The Forest Industry Safety Council would formally get underway in early April but in the meantime a working group representing forest owners, contractors, workers, unions and the Government was putting the building blocks in place. Recruitment for an independent chairman and national safety director was under way.
The council was created after 10 workplace deaths and 169 serious harm injuries in forestry in 2013. That led to the industry establishing the review panel which reported in October last year.
Forest Owners Association president Paul Nicholls said since 2013 there had been a dramatic turnaround in safety performance.
“Last year there was one fatality – one too many but a huge improvement on 10 – and a 25% reduction in serious harm injuries.
“There are several reasons for this, including increased mechanisation of harvesting and the successful roll-out of a new Approved Code of Practice.
“But one of the biggest factors will have been the increased awareness of the need for safe work practice as a result of publicity about the terrible toll in 2013.”
Nicholls said it was essential to maintain and reinforce the industry’s safety culture so the vision of zero serious harm injuries remained at the top of everyone’s mind.
“For this reason we have deliberately called the new body a council to reinforce the status it will have in the industry.”
He said the industry was committed to improved safety and to the review panel’s mantra – “If a job can’t be done safely, it shouldn’t be done at all.”
That commitment was also reflected in record registrations for the Forest Industry Safety Summit being held in Rotorua in early March.
The safety council, jointly funded by industry and government, would have triple the resources that were previously deployed by ACC through its injury prevention programme, Farm Forestry Association president Ian Jackson said.
“Its first priority will be to agree on a work plan for its first 12 months. But its focus will be on practical tools and systems for improving safety in forest workplaces, including farm woodlots.
“Many farmers and farm staff are handy with a chainsaw. But harvesting forestry blocks, especially on steep hillsides, is specialised work that must be carried out by people with appropriate skills and safety credentials.”
“For this reason we have deliberately called the new body a council to reinforce the status it will have in the industry.”
PAUL NICHOLLS
Forest Owners Association
Forest Industry Contractors Association (FICA) director John Stulen said both corporate and farm forest owners had worked closely with contractors to improve safety for all workers on the forest floor.
“Several years ago forest managers recognised that manual tree felling was becoming too risky in steep country so the steep land harvesting research programme was set up with industry and Primary Growth Partnership funding, with the vision of having ‘no worker on the slope, no hand on the chainsaw’,” Stulen said
“This work, supported by innovative engineering firms and contractors in Nelson and Rotorua, has borne fruit with the development of a new generation of harvesting technologies.
“More than $50 million has been invested in the last 18 months in new feller-bunchers that replace men with chainsaws on steep slopes – the biggest area of risk.
"These machines are also supported by other innovations, such as on-board GPS-based navigation and camera-assisted grapples for log extraction,” he said.
