The national society representing maintenance engineers claims that guarding and unsafe use of machinery has failed to improve even after the new guideline, Health and Safety Act and workplace regulations.
Maintenance Engineering Society of New Zealand (MESNZ) life member Craig Carlyle says that despite the best efforts of the government and crown agencies, the results at the coal face have hardly moved since the new initiatives with fatalities and serious injuries still featuring in WorkSafe enforcements in 2018.
MESNZ participated alongside WorkSafe on the 2014 guidelines, maintains a guarding practitioner’s register at their request and actively involves the Inspectorate at their National Conference. The 2018 conference, which included a guarding forum session, was an ideal opportunity to discuss the topic with Worksafe and maintenance engineers from industry. The feedback underscored that basic competency is missing in the middle ground with either overreaction or a head in the sand approach still being the norm. While some businesses have nearly consulted themselves out of the operation at the hands of consultants, other businesses continue to fail to even recognise there is a problem which often leaves the maintenance engineer in the middle.
The Best Practise Guideline on the Safe Use of Machinery provides a systemised approach to resolving machinery and guarding issues. It is an ideal basic tool in a business’s approach to understanding how to keep their operations safe and what specialist skills they may need to utilise for specific needs.
According to Carlyle, “The Crown has done a good job of providing the tools at their end, but the issue is delivering the simple messages and competency training to industry at operational level. Guarding and the safe use of machinery is another example where middle management and the health and Safety Industry have failed to change their Teutonic approach of the 1990’s.”
MESNZ discussed competency training with Worksafe in 2014, but other than specialised training, nothing has been available until this year, with MESNZ members taking up the challenge.
“The guideline is peppered with references to competency from ‘industry’ to the Standards, yet until now, there has competency training in the solution path itself. Our concern is for maintenance engineers thrust into solving guarding issues with an expectation that they are competent,” states Carlyle.
The Maintenance Engineering Society’s members represent manufacturers and industries right across New Zealand industry.