Page 605 - Week 02 - Thursday, 20 March 2014
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construction sites accounted for 746 visits by WorkSafe inspectors. During these visits, inspectors issued 434 improvement notices, 61 prohibition notices and 32 infringement notices. I will continue to seek advice on the numbers of notices in order to target education and compliance activities in the sector.
The territory is a signatory to the intergovernmental agreement to harmonise work health and safety laws. As part of this agreement, I am considering the notification of a number of new codes of practice. Significantly, I intend to declare a new code of practice for construction work commencing on 1 May. This code has been revised to include valuable and welcome guidance for the housing sector.
The adoption of codes provides employers and workers with practical information to ensure safety. This results in managing safety, not only through compliance, but through education, advice and assistance. Both reports, Getting home safely and Building quality in the ACT, highlighted a lack of accountability of people who design and provide certification of certain aspects of buildings. In this regard, work is progressing on exploring options to improve accountability and quality of design in the sector, through the regulation of engineers, architects and related design professionals.
In December last year I released a discussion paper entitled “Regulation of Design and Inspection Practitioners in the Construction Industry”. The consultation is part of the broader review of the Building Act. The government is keen to improve poor quality design and documentation which is a substantial contributor to building defects in the territory, and we are committed to reform in this area to improve the quality and safety in our built environment.
The quality of work undertaken by construction design practitioners, such as architects, construction engineers and building designers, is vital to the quality of the built environment. Many people also rely on the skills and knowledge of other practitioners including quantity surveyors, building inspectors and building consultants to advise them on building costs and compliance with relevant standards.
The government has invited interested parties to participate in the consultation process, and education is still high on the agenda for the construction industry. The ACT Work Safety Commissioner held a major construction safety conference in July last year and more recently convened a training summit to discuss a wide ranging strategic approach to education in the sector. This is a significant development in ensuring we have industry representatives working together to inform and better prioritise the training needs of industry. Those who participated are those most able to influence safety.
I have asked the Work Safety Commissioner to work with the Construction Safety Advisory Committee to bring forward recommendations stemming from the training summit for a strategic future approach to industry training, and I look forward to updating the Assembly with progress on this important work.
The Work Safety Commissioner has also recently released his 2014 January to July training calendar with training focused on work health and safety induction and risk
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