When was the HSE Committee formed, and what was its original purpose?
The Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Committee was in existence as an informal gathering of pipeline construction health and safety professionals with a common goal of improving safety across the industry when I became a board member in 2000.
By 2001-02, the Committee made a concerted effort to get the group’s ideas more progressed in the industry, however it wasn’t until Cheryl Cartwright and Steve Dobbie were appointed as the Association’s Chief Executive and Business Manager, respectively, that a real committee started to work on specific health and safety projects.
Who leads the Committee, and who else is involved with the HSE Committee?
I am in the Chair of the Committee and have been since 2004.
There are over 40 members on the Committee, representing pipeline operators, constructors, service providers and consultants.
At any given Committee meeting we have 10-15 actually in attendance and around the same number dial in on the telephone.
The Committee was established by bringing together the Environment Committee and the Safety Committee, which had been operating quite separately and with different emphasis.
It was a logical move, because it then also brought in health issues.
This is all of great benefit to the industry.
It continued the good work already being undertaken, but also created an excellent working atmosphere to introduce new projects.
2011 was the first year the HSE Committee came together, and we decided that the traditional APGA Brisbane seminar in May would become the HSE seminar.
There were several reasons for this, including: the Brisbane seminar, which had a different topic each year, had been most successful when it had environment or safety as its topic; plus, it was an excellent opportunity to highlight the establishment of the new/combined committee.
I had, with the help of the committee, major input to the seminar agenda and at that seminar the Chief Executive handed over the chairing of the seminar to me.
That year we had the largest attendance at the May seminar in many years.
It was only natural that the May seminar would become the HSE seminar (except, in 2015, it will be held in June in Melbourne).
How has the Committee evolved since it was created?
The Committee has evolved from a semi-regular, informal gathering to a scheduled, formal Committee.
We started keeping minutes in 2004 and that made a great change to our output as members put their hands up for projects and were accountable.
As mentioned earlier, a big evolution occurred in 2011 when the Health and Safety Committee and Environment Committee merged to become the HSE Committee.
This was done mainly to recognise that HSE functions tended to be grouped together in most companies and also because the Environment Committee could have been more engaged.
The purpose of the Committee now is to:
- Develop and disseminate industry guidelines, including in relation to construction safety and management of environment issues;
- Provide a range of forums to discuss and address HSE issues;
- Implement an industry wide safety alert system, to be available to members and non-members on the APGA website;
- Lead the industry in achieving, with government, sound HSE legislation, including regular meetings with Australian regulatory authorities and co-ordination of industry response to government proposals and initiatives; and,
- Keep its members fully abreast of HSE initiatives developed by others and considered applicable to the activities of its members.
What sort of issues are generally covered by the HSE Committee?
All aspects of construction health and safety feature prominently on the Committee agenda.
We start every Committee meeting with a safety moment, where one committee member shares an experience or lesson that can help us all improve safety.
The Code of Environmental Practice and related issues are also commonly discussed.
Vocational education and training for industry is a standing item. Safety statistics, fatigue management, vehicle safety, equipment safety, erosion control, weed management, legislation and regulation – the list goes on, and is constantly changing.
What are some of the biggest successes that the HSE Committee has achieved, and how have these made a real impact on the Australian pipeline industry?
Overall, the spirit of cooperation and sharing that the HSE Committee has developed across the industry is our biggest achievement.
Companies have time and time again demonstrated their willingness to share information and intellectual property with each other when it will lead to improved HSE outcomes.
As companies, we can develop innovations and processes that improve our work places and to then share these as an industry has been a phenomenal success which has led to much better outcomes than could have been achieved otherwise.
One of the biggest recent achievements has been the development of the APGA Fatigue Management Guidelines, which required many months of monitoring and testing in construction camps to quantify the issue and develop mechanisms to deal with fatigue.
Overall, the project took around three years and has resulted in a fantastic education campaign aimed at improving awareness of the links between lifestyle and fatigue and the ways it can be best managed.
The co-operation of the industry in sharing safety data so that we can develop reliable statistics has also been a big achievement.
Statistics allow us to benchmark activity and identify common issues across companies and have been very helpful in prioritising projects.
The Code of Environmental Practice has been a very successful document and is particularly helpful in getting regulators to understand and accept a risk-based approach to environmental management.
Risk-based approaches are widely accepted in safety management but have taken longer to be embraced by environment regulators, which still tend to advocate for prescriptive environmental regulation.
What are some of the major projects that the HSE Committee will be working on in 2015?
2015 will see the finalisation of the Pipeline Erosion Control Guidelines which are being jointly developed by the Committee and the International Erosion Control Association (IECA).
This project has been over a year in development and it’s really exciting to be able to provide such detailed advice on risk-based erosion control and management.
It has been a big issue for pipeline construction projects over the last few years and this will really allow us to take erosion control to the next level.
APGA is the first industry association to work with IECA on a guideline like this and they are keen to repeat the experience with other industries.
An emerging issue the Committee will be dealing with this year is mental health, particularly as it is related to fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) workers and construction camps.
It became apparent at the end of 2014 that there’s a problem that needs to be managed, and the Committee is dedicated to getting something out that all companies can use to improve the mental well-being of their workers.
We are also hoping to develop a common geo-fencing database, so all the geographic information system (GIS) information on all the remote roads and construction roads used in projects can be made available to all companies and reduce the need for duplication.
How can companies or individuals operating in the Australian pipeline industry raise any health, safety or environmental concerns with the HSE Committee?
Get involved and come along to a meeting.
If you have an issue you want considered, give the Secretariat or me a call and let’s talk.
However, the Committee is not going to solve everyone’s problems for them.
If you have a concern and it needs action, bring it to the Committee and take responsibility for solving it.
The Committee will provide all the support and assistance you need to get the right result.
For more information on the APGA Health, Safety and Environment Committee visit www.apga.org.au/issues/apga-committees/health-safety-and-environment-committee