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68 Business View Australia - September 2015
conditions. Consequently, safety is
an important issuefor the industryand
the ACA has taken a lead in this area.
Lindsay Le Compte explains the
steps being taken by the association
in this regard, “One of the big
issues that we are dealing with
at the moment relates to safety
and in particular safety culture, so
what the working party on safety
is involved in at the moment is the
development of a number of guides
and other publication materials to
help the industry to improve the
culture of safety at the work place.
Some of these include a glossary of
safety terms and the identification
of the type of skills and training that
would be required of all people of a
safety responsibility in organisations
and at work places. We are trying to
look at who is involved in the industry
including the whole supply chain who
actually sends people to work places
and how those people would interact
in a way which would reduce the
risk of safety problems occurring.
The difficulty of dealing with that is
the fact that in this industry we deal
with a workforce which comes from
a very wide ethnic background and
a number of those components have
an impact on the culture of safety
in the industry. A lot of what we are
trying to do is assist organisations
across the board to improve their
organisational culture, so that will
of itself improve safety and that’s
more important today than simply
the development and completion of
different types of documentation.
It’s really about how people at work
places actually view safety and
how they interact with each other.
So you can have safe work method
statements which set out what is
required to be done, it’s another
thing to actually have a culture in
the work place which results in
the various people who turn up at
the work place and get involved.”
Workforce development
and skills
The ACA will shortly release a
website on the construction industry
for the purpose of providing useful
information to young people, their
parents and school advisers as to
the types of jobs that are available
within the sector. This website will
also provide details which will enable
visitors to make career choices by
explaining the different facets of work
involved in the construction area.
A concerted effort is being made by
theACA to improve the skills of existing
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