The Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner (OFSC) recently awarded one of our clients Baseline Projects their accreditation to bid for commonwealth construction work greater than $4 million.
The journey of helping a client through OFSC accreditation is tough! It is well recognised achieving OFSC accreditation is much harder than ISO45001 and similar industry certifications.
Despite the hard slog, it was incredibly rewarding seeing our client Baseline succeed. When I tell this story, the first response I get is often “…who is Baseline Projects?”. Both Aaron Meharg and Dave Vella are two young Directors of Baseline with bright futures. Their personal leadership to own, develop and execute health & safety on their construction sites was amazing!
Approx 6 months prior to achieving OFSC accreditation, Aaron, the Managing Director of Baseline Projects approached FEFO Consulting hoping to gain accreditation to bid for commonwealth funded construction work. I agreed to help Aaron with hesitation, knowing how difficult the OFSC requirements are to both develop and implement. We started with a blank sheet of paper and a few months later – boom! success 🙂
This success will not only help Baseline workers safety, this is also a huge financial boost for such a young company. Once Baseline obtained their safety accreditation, they were almost immediately awarded a multimillion-dollar contract with the Australian Defence Force.
FEFO Consulting learnt plenty along the way helping Baseline. For more information refer to our Success Stories for a free guide on how to achieve OFSC accreditation.
FEFO Consulting was contacted by the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) to provide guidance to directors and officers on effective safety governance.
Balancing Safety Legal Compliance with Effective Leadership
Changes to National Heavy Vehicle Laws (NHVL) and Chain of Responsibility (CoR) requirements left many industry stakeholders confused. In parallel, several high profile Workplace Health & Safety (WHS) prosecutions and jail sentences of directors raised safety governance concerns with boards and directors.
Safety Governance
FEFO Consulting facilitated a simple webinar to cover:
• Legal obligations including WHS, the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) and the new Chain of Responsibility (CoR) changes
• Safety Due Diligence Framework and six keys to effective safety leadership
• Simple recommendations on how to demonstrate WHS/ CoR due diligence
• Cultural and organisational blocks to achieving sustainable change.
Six Steps to Safety Legal Due Diligence
Six simple steps to assist leaders not only demonstrate legal due diligence, but also demonstrate desired safety leadership behaviours and effective outcomes.
FEFO Consulting was engaged to complete a review the Workplace Health & Safety (WHS) function of NSW Government Department of Planning & Environment. Various aspects of safety culture and teamwork were evaluated and reassessed after 12 months. The results demonstrated a remarkable step change and safety culture and team performance.
Culture and Team Performance
• Team design did not align with stakeholders, activity & locations
• Job design not aligned to work
• Accountability, trust and morale was low
Case for Change & Team Re-design
• Safety team and function assessment
• Recruited 17 new roles, including a new WHS Director
• Right people, Right place!
Performance Improvement
• WHS Function Overall Performance up 39%
• Greater operational presence up 50%
• Team Engagement & Motivation up 37%
• Team members willingness to call out unproductive behaviour up 36%
• Team role clarity up 27%