By Craig Carlyle, certified machinery safety expert (TÜV Nord), HasTrak
Here we go again, another year and another engineer killed at work through the complacency of the workplace. This time it was an apprentice, 23-year-old Josh Masters fixing the hydraulics on a log loader in the Balmoral Forest in North Canterbury.
The verbal instruction on the task were completely inadequate, killing Mr Masters when the boom collapsed. The court proceedings have just been released, and they do not make good reading. This young man should be alive today and getting on with life. It is shocking and of course devastating when it happens, for everyone, the victim, their family, workmates, the community.
If we were learning from it and making our workplaces safer, there may be some cold comfort. But on the evidence from the Courts and our observations throughout industry, we have not learnt a single thing. We have conducted a significant number of machine safety audits over a wide range of businesses right across New Zealand, and one of our key audit questions concerns formalised safe work instructions for reasonably predictable maintenance activities. While all engineers will happily engage about the physical safety precautions, making a leap to formalising the same seems to escape them. To date we have logged a 100% record – of failure.
I don’t know how I could make the message clearer. Other than, forget about your prequals, JSA’s and flagpole saluting approach. Look closely at the prosecution notes openly available from WorkSafe. If you acknowledge that in the life cycle of your machine you will perform a maintenance task that could go devastatingly wrong, then do something to bundle the information that will keep that worker alive into your maintenance planning.
After all, no-one wins when someone dies at work. Its’ not even that you could argue that the tools are not available. Computerised maintenance management systems are readily available and packaging work instructions and documents into a preventative maintenance plan is not a stretch for a competent maintenance planner. Our advice is to start small, taking learnings from your latest job, one job at a time. It’s a simple question for your tradesmen; what advice would they give to the next person to keep them alive?
WorkSafe says urgent action is needed by the trades to take better care of apprentices after the second court sentencing this year for a trainee killed on the job.
Unfortunately, it is all workers that need the same protection as evidenced by WorkSafe’s latest advice. Under the heading “Unsafe machinery costs digits and dollars”, WorkSafe highlighted three recent manufacturing sector cases where there was a failure to follow basic machine safety standards. One worker had two fingers amputated and a third degloved in a punch and shear machine.
Another worker had three fingers partially amputated while using a punch and forming press. In sentencing, Judge Lisa Tremewan referred to “an unintended complacency” and that “it is critical that robust practices are employed by those within the relevant industries”.
And a third worker was cleaning a machine when it amputated two fingers and degloved a third. The machine’s on/off switch had been knocked into operation because the interlock wasn’t functioning.
“If you are unsure whether your safeguarding is up to scratch, engage a qualified expert as soon as possible,” says WorkSafe’s Mark Donaghue. “Workers should not be suffering harm like this in 2024, and businesses have no excuse. WorkSafe is notified of machine guarding incidents from across the country every week and is regularly prohibiting dangerous machinery.”
Workplaces have been required to safeguard machinery since the Machinery Act 1950 took effect. But more than 70 years later, workplaces still aren’t getting it right, with too many workers in New Zealand being injured and killed from unsafe machinery.
Craig Carlyle is director at Maintenance Transformations. His expertise lies in the practical application of maintenance and health and safety management systems in the workplace. He is also a life member of the Maintenance Engineering Society of NZ.