Occupational health and safety has come a long way in the eyes of company and corporate management. Far from being considered just another cost that takes away from the bottom line - the way many companies may have viewed it in the past - it is now being considered ‘sexy’, especially by investors.

Every organisation wants long-term growth and profit. A company’s long-term success - what the Australian Institute of Management calls ‘corporate endurance’ - recognises the critical necessity of ‘people’ performance. Therefore, a company has a vested interest in looking after the safety and wellbeing of its people. People drive business performance - up or down. People are a company’s key competitive advantage or disadvantage.

Commercial vehicles are the workhorses of Australian industry and therefore the acknowledged ‘workplaces’ of many drivers. These vehicles all carry a very precious cargo - humans. While the safety standards of roads and vehicles in general have improved in recent years, more needs to be done to provide a safer ‘workplace’ for the thousands of workers whose job is ‘on the road’.

Communication has always been considered a vital tool in emergency and first-response situations to ensure the safety of operatives and to enable them to carry out their important functions. The same is true in industrial safety because the common thread between first-response and industrial safety situations is that they are all mission critical.

There are several issues to consider in the selection of gloves to provide proper hand protection for workers in real-world situations that are not adequately addressed in the AS/NZS 2161 standard.

Distributed processing architectures provide machine builders with more flexibility in meeting clients' operational and safety requirements.

The Finnish-headquartered minerals and metals processing solutions company Outotec has combined high-efficiency hydraulic technology with advanced ultrasonic bolt load testing to optimise the speed and safety of bolting operations in the construction of SAG (semi-autogenous grinding) and ball mills.

Optimum Handling Solutions has recently supplied a double scissor lift for a building project in the Sydney CBD that has eliminated the problem of bulk food deliveries to a retail outlet situated on the second level of a commercial building.

Palwrap from Optimum Handling Solutions has generated significant pallet-wrapping savings at a large meat processing plant.

The salaries of Australia’s top safety executives fell by an average $59,000 during the last 12 months, a recent survey reveals.

The implications of the recent High Court ruling in the Kirk case have far-reaching effects on the powers of OHS regulators.

Worksafe Victoria is appealing to all plant operators to be more vigilant in practising safety in civil construction works after expressing concerns over the high incidence of lower leg injuries.

Designing good harnesses for people working at height has meant facing some difficult challenges, not the least of which has been that, over the last 10 years, there has been a gradual change in the body size and weight of the people who work at height that we are working to protect.

In recent months, an alarming number of workers have been electrocuted while installing thermal insulation into homes. Given the growing need for more insulation installers required to satisfy the sharp increase in demand, driven by the federal government’s incentive to make homes more energy efficient, there will be a high percentage of workers who are new to this field, who may not be aware of the serious occupational hazards they face.

Industrial safety barriers have evolved to address a host of safety and productivity issues, and advances in technology have led to a wide range of easy-to-use, adaptable solutions.