Water industry safety award presented to Gosford City Council

The 2014 AWA National Awards for water excellence have been announced at the Ozwater conference and exhibition which was held in Brisbane last week. Gosford City Council was announced the winner of this year’s Water Industry Safety Excellence Award.

The objective of the Water Industry Safety Excellence Award is to acknowledge outstanding initiative and team contributions in considering and playing an active part in the area of safety improvement and injury prevention across the entire water industry.

The Water and Sewer Directorate at Gosford City Council is responsible for operating Mangrove Creek Dam. One of the structures at the dam is the intake tower. The intake tower has a central wet well that is a vertical shaft with an unobstructed drop of approximately 47 m. One of the tasks is to install and remove racks (ie, barriers) into slots within the wet well and this involves removing flooring to open the shaft and visually aligning the racks into the slots. The physical actions required to perform the work potentially exposes workers to a fall of approximately 47 m.

The council designed a rolling grate floor that moves on tracks and has installed fixed handrails, brakes and a stop-pin to secure it into place. It can be rolled back to expose the opening of the shaft and rolled forward to close the shaft.

Workers are able to work close to the shaft from all sides to visually align racks into their slots without risk of falling into the shaft.

Congratulations to Gosford City Council.