Other Safety Services & Advice

Every workplace is different and every workplace’s WHS requirements are different. We offer a wide range of products and services to suit your company’s unique WHS requirements. Some of the services we offer are listed below:

• Risk Assessments and Risk Control Strategies
• Close-Out of WHSQ Improvement Notices, Prohibition Notices and other Infringements
• Onsite and Offsite Safety Advisor Engagement, including the Development and Implementation of:
  • WHS Induction Materials
  • Site WHS Inspections
  • Permit to Work Systems
  • KPI’s, WHS Statistics and Tracking
  • WHS Oversight and Supervision
  • Development and Implementation of SWMS / SOPs / JHAs
  • Equipment Registers
• Incident Reporting and Incident Investigations
• Injury Management and Rehabilitation (Rehab and Return to Work Coordination / RRTWC)
• Safety Culture and Leadership Programs
• WHS Health and Hygiene Monitoring
• Noise Surveys
• Management of Change

Under the WHS Regulations, organisations are required to assess all WHS risks that workers may be exposed to and to implement control strategies to eliminate or minimize the risks as far as reasonably practicable. Our consultants are experienced in risk assessment methodologies and can devise effective risk control strategies to ensure your work environment is safe.

Although generally preferring to act in an advice-giving and assistance-focused role, Work Health and Safety Queensland (WHSQ) Inspectors can issue penalty notices to businesses that fail to comply with the WHS Act or regulations.

These notices provide information on what legal duties were being breached and when they must be rectified by and can contain recommendations on closing the items out.

Some companies may not wish to engage a full-time safety advisor or may need a safety advisor on short notice.

In these cases, Spire Safety can provide safety advisors to help fill the gap in WHS management.

Available in both an “Onsite” and “Offsite” capacity, the contract safety advisor can assist in meeting WHS obligations for short or long-term engagements.

These services can include the development and implementation of:

• WHS Inductions
• Site WHS Inspections
• Permit to Work Systems
• KPIs, WHS Statistics and Tracking
• Internal Training
• WHS Oversight and Supervision
• SWMS / SOPs / JHAs
• Equipment Registers

Notifiable incidents need to be reported to the regulator; however, it is best practice to record and investigate ALL incidents and near misses in the workplace.

This is vital to ensure incident root causes and causal factors are identified with corrective actions implemented to prevent a recurrence.

Spire Safety’s WHS consultants are trained in the most common and effective incident investigation standards, including Taproot and ICAM.

It is the responsibility of the employer to ensure they provide a Rehabilitation and Return to Work Coordinator who is appropriately qualified and competent to carry out their role.

Our safety consultants are trained rehabilitation and return-to-work coordinators (RRTWC) that understand the worker’s compensation and rehabilitation legislation and apply injury management practices as well as effective negotiation and communications skills to ensure injured workers return to work in a timely and safe fashion.

Commitment from senior management is directly related to safety performance and demonstrates how top-down leadership and leading by example can lead to improvements in WHS.

An effective safety culture places importance on safety beliefs, values and attitudes—and takes steps to communicate these and to ensure they are shared by most people within the organisation.

Our WHS consultants use the action plan provided within the Construction Safety Competency Framework to improve the safety culture in our client’s organisation. This action plan includes:

1. Communicate company values
2. Demonstrate leadership
3. Clarify required and expected behaviour
4. Personalise safety outcomes
5. Develop positive safety attitudes
6. Engage and own safety responsibilities and accountabilities
7. Increase hazard/risk awareness and preventive behaviours
8. Improve understanding and effective implementation of safety management systems
9. Monitor, review and reflect on personal effectiveness

Health and Hygiene monitoring is the monitoring of a worker to identify changes in their health status because of exposure to certain substances or working conditions.

A health monitoring program should consider:

• the regulatory requirements under the model WHS laws
• the type of chemical involved
• the way your worker is exposed
• the level of exposure
• if the work environment includes control methods or equipment to reduce the exposure, and
• if it is possible to use a proactive way to monitor adverse health effects.

Workers must undergo health monitoring when exposed to the following:

• Hazardous Chemicals Defined in Schedule 14 of the WHS Regulation (including arsenic, benzene and cadmium)
• Chemicals not Listed in Schedule 14 where Serious Risks Exist
• Lead
• Asbestos

Management of change is vital for identifying, assessing and controlling a change to workplace design, operations, organisation or activities.

The main objective of the management of the change process is to ensure that the change doesn’t introduce any hazards into the workplace and that any hazards that may be created are managed appropriately.

Workplaces need to manage the risk of hearing loss from workers being exposed to high levels of noise. Exposure standards outline the safe levels of noise that a worker can be exposed to and the safe duration of exposure.

Generally, a noise level of 85dBa is safe for an 8-hour shift, with anything higher than this potentially causing damage. As the noise level increases, the safe duration of exposure decreases. For example, at 129dBa the safe exposure duration is only 1 second.

Workplaces can undergo a “Noise Survey” where dBa readings are taken throughout the workplace to identify areas where noise levels exceed the exposure standards and thus require safety controls (e.g. hearing protection).