Hi everyone. Quite often, effective risk management can come down to simply just stopping and thinking about your task before starting it. In this blog we will discuss workplace Traffic management plan and health and safety duties
I’ll give you an example. I was picking up my daughter from school and on the way, I encountered a large truck reversing out of a driveway, with his mate directing him out from the middle of the road. The truck backed out across both lanes of traffic, and with his mate waving him to keep going, the back end of the truck started to push onto the footpath on the opposite side of the road. This probably would have been ok if it hadn’t been for the approaching earbud wearing, head down and lost in his phone pedestrian. The pedestrian was oblivious to the truck about to run him over, and the mate directing didn’t see him either. In the 2 seconds, it took for all this to happen, I got on my car horn and blared out a warning. The truck stopped, the pedestrian looked up and realised what was happening, the mate directing was still oblivious to the near miss and I luckily saved the pedestrian a potential visit to the hospital. Looking back on this, if the driver had done a mental stop before you start, he could have realised it would be safer to back into the building upon arrival, instead of driving straight in. This would have allowed his full vision of all road and pedestrian traffic when departing and would have removed his traffic duty mate from the road as well. Just spending a few seconds thinking about what has changed, what / where are the danger areas, how can I get hurt and what can I do to make this task safer is not difficult and should be incorporated as a first step before starting any task. (Nick Lines, WHS Advisor)
What is a Traffic Management Plan?
A traffic management plan provides comprehensive information on managing the risks related to the vehicles such as a car, truck or forklift traffic in a workplace. The traffic management plan is required to be monitored and reviewed frequently in order to ensure traffic management plans are effective and reflects the changes in the workplace.
Depending on the size of the workplace, the vehicles are used and the frequency of the vehicles and pedestrians are interacting, workplaces are required to manage the risk of vehicles colliding with people.
Traffic Management Duties
Employers have a legal responsibility not to expose workers and others within the workplace, with health and safety risks. This involves the employer to:
- Identify the hazards and potential areas of collision between people and vehicles such as a car, truck or forklift.
- Consult and actively involve your team and others in the supply chain. Workers involvement in planning, developing, monitoring and reviewing traffic management plans, will identify the potential problems they are encountering at the workplace. This will assist the employer to identify the effective control measures.
- Implement the controls
- Review controls periodically.
Officers are required to exercise due diligence and ensure the business:
- have an understanding of health and safety, traffic management, risks workers and other people within the workplace are exposed to;
- have sufficient resources to manage traffic management;
- have policies, procedures to manage traffic management;
- implements the policies and procedures;
- complies with the health and safety act.
Workers responsibilities are to take reasonable care for their health and safety, co-operate with reasonable workplace policies and procedures, comply, and not adversely affect other people’s health and safety.
Examples are: Workers are required to understand the companies traffic management process, attend training, participate in consultation, follow the traffic management policies, and procedures, don’t expose themselves and others in risk.
Managers responsibilities are to ensure anything entering the workplace is without risk to health and safety.
Some of the examples are: a manager can make sure traffic management plans are communicated, consulted, implemented. Workers are supervised.
Designers, manufacturers, suppliers and importers of plant and structures are required to ensure that their plant and structures are without risk to health and safety.
WHS and Training Compliance Solutions, offer WHS training courses across Australia. We have online, onsite, elearning and public WHS courses. Contact us for more information.
