Key Elements of Self-Governance

The key elements of self governance in health & safety are:

= An approved health & safety system. The Operate Safe system provides an industry specific audit tool for establishing or enhancing a company's health & safety management programme to meet ACC Secondary Accreditation requirements.

= Evidence-based audits. Operate Safe enables contractors to achieve accreditation using an evidence-based approach. This shows they are:

a Applying good practice health & safety systems in the field.
a Only using staff who are appropriately trained in health, safety and operational activities.
a Accountable for their health & safety record against industry key performance indicators.
a Managing Health, Safety and Operational training.

While all Operate Safe members must undertake an external audit through ACC's Workplace Safety Management Practices (WSMP), comprising ten 'Critical Elements', it was recognised that some of these were too general in scope. In conjunction with ACC, guidelines for five of these elements (numbers 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 of the ACC's table of ten) have been developed that are industry-specific, being based on sound industry experience. They are contained in the Industry Best Practice Guidelines (IBPG), formerly referred to as the Industry Specific Audit Tool (available by emailing tim@operatesafe.org.nz)

= Pilot programme. Operate Safe requires that members undertake their Stage 1 internal audits and Stage 3 external audits (with ACC) using the IBPG. In conjunction with Operate Safe, ACC has agreed to trial the IBPG and to train their auditors in its use - the first such pilot programme in New Zealand. This underlines the civil contracting industry's ability to determine and enforce its own standards and to provide for continuous improvement. Click for full details of this trial and a list of the ACC-trained auditors.

= Employee training. Competency-based mandatory health & safety training for all of a company's employees, including two-yearly onsite update courses based on current areas of concern for H&S and injury prevention, form part of the Operate Safe programme.

= Benchmarking. A key element of the self-regulation system is the development of measurable performance indicators. These key performance indicators (KPIs) fall into three categories:

o The number of contractors accredited under the industry self-regulation scheme.
o The level of actual ACC claims (dollar value of injury claims per employee).
o The level of entitlement claims (dollar value per employee in respect of sick leave, rehabilitation, lump sum payments, etc).

Information on these KPIs will be obtained directly from ACC each year in order to ensure the statistics are independent and robust.

= Improvement plans. Contractors whose KPIs fall below the industry average will need to have work plans in place to improve them.

= Administration of self-governance. Roading New Zealand, acting on behalf of the civil contracting industry, is responsible for administration of self-governance in health & safety. It has developed the Operate Safe regime to provide contractors with a staged programme that will ensure compliance with all relevant standards and regulations.