Forum brings together like-minded infrastructure delivery and safety professionals to share and learn about new developments and best practice in safety.
In his opening address Acting Managing Director, Des Snook, outlined the unprecedented level of roadworks that are being undertaken across the state. Particularly, unusual are the lengths of road being worked on as part of the delivery of the Regional Road Safety Program. With so many works safety is, more than ever, a factor that must be considered by clients, delivery partners and members of the community.
Across Australia, the road transport industry employs more than 500,000 people full-time accounting for over five per cent of Australia's total employment. For every $1 million invested in the road construction industry approximately seven workers are employed directly or in related industries. The construction industry had the second highest number of work-related fatalities in the period 2011 to 2021. Alarmingly, for a given hour worked, a person in the construction industry has 1.4 times the average risk across all industries of a work-related fatality and 30% of work-related fatalities were among people younger than 25.
In a collaboration the Transport Portfolio and the Civil Contractors Federation came together to host the Transport Works Safety Forum which brought together more than 185 people from 72 companies representing traffic management, civil contractors, and consultants from across the road and rail industry.
The forum focused on key topics including updates on current thinking around temporary traffic management, innovations, technologies and how to best ensure consistency across the network. There were also excellent discussions and sharing on what good practice looks like in terms of engaging with employees to deliver better safety outcomes and creating a culture to support good mental health.
The other two areas of focus directly related to today's environment and challenges presented in delivering an accelerated program in a resource constrained market and applying safety in design to deliver immediate and long-term benefits to constructors, operators, maintainers, and users of our infrastructure.
In his closing comments Des Snook reminded everyone that “safety is first and foremost a mindset, it can be supported by tools, processes and procedures but all of us have a role and a responsibility to do what we can to provide a safe work environment”.