It is often said that society exerts it’s demands for a safe environment through government and regulatory systems. Whereas in Australia, the Commonwealth government maintains an overall national framework for safety, each state and territory has a principle Health and Safety statute, which sets out requirements for ensuring that workplaces are safe. In the main the underlining theme is to demonstrate “due diligence” in exercising “duty of care” or obligation which implies that everything “reasonably practicable” was done in each circumstance.

Legislative changes in the Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995, Queensland (section 30B), has recently raised the profile of Safety in Design and the concurrent risk management principles which forms an integral part of it’s delivery on projects in that state.

The paper is not meant to be a legal treatise of Safety in Design for but the author aims to present a technical perspective on meeting design obligations and discuss some pitfalls he has come across, working in a multi disciplinary engineering environment.

References

1 Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995, Queensland.

2 I. Cameron, R. Raman, Process Systems Risk Management, Elsevier Press, 2005.

3 AS/NZS 4360:2004 Risk Management.