Concepts of accident causation and their role in safe design among engineering students
- Authors: Hall, Stephen , Culvenor, John , Cowley, Stephen , Else, Dennis
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 18th conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education, Melbourne, Victoria : 9th-13th December 2007
- Full Text:
- Description: Safe design is a strong theme at present in Australia. To ‘eliminate hazards at the design stage’ is one of the five national priorities set out by the National OHS Strategy. The Australian Safety and Compensation Council have recently released both a guideline for safe design and an engineering education package. Safe design is not only about engineering decisions. Engineers are however an important group. This paper reports on a survey to evaluate perceptions of student engineers on topics relevant to the advancement of safe design including perceptions of: control versus fatalism; accident causation; and perceptions of the role played by engineers.
- Description: 2003004787
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
Impact of health and safety representative training on concepts of accident causation and prevention
- Authors: Culvenor, John , Cowley, Stephen , Harvey, Jack
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Occupational Health and Safety - Australia and New Zealand Vol. 19, no. 3 (2003), p. 279-292
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- Reviewed:
- Description: In South Australia, health and safety representatives (HSRs) may undertake three levels of training, commencing at basic level, then progressing through advanced level to continuing level. A survey of 1,200 HSRs in SA was conducted to assess their beliefs about accident causation and accident prevention. In regard to accident causation, the survey found that HSRs showed a tendency to favour behavioural causation over workplace environment or systems-type causation. In regard to accident prevention, HSRs at all levels of training had a preference for low-order controls. However, there appears to be some shift in thinking by the time HSRs have completed all levels of training (that is, to the continuing training level), though the thinking of most remains distinctly safe-worker in orientation.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003003020
An analysis of the forces required to drag sheep over various surfaces
- Authors: Harvey, Jack , Culvenor, John , Payne, Warren , Cowley, Stephen , Lawrance, Michael , Stuart, David , Williams, Robyn
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Applied Ergonomics Vol. 33, no. 6 (Nov 2002), p. 523-531
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Some occupational health and safety hazards associated with sheep shearing are related to shearing shed design. One aspect is the floor of the catching pen, from which sheep are caught and dragged to the shearing workstation. Floors can be constructed from various materials, and may be level or gently sloping. An experiment was conducted using eight experienced shearers as participants to measure the force exerted by a shearer when dragging a sheep. Results showed that significant changes in mean dragging force occurred with changes in both surface texture and slope. The mean dragging forces for different floor textures and slopes ranged from 359 N (36.6 kg) to 423N (43.2 kg), and were close to the maximum acceptable limits for pulling forces for the most capable of males. The best floor tested was a floor sloped at 1:10 constructed of timber battens oriented parallel to the path of the drag, which resulted in a mean dragging force 63.6N (15%) lower than the worst combination.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003000244
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