Gira deveres de PCBU sobrepostos numa obra partilhada

Work through the risks the job actually creates, eliminate what can be eliminated and minimise the rest, and write down the reasoning: how likely the harm is, how serious it would be, what is known about the risk and about ways of controlling it, and what those controls cost relative to that. Keep the reasoning with the control rather than only the control.

Por quê: Reasonably practicable is a defined test in this Act, not a general appeal to common sense, and it is applied afterwards by someone reading a file. A control with no reasoning behind it is indistinguishable from a control that was chosen because it was cheap, and the difference between those two is the whole of a defence.

Keep a live list of every business working on or into the site, not only the direct subcontractors: labour hire, plant hire with an operator, scaffolders, testing and surveying, the client's own trades. Record a named person for each, with the work they are here to do and the period they are here for.

Por quê: You cannot consult, cooperate and coordinate with a business you have not written down, and the ones that get left off a list are exactly the ones that arrive for two days, do something high risk and leave. Plant hire with an operator is the classic: the operator is another PCBU's worker, working under your site rules, on your programme.

Take the risks that more than one business touches, scaffold and edge protection, traffic and pedestrian movements, services, lifting over other trades, and agree in writing who provides the control, who inspects it, who may alter it and how a change is told to everyone else. Review the agreement when the trades on site change, not only at the start.

Por quê: The Act requires each PCBU to consult, cooperate with and coordinate activities with the others so far as their duties overlap, and it does not let any of them contract out of the duty itself. What an agreement can do is stop two businesses each assuming the other inspected the scaffold, which is the exact shape of most serious harm on a multi-trade site.

Induct every crew onto the site controls and the agreement behind them, brief changes when they happen rather than at the next monthly meeting, and give workers a real route to raise a hazard, through health and safety representatives where the site has them. Record who was briefed on what and when.

Por quê: Worker engagement and participation is a duty in its own right under this Act and not a courtesy, and it is also the cheapest source of information a site has. The person who knows the excavation is moving is the person standing in it, and whether that reaches the site office is a question about the route, not about the person.

Record each day as it runs: who was on site, what work went on, the weather where it mattered, the safety observations made and what was done about them, and any change to a shared control. Close out the actions rather than only raising them.

Por quê: A diary kept every day is evidence and a diary written up in the week after an incident is a liability, and the two are easy to tell apart. It is also the record that answers the only question an investigation really asks, which is what the business knew and when it knew it.

Keep two notification routines running from the same set of forms. Particular hazardous construction work, such as deep excavation, work at height above the prescribed limit and certain lifting, has to be notified to the regulator at least 24 hours before it starts. A notifiable event, a death, a notifiable injury or illness or a notifiable incident, has to be notified as soon as possible after it happens, and the site left undisturbed except to help someone or make it safe.

Por quê: These are the two duties most often discovered after the fact, and both carry offences of their own regardless of whether anyone was hurt. Disturbing a scene is the one that does lasting damage: it destroys the evidence that would have shown what the controls actually were, and the business that cleared the site is the business that cannot now prove anything about it.

Report to the people who govern the business, not only to the ones who run the site: what the risks across the portfolio are, what resources have been put against them, what events happened and what was done, and where the same hazard keeps coming back on different jobs. Show the actions that are still open as well as the ones closed.

Por quê: An officer of a PCBU owes a personal duty to exercise due diligence, which means keeping up to date, understanding the operations and their hazards, and making sure the business has and uses appropriate resources and processes. That duty cannot be discharged from a summary that only carries good news, and a board that was never shown the open actions is a board that cannot say it knew.