Why is Industry Guidance for Site Access necessary?
CHASNZ and Site Safe have been working hard to better connect the New Zealand construction industry on matters of health and safety. Through this work, it is clear that there is frustration around the variations in requirements for people to gain access to sites and other construction work areas. These are broken down into four key areas:
- Uncertainty about what training is required to gain entry to construction sites
- Different training requirements present, causing repetition and duplication of effort
- Variation in what foundational health and safety training covers eg. no universal standard.
- Difficultly knowing whether training is effective
- Confusion around the difference between training and competency assessment
- Some site access requirements are linked to meeting competency standards, rather than training requirements
- Site inductions vary and can sometimes be a repeat of learnings through foundational
health and safety training - Some site inductions don’t identify critical health and safety risks and controls
- Difficult for those who manage sites to maintain assurance that people are trained and are competent
- People who are not yet competent are often working unsupervised in high risk environments
- Difficult for employers to understand what the appropriate levels of supervision are
- Lack of access to development, coaching and further training opportunities
