Capital Development Guidelines

The Principal has a legal obligation to monitor and supervise the activities of Contractors with regard to health and safety aspects of their work, irrespective of whether contracts are major or minor.

In order to perform this function, the Principal may engage consultants with appropriate professional qualifications as Contract Managers or Supervisors. Contract Managers should have:

• Access to the contract documents and specifications.
• A good understanding of the health and safety requirements set out in the contract documents.
• Access to other documents referred to in the contract, eg: Risk Assessment and Health and Safety Plan.
• Adequate contract supervision training and suitable health and safety knowledge and skills relevant to the contract.

Monitoring and Supervision

The extent to which the Principal or Consultants should monitor and supervise Contractors will be influenced by several factors, including:

• Level of risk associated with the Contractor’s activities.
• Complexity of the tasks performed by the Contractor.
• Control the Principal has over the workplace.
• Interaction with other parties (eg employees, the public).
• Duration of the contract.

A higher level of supervision may be required in special circumstances such as works undertaken in occupied facilities and particularly in facilities with special requirements eg custodial or secure facilities.

Supervision may also need to be targeted to specific key elements of a contract, for example:

• Contract Start-Up - ensuring that suitable systems and procedures are in place and the workplace is appropriately established.
• High-Risk Or Complex Activities - monitoring conformance with safe work procedures and risk assessment control measures.
• High level of interaction with other parties - review of co-ordination and notification systems operating at the workplace.
• Introduction of New Plant, Equipment Or Systems Of Work - may require separate risk assessment and monitoring of control procedures.

Monitoring and Supervision of Contractor Activities includes:

• Regular review of Contractor health and safety documentation. This may involve review of:
  • Induction records
  • Plant maintenance/inspection records
  • Health and safety inspection reports
  • Risk assessment documents
  • Employee training/competency records
  • Safety meeting minutes.
• Undertaking regular site inspections to monitor compliance with health and safety procedures, considering:
  • Legislative requirements
  • Conformance with Risk Assessment control measures
  • Conformance with Health and Safety Plan
  • Conformance with Departmental health and safety policy and procedures
• Providing Contractors with advice on unusual or unexpected risks and feedback on areas of non-compliance. This may arise from:
  • Inspections undertaken by the Principal or Consultant
  • Inspections or reports from other parties
  • Experience from similar contracts
• Reviewing Contractor health and safety performance. This shall include review of:
  • Accident/incident reports
  • Third party reports or complaints
  • Review of monthly OH&S performance reports
• Ensuring that corrective action is taken where non conformance is identified by:
  • Issuing of non-conformance report
  • Reviewing and confirming that corrective action implemented
  • Issuing formal notice (ie: site instruction) when action not taken within reasonable timeframe
• Incorporating health and safety issues as part of regular contract review meetings. This may include:
  • Health and safety as an agenda item
  • Safety inspections undertaken after/before site meetings
  • Health and safety issues considered as high priority in relation to overall contract performance.
• Incorporating reports on Contractor health and safety performance as standard agenda item for Project Control Group meetings (Refer to the ‘Contractor OH&S Performance Report’ proforma).

Workplace Inspections

The Principal demonstrates their fulfilment of obligations in relation to the supervision of Contractors by monitoring the standard of workplace safety and compliance. Inspection programs undertaken by Contractors and where required, by the Principal or Consultants, are a key element in monitoring the health and safety standards of the Contractor’s operations and play a significant role in identifying health and safety issues before they result in injury or damage at the workplace.

Contract Inspection Checklist

The Risk Assessment completed by the Contractor should be referred to in order to determine priority areas for inspection. The risk assessment identifies the hazards associated with the contract and the particular control measures to be implemented by the Contractor.

The Contract Inspection Checklist allows the systematic review of health and safety issues relevant to the contract activities. The inspection checklist can be modified to include other health and safety issues identified during the contract.

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General Health and Safety Inspection Checklist

A General Health and Safety Checklist is for use when undertaking health and safety inspections of Contractor operations. The checklist is designed to consider a broad range of general health and safety issues in the workplace and should be modified as required to include specific safety aspects associated with the contract.

Responsibility for Carrying Out Inspections

The Contractor has a duty of care as an employer to provide and maintain a safe workplace and consequently has an important responsibility to conduct workplace inspections on a regular basis. A team comprising management and employee representatives should generally undertake the inspections. The Contractor should make available copies of health and safety inspection reports for review when requested.

The Principal also has a responsibility to monitor health and safety aspects of Contractor operations. Although not required to be expert in all matters, they or the Consultants appointed to represent the Principal should check that the Contractor has adequately fulfilled their health and safety obligations, as far as they can reasonably establish. The Consultant should raise with the Contractor any health and safety issues that come to their attention through their inspection and monitoring of Contractor operations.

Where a representative of the Department as Principal participates in inspections these should be conducted in conjunction with a representative of the Contractor to enable discussion and resolution of issues as they are identified. The Consultants may seek input from specialist health and safety staff to be available during and after the inspection to give advice on health and safety issues.

Frequency of Inspections

The Contract manager should establish an inspection schedule prior to the commencement of the contract.

For high-risk projects it may be appropriate for the Contractor to undertake daily health and safety inspections. Weekly or monthly health and safety inspections are likely to be more practicable for contracts with lower associated risk. Daily pre-start safety inspections may be required for particular high-risk plant, equipment and processes.

Contract Records

Effective contract management requires a systematic approach to record keeping. Relevant health and safety records retained by consultants provide documentary evidence of the Principal’s due diligence in relation to the health and safety of Contractors. These records are particularly important in situations where the Contractor is in breach of health and safety requirements or a significant incident or accident occurs from activities performed by the Contractor.

Consultants are to notify the Contractor promptly of any breach of health and safety they identify. Breaches should be notified using a non-conformance report (Refer to the ‘Non Conformance Report’ proforma). The Contractor must take immediate action to rectify the breach. Relevant details of the breach and the remedial actions taken should be recorded on an inspection checklist or as a file/diary note. The Principal should retain a copy of the report and document the remedial action undertaken by the Contractor.

Other relevant health and safety records that should be retained by Consultants on behalf of the Principal include:

• Risk Assessment
• Health and Safety Plan
• Contract documents
• Health and safety inspection reports
• Minutes of safety meetings and site meetings
• Incident investigation reports
• Monthly OH&S performance reports
• Non-conformance reports
• Photographs and test results
• Site instructions and diary notes.

Relevant health and safety documents should be consolidated and retained in the contract file. These are important documents that may be required even some time after the contract has been completed.

Contractor Performance Reporting

At the completion of the contract, the Principal or Consultant is to complete and retain on file a Contractor OH&S Performance Report.

Building Design Statutory Requirements

To eliminate and reduce hazard and risk to buildings Section 28 of the OHS Act 2004 was amended to ensure that OH&S is considered in the design and structure of a building. This legislation applies to designs commenced on or after 1st July 2006. In some situations a redesign of a design commenced before 1st July 2006 may fall within the scope of the duty where it is, in effect, a new design.

The section 28 legislative requirement is, “A person who designs a building or structure or part of a building or structure who knows, or ought reasonable to know, that the building or structure or the part of the building or structure is to be used as a workplace must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that it is designed to be safe and without risks to the health of the persons using it as a workplace for a purpose for which it was designed”.

The person designing the building or structure should therefore include consideration of the range of work activities associated with the intended uses of the building or structure and account for these, in preparing the design. Designers need to cater for activities being undertaken safely: for example, by designing sufficient space and safe access to a lift well, lift pit or machine room in order to ensure proper functioning of the lift.

The scope of the hazards to be considered are:

• Siting of building(s) or structure(s)
• High consequence hazards – dangerous goods storage, high energy hazards work (eg temperature pressure) and health hazards
• Systems of work – main work activities (maintenance, cleaning etc)
• Environment – environmental conditions of a workplace eg inadequate ventilation, lighting and welfare facilities
• Incident mitigation – inadequate egress, suiting of assembly areas, inadequate emergency services access.

Each of the above hazard considerations may occur at various stages of a project. Therefore, preliminary sketches, plans and drawings by technical specialists should be created before a building is constructed, commissioned and used as a workplace to ensure all OHS hazards have been considered and reduced.

The WorkSafe ‘Designing Safer Buildings and Structures – a Guide to Section 28 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004’ details the new legislative requirements, duties and procedures to ensure that OHS is considered at the design stage of a project. This can be obtained by contacting WorkSafe Victoria on 1800 136 089 or online at http://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/.