Building a Work Health and Safety Management System on Site

About this course.

This course builds a working understanding of what a work health and safety management system is, why a systematic approach beats a reactive one, and how each element operates on a real construction site. It walks through the risk-management process and the hierarchy of controls, the legal duty to consult, cooperate and coordinate, the role of safe work method statements for high risk construction work, the discipline of training and induction, the handling of incidents and hazards, emergency preparedness, and the plan–do–check–act cycle that keeps the whole system alive. It also explains how a WHSMS supports the primary duty of care, how it feeds a principal contractor's WHS management plan on larger jobs, and how to scale the system sensibly so a small builder is not drowning in documents built for a tier-one contractor.

Throughout, duties are framed using the model work health and safety (WHS) laws developed by Safe Work Australia. Safe Work Australia is the national policy body: it writes and maintains the model WHS Act, model WHS Regulations and model Codes of Practice, but it does not enforce them. Each state and territory enacts its own WHS laws and enforces them through its own regulator. Victoria has not adopted the model laws and instead operates under its Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act 2004 and OHS Regulations, enforced by WorkSafe Victoria. Western Australia adopted the model WHS laws more recently than the eastern states. Because of this, every duty described here must be checked against the law and regulator in the jurisdiction where your work is carried out.