Safety and Risk Management

This report discusses risk management in organisations with a real accident that happened in Canberra. It provides insights on safety breaches and work health and safety law. Ways to prevent accidents in construction site works are also discussed. The subject is risk management and the course code is not mentioned. The college/university is not mentioned.

Running Head: Safety And Risk Management
SAFETY AND RISK MANAGEMENT

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Safety And Risk Management
Executive Summary
This project report provides the discussion on risk management of organisation. Here
accidents in Australia had been discussed in order to understand the safety issues. The accidents
had happened in a construction company Canberra in 2012. The company had breach the safety
system and a truck driver had to die for it. The company had to face penalty of $1.1 million for
the accidents and it was also warned. The corporate culture of Canberra Company was poor and
the safety system was not proper due to unqualified safety manager. The responsibility of a
person of safety system has been provided. The report also provides the various ways in order to
prevent accidents in construction site works.

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Safety And Risk Management
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
Workplace description...............................................................................................................3
Hazards and Avoidance of Safety Breach and Work Health and Safety Law.............................4
What happened?...........................................................................................................................5
Resolving the issue by Safe work................................................................................................5
Ways of preventing of such incidents..........................................................................................6
Addressing the issue like a responsible person of safety system.....................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Safety And Risk Management
Introduction
Risk management is basically an approach that systematically manages the hazards of
workplace. Being a key component of organisational management, it helps in identifying,
evaluating and determining the ways to reduce risk at acceptable level in order to protect visitors,
employees and anyone present in the workplace. By introducing proper risk management in an
organisation, several hazards of workplace can be stopped and managed with proper safety
systems. Organisation should have proper safety system as well as safety culture in order to
protect the employees working there. An incident of death of a truck driver has been found in the
construction company Canberra in 2012. The company had been fined $1.1 million for the death
of the driver.
Discussion
Workplace description
Canberra is a construction company in Australia. In a construction company, there are
various incidents of health can be happened. The chance of accidents is higher in construction
sector than any other sector. It is really true that construction industry is not safe or healthy
place. There are various types of works in the construction company such as setting up
temporary sources of powers and working platform, plastering, tiling, painting and many others.
There are various tools that need to be operated such as various power tools, specialist tools and
hand tools. Various works have been done at height in construction site and it is very risky.
Movement of heavy goods from one place to another is also dangerous as well. Slipping and
tripping are also common in construction site. Various health hazards happen in construction site

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Safety And Risk Management
that causes injuries as well as death of employees working there. It has been found that in
Canberra, there was no any poster of warning for power lines or any attachment of flags for the
lines (The Canberra Times, 2015). The corporate culture of Canberra was poor and the safety
manager was also not well for the post.
Hazards and Avoidance of Safety Breach and Work Health and Safety Law
The company fails to maintain safety breaches and there was not any poster to warn
anyone about power lines or any flag attachment for the lines. According to Ms Walker, there
was poor corporate culture in Canberra construction. It has been found that general manager's
son had been appointed to the post of safety manager but he was not qualified for that post. Due
to this, the safety system of the company was not proper and there was chance for various
incidents.
As stated by Oakman & Chan (2015), according to the work health and safety law of
Australia, every business owners of Australia should fulfil all the requirements of WHS (Work
Health and Safety) and if any company does not meet the proper requirements then it has to face
penalties. According to the Act, a overview has been provided in order to make the place of
working healthy as well as safety. As stated by Sanz-Calcedo et al. (2015), this is the legal
duties and responsibilities of every individual either he or she is employee or business owner. In
accordance to Qian & Lin (2016), according to the regulations, the companies have to meet the
risks and hazards such as machinery, noise and proper handling of equipment and tools of work.
In accordance to Omar, Parker, Smith & Pollard (2017), the regulating agencies are responsible
for the inspection of workplace, help the employees to know about safety rules and about the
penalty that they have to face if they do not follow any rules of WHS (Work Health and Safety)
laws of Australia.

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Safety And Risk Management
What happened?
Canberra was found to have poor culture of corporate world and the safety system of the
company was not proper because of unqualified safety manager. General Manager’s son had
been appointed as safety manager because of his father's position. Due to the breach of safety
system, a 48 years old truck driver, Michael Booth was electrocuted due to touch of his tip truck
with power lines of low slung. The incident had happened at the work site of Kenoss Contractors
of Canberra Company. Canberra was guilty for the safety breaches due to which Mr Booth died.
According to the industrial magistrate Ms Walker, no remorse had been shown by the company
for the death and the company was in liquidation. Kenosis try for hindering the process of
investigation for the death. Ms Walker was found the incident at the higher end of breach (ABC
News, 2015). This was the first case of safety laws of national work and a precedent had been set
for jurisdictions all around the country. The commissioner of ACT Worksafe Mark McCabe had
given a great strong warning to the director of Canberra and told their criminal liability under
those new laws (The Canberra Times, 2015).
Resolving the issue by Safe work
The director of the company or other high authority tries to resolve the issue easily. They
try to hinder the issue from the investigation in order to protect the company. Though the
industrial magistrate Ms Walker had said that the corporate culture of Canberra was poor, they
did not try to improve the safety systems of the organisations. The company had done mistakes
by making the general manager's son as safety manager and he was not proper for the post. The
safety system was not well because of unqualified safety manager and due to this, a person had

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Safety And Risk Management
to die and the company did not try to take the responsibility of the person. The issues have been
resolved easily by giving strong warning to the directors of the Canberra as well as the company
and by taking penalty of $1.1 million for the safety breach by the company (ABC News, 2015).
Ways of preventing of such incidents
There are various ways of preventing incidents of construction site and it is the
responsibility of the company as well as the employees to implement the ways properly in the
organisation.
Proper sign of danger
In construction site, there are many dangerous wires as well as area of high voltage. As
stated by Alston (2017), these things should be warned properly by a poster or attached flags so
that the employees or any other people can understand that the place is dangerous.
By practising defensive driving
As stated by Schernthaner et al. (2017), warning strobes of vehicles are required for
machine and vehicles operators in order to approach traffic. In accordance to Bessis (2015),
driving should be done slowly and backing up should be avoided. Assignment of a spotter is
required in case of backing up is needed.
Highly visible and reflective clothing
In order to reduce the accidents that is related to vehicles. As stated by Glendon & Clarke
(2015), the fabric with high reflective should be used by the workers so that the employees can
be safe and protect themselves from the accidents.
Safety Meetings

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Safety And Risk Management
It is duty of leaders and project managers to have safety meetings in order to aware the
employees for their safety. As stated by Hopkin (2018), in order to provide instruction and keep
them updated about safety issues, meetings are required.
Frequent Break
It has been seen that in construction site, workers use to work for long time without
taking any break that leads to tiredness and they do not work properly with safety. In accordance
to Abimbola, Khan, Khakzad & Butt (2015), frequent break should be included in construction
site because it will be better for their work as well as their safety.
Avoiding sunlight
As stated by Adamo, Al-Ansari, Laue, Knutsson & Sissakian (2017), sunlight is the main
reason of fatigue so it is required to cover all the skins with the shirts of long sleeves and other
skin protection to avoid fatigue.
Avoid Night work
In accordance to Bromiley, McShane, Nair & Rustambekov (2015), working for late
hours and at the dark environment can be the reason of accidents in construction site. Especially
for construction work, night works should be avoided because of the dangerous sector of work.
Addressing the issue like a responsible person of safety system
As a responsible person of safety system, it can be said that Canberra had done mistakes
by breaching safety that caused a death. The company had also done wrong by appointing the
general manager's son as safety manager although he was not fit for the job. Due to unqualified
safety manager, one truck driver had to die and many of the other employees are in danger. In
accordance to DeAngelo & Stulz (2015), as a responsible person of safety manager, first duty is

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Safety And Risk Management
to improve the safety system of the organisations. As stated by Kouabenan, Ngueutsa & Mbaye
(2015), there is requirement of investigating the safety system of every organisation so that
accidents can be avoided. It is also the duty of safety system to make people aware of the safety
issues as well as penalty if they did not follow the safety system of WHS (Work Health and
Safety) law of Australia.
Conclusion
In this project report, risk management has been discussed with the help of a real accident
that happened in Canberra. Due to breach of safety, a truck driver had died and the company did
not think that it was responsible for the incidents. There was no poster of warning of power lines
that had become the reason for the death of the driver. The company try to hinder the incident
from the investigation. According to the industrial magistrate, the corporate culture of Canberra
was poor and there were no proper safety systems. Safety system is required in any sector in
order to protect the employees from risk. Canberra did not focus to the safety system and it had
to pay penalty of $1.1 million. In the work of construction site, safety system is mainly required
because there are many dangerous works related to power systems, tools, and work at height that
requires proper protection for employees in order to reduce risk.

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References
ABC News. (2015). Canberra construction company fined $1.1 million over death of truck
driver. Available from: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-19/construction-company-
fined-1-million-over-workplace-death/6708032
Abimbola, M., Khan, F., Khakzad, N., & Butt, S. (2015). Safety and risk analysis of managed
pressure drilling operation using Bayesian network. Safety science, 76, 133-144.
Retrieved from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753515000119
Adamo, N., Al-Ansari, N., Laue, J., Knutsson, S., & Sissakian, V. (2017). Risk Management
Concepts in Dam Safety Evaluation: Mosul Dam as a Case Study. Journal of Civil
engineering and architecture, 11(7), 635-652. Retrieved from: http://www.diva-
portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1149403&dswid=-152
Alston, G. (2017). How safe is safe enough?: Leadership, safety and risk management.
Abingdon: Routledge. Retrieved from:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781351930208
American Diabetes Association. (2017). 9. Cardiovascular disease and risk
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http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/40/Supplement_1/S75
Bessis, J. (2015). Risk management in banking. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved
from: https://books.google.co.in/books?
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Bromiley, P., McShane, M., Nair, A., & Rustambekov, E. (2015). Enterprise risk management:
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Hopkin, P. (2018). Fundamentals of risk management: understanding, evaluating and
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Qian, Q., & Lin, P. (2016). Safety risk management of underground engineering in China:
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