03 August 2016
The Forest Industry Safety Council (FISC) has been working on a number of initiatives, many of which were suggested as part of the independent review of safety in forestry completed in 2015. FISC is governed by a board consisting of representatives from forest contractors, forest managers, Worksafe, ACC, unions, and two worker representatives.
Currently there are five work streams being run by separate technical advisory groups (TAGs):
- Leadership – To support industry leaders across the supply chain in becoming more active and effective in delivering improved health and safety in forestry.
- Communication – To deliver targeted, useful, and easy-to-use health and safety information and resources, mainly through the Safetree website and Facebook page.
- Performance management – To improve the collection and sharing of health and safety data, to identify critical risks and emerging issues, and benchmark performance.
- Competency – To work with industry players to further improve training, assessment, and certification of workers and companies.
- Health and safety reform – To work with WorkSafe to develop forestry-specific guidance on the new Health and Safety at Work Act.
Reports detailing the work done so far can be found on the FISC website.
Competenz is involved with FISC at the TAG level and in the Operational Advisory Group (OAG). This OAG reviews all work done by the TAGs before it is presented to the FISC Council for sign-off.
Competenz is involved in the Competency TAG, which looks into:
- Individual re-certification of high risk tasks including tree felling and breaking out, with thinning to waste also under development; and
- A review of how training is undertaken in industry.
