Compliance campaign report - demolition and asbestos removal in the construction industry
Background
The Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities (HWSA) initiated this joint campaign in October 2004.
HWSA is a framework that brings together the most senior Executive Officers from the Australian (Commonwealth, State and Territory) and New Zealand Workplace Safety Authorities. Amongst other things, HWSA seeks to improve the operational coordination and enhance the operational consistency of the Workplace Safety Authorities.
The Demolition and Asbestos joint compliance campaign was designed to maximise our collective impact on these activities.
SafeWork SA and WorkSafe (WA) agreed to coordinate the campaign at a national and trans-Tasman level, and each participating Workplace Safety Authority provided an officer to manage the joint campaign’s delivery and data collection within its jurisdiction.
The joint Campaign Management Group held two meetings prior to commencing the operational aspect of the campaign.
The first meeting, on 29 and 30 June 2005, scoped the campaign, agreed on an audit tool format, identified general timeframes, and addressed the required supporting documentation for stakeholder consultation, inspector briefings and media releases.
The second meeting, on 25 October 2005, finalised the targeted number of site visits for the campaign, the arrangements for the campaign rollout and the data collection and report preparation. It also endorsed a media strategy to support the campaign.
Each jurisdiction carried out stakeholder briefings prior to the commencement of the operational aspect of the campaign, which was carried out over a six-week period between 20 February and 31 March 2006.
Conclusions
The campaign audit data and the associated enforcement actions for non-compliance indicates the greatest levels of compliance related to the management of site services, such as electricity or gas supplies, with the lowest levels of compliance related to asbestos removal work. Where there was a competent supervisor on site, there was a greater level of compliance on all other matters.
The two most commonly used enforcement tools were verbal directions and the issuing of improvement notices, both of which could be used by all participating jurisdictions, unlike other enforcement actions such as infringement and compliance notices which are not available to all jurisdictions.
Overall, the campaign identified that the level of compliance nationally appeared to be of a reasonable standard with respect to demolition activities. But improvements need to be considered for asbestos removal, as it was evident that levels of compliance were lower irrespective of a licence regime being implemented. The only exception to this was South Australia. This could be explained due to the strict legislative requirements that need to be met prior to asbestos removal being undertaken.
View the report
View the full Demolition and Asbestos removal in the construction industry (PDF, 152 KB).
Last updated 22 July 2008
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