Safety on the Building Site

• Under the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992, you become a ‘principal’ (unless you’re living in the house while the work is going on).

• As a principal it’s also up to you to ensure that people working on the site don’t get hurt, which means you also must identify hazards and remove them, isolate them, or minimize them as much as possible if the first two options are not open to you.

Your builder’s health and safety site plan

This needs to include:

• The person responsible for health and safety on site.
• Identification and control of potential hazards.
• Posting of notices and warnings of potential hazards.
• Restriction of access to the site to authorised people only.
• Guidance on ensuring a safe working environment at all times, for example, avoiding stacking things that could topple over.
• Instruction in safe methods and practices.
• Provision for safety meetings.
• Safety audits on plant and procedures.
• The recording and investigation of accidents.

Courtesy of Consumerbuild.org.nz