Construction safety conference in Canberra

The ACT Work Health and Safety Commissioner, Mark McCabe, has announced that he will be hosting a major conference on work safety in the construction industry in Canberra in June of this year.

The conference - ‘Building Safety: Bridging the Gap’ - will be held on the first weekend in June, with a preconference workshop on 31 May 2013.

The conference will focus on safety issues in the construction sector with an emphasis on what construction companies need to do to comply with the law, how to build a safety culture on their sites and how to ensure they are doing everything they can to make their sites safer. It will be important for anyone managing workers on a construction site.

McCabe says that the conference will build on the findings of the recent construction industry safety inquiry and the report ‘Getting Home Safely’, which was released in November 2012. The Attorney-General, Simon Corbell, recently announced the government’s support for all 28 recommendations from the report.

“It is important that we see this report, and the recommendations, as a starting point and not an end point,” McCabe said. “The real work lies in implementing the recommendations and reducing the incidence of serious injuries in the local construction sector. This conference will build on the findings from the report and promote discussion regarding how to achieve the agreed goal of a significant improvement in the local safety record. The presentations should help anyone working in construction in Australia to improve their safety outcomes.”

Baroness Rita Donaghy, responsible for the landmark report for the British Government ‘One Death is Too Many’, will be the conference’s keynote presenter.

Baroness Donaghy’s 2009 report was commissioned in response to similar circumstances as those which faced the ACT in mid-2012 - an unacceptable level of fatalities in the local construction industry. Her report made far-reaching recommendations for improving safety in the UK construction industry, many of which were very similar to those in the ACT’s Getting Home Safely report. Baroness Donaghy will report on the British experience in the aftermath of her report.

McCabe has indicated that the June conference, which will be opened by the Attorney-General, will bring together prominent practitioners and academics from across the country. Speakers will include Dennis Else (Brookfield Multiplex), Ross Trethewy (Lend Lease), Helen Lingard and Ron Wakefield (RMIT Centre for Construction Work Health and Safety Research), Alan Edwards (Federal Safety Commissioner), Andrew Hopkins (ANU), Rob Long (Human Dymensions), Peter Dunphy (WorkCover NSW) and Gesa Ruge (University of Canberra and National Association of Women in Construction).

Alenna Titterton and her team from Norton Rose will conduct a mock court hearing, taking conference participants through how the legal ramifications might play out should a company and its directors be charged with breaches of the Work Health and Safety Act in the aftermath of a workplace tragedy.

Further details about the conference can be found at www.worksafe.act.gov.au or www.buildingsafety.org.au.