Meaningful and effective consultation and the construction industry of Victoria, Australia
- Authors: Ayers, Gerard , Culvenor, John , Sillitoe, Jim , Else, Dennis
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Construction Management and Economics Vol. 31, no. 6 (2013), p. 542-567
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Consultation between employers and employees is mandated under Australian occupational health and safety legislation. For consultation to be considered meaningful and effective, it is generally accepted that moral and ethical principles such as trust, honesty, commitment and respect need to be recognized and applied by individuals during consultation. It is also considered that an organization's level of cultural maturity is an important element in the ability of individuals to freely engage in meaningful and effective consultation. If the value of consultation is best reflected in the degree of input and control that workers have regarding the very decisions that affect them, and if the level of worker involvement is a reflection of an organization's level of cultural maturity, it is debateable whether the notion of applying moral and ethical principles during consultation, and the adoption of the paradigm of organizational and cultural maturity, have been successfully developed and embraced in the commercial and industrial sector of the construction industry of Victoria, Australia. © 2013 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
- Description: C1
Safe design in construction
- Authors: Behm, Michael , Culvenor, John
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Health & Safety, Research & Practice Vol. 3, no. 1 (2011), p. 9-32
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: n 2008, WorkSafe Western Australia and the Western Australia Commission for Occupational Safety and Health developed and implemented a Code of Practice for the Safe Design of Buildings and Structures to provide guidance for construction designers in meeting safe design regulations. Design engineers were surveyed and participated in focus groups to evaluate the Western Australia construction industry’s perspective on the new code of practice and to understand the effects of construction safety in design. The research concluded that engineers generally believe the regulations and code of practice are sensible and almost all believe construction worker safety and health is being positively impacted. Furthermore the research indicates that the regulations and code of practice have made a positive impact on the design engineers’ duty of care, thinking, and actions towards affecting the safety and health of construction workers. The work was carried out to understand the effects in Western Australia and also to inform the current National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Prevention through Design approach and a long-term strategy to adoption in the United States.
- Description: 2003009255
Evaluation of learning outcomes for the Engineering Resource Package (ERP)
- Authors: Culvenor, John , Cowley, Stephen , Else, Dennis , Hall, Stephen
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Report
- Full Text: false
- Description: The Australian Safety and Compensation Council recently released "Safe Design for Engineering Students - A Resource Package". This package won the Society of Technical Communication Excellence Award for technical communication. Much of the Resource Package was drawn from The Principles of Safe Design (Culvenor, 2004). The report above was an evaluation of the implementation trial and it lead to the identification of improvements - one which was the inclusion of substantial additional material on accident causation and prevention concepts and activities (Culvenor, J. 2005, Editing the final stage of the Safe Design: An Engineering Resource Package).
- Description: K1
- Description: 2003002681
The principles of safe design
- Authors: Culvenor, John
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Report
- Full Text: false
- Description: This commissioned report was the core material for the "Guideline for the Safe Design of Work" released last year by the Australian Safety and Compensation Council. This document establishes the foundation arguments for the discussion of safe design in occupational health and safety. Regulation in OHS is currently changing and so too are industry practices and this document is a key policy and educational document supporting these social improvements.
- Description: K1
- Description: 2003002678
Comparison of team and individual judgements of solutions to safety problems
- Authors: Culvenor, John
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Safety Science Vol. 41, no. 6 (2003), p. 543-556
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Knowledge about how best to solve problems in occupational health and safety and how to be innovative in general is important to all industry. With the advent of non-prescriptive workplace safety legislation in Australia (and internationally), the need for problem solving at an enterprise level has never been greater. The legislation calls for problem solving to take place via a cooperative approach between employers and employees and this manifests itself as committees, risk improvement teams and the like. Unfortunately research in problem solving generally has showed us that interacting teamwork is less effective that individual thinking in terms of generating solutions to problems. However, there has been little research on the comparison of individuals and teams as regards the decision-making stage of problem solving that must naturally follow the idea generation stage. This research compared individuals and teams based on decision-making in health and safety. Subjects were 294 manufacturing industry employees arranged into 38 teams. Subjects ranked solutions to safety problems individually and then repeated the exercise in teams where they sought to develop a team consensus. The average of individual judgements were compared with the team consensus judgements in a paired design. The results indicate that the consensus judgement of the teams was much better than the average of the individuals that comprised the team. The implications are that, while idea generation is probably best achieved individually, judgements and decision about solutions is probably best performed through a consensus approach.
- Description: 2003003023
Effect of creative thinking on OHS committees
- Authors: Culvenor, John , Ayers, Gerard
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Occupational Health and Safety, Australia and New Zealand Vol. 18, no. 3 (2002), p. 239-246
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: An important principle of Australian OHS law is that workers participate in the management of health and safety via OHS committees and representatives. A further principle is that workplaces engage in problem solving processes according to a hierarchy of hazard control - rather than simply following prescriptive rules. The OHS committee is therefore a problem-solving forum. However, the benefits of problem- solving or creative thinking techniques within committees have not been widely explored. To test the effects, two OHS committees from two construction companies were trained in a combination of creative thinking and risk control concepts. Subjects were tested on their ability to generate solutions and to rank solutions. They were compared with untrained subjects from two further committees. The results showed that the trained subjects generated more solutions and, when ranking solutions, showed a greater preference for solutions which were higher on the hierarchy of controls. (author abstract)
- Description: 2003003032
Reducing the energy cost of dragging sheep during sheep shearing
- Authors: Payne, Warren , Culvenor, John , Lawrance, Michael , Harvey, Jack , Cowley, Stephen , Stuart, David , Williams, Robyn
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Occupational Health and Safety - Australia and New Zealand Vol. 18, no. 2 (2002), p. 173-179
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The task of dragging sheep into position for shearing has been reported by shearers as the most physically demanding and one of the highest injury risk aspects of shearing, particularly with regard to back injury. This study aimed to identify which of the currently used drag paths induced the lowest energy consumption and risk of injury. The drag path with the lowest work economy (oxygen cost per sheep dragged per minute) and highest injury risk is used by left-handed shearers who are shearing from a workstation which is designed for right-handed shearers. Importantly, there were no significant differences in the work economy of the two drag paths which were used most frequently and which involved the lowest injury risk. These data have been used in advocating the adoption of simple shearing shed design solutions to assist in the control of injury risk and energy expenditure in the wool industry.
- Description: 2003000247
Workplace health and safety in the building and construction industry
- Authors: Culvenor, John , Durham, B. , Rozen, P.
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Report
- Full Text: false
- Description: K1
- Description: 2003003014