What’s Happening in Safety: April 2013

‘What’s Happening in Safety’ is a monthly publication aimed at keeping Geelong businesses up to date with legislative changes, incidents and safety news within the Greater Geelong region.

The Ritz Geelong – Structural support in question

Following the Swanston St wall collapse, which tragically took the lives of three people last month, the structural integrity of Geelongs’ Ritz flats has been thrown back into question. The structure has become an icon for lax safety cultures within the Geelong area and incidents such as this remind us that before we judge, we need to look in our own backyards.

In a Geelong Advertiser article on 2nd May 2013, we saw that the COGG had taken an albeit provoked step to mitigate the structural risk by placing an emergency order for fencing to be erected around the site, COGG Manager City Development Joanne Van Slageren was quoted as saying “An engineer’s report would need to be provided demonstrating the safety of the building before any barricading could subsequently be removed.”

AGB Engineering added to this through their Facebook by stating “Free standing walls…. Are very susceptible to horizontal loads such as high winds or twisting from basketball rings… a Professional Civil Engineer who is also a registered building practitioner are the only ones who are qualified to give advice on these matters.”

Let’s hope a decision regarding the building can be made soon, as I’m not sure how well a fence can hold a crumbling building.

Injury figures for construction industry released

Recently, Worksafe figures were released outlining staggering statistics showing that in the past five years 17,000 injury claims were made in the construction industry, which accounted for 80% of the total injuries over the period, at an estimated expense of one billion dollars to tax payers.

The root causes leading to these injuries have been identified to be inadequate planning, poor site housekeeping and lack of responsible supervision.

To help advertise safety in the construction industry, Worksafe Victoria has introduced the ‘Top Tradie Cup’ which is a six-week competition that tests tradies on their football and safety knowledge.

The competition is still open for entries and has heaps of prizes up for grabs: toptradie.com.au