This post provides an overview of Safe Design in Australia: Overview, Statistics, and Principles.
Introduction
Learn about safe design in Australia, integrating hazard identification and risk assessment methods early in the design process to minimize injury risks.
Safe design is about integrating hazard identification and risk assessment methods early in the design process, to eliminate or minimize risks of injury throughout the life of a product. This applies to buildings, structures, equipment, and vehicles.
Statistics and Research
Discover key statistics on work-related fatalities caused by unsafe design and design-related factors in Australia.
Of 639 work-related fatalities from 2006 to 2011, one-third (188) were caused by unsafe design or design-related factors that contributed to the fatality.
Of all fatalities where safe design was identified as an issue, one-fifth (21%) was caused by inadequate protective guarding for workers.
188 work-related fatalities from 2006-2011 were caused by unsafe design.
21% of fatalities where safe design was identified as an issue were caused by inadequate guarding.
73% of all design-related fatalities were from agriculture, forestry, and fishing, construction, and manufacturing industries.
A Safe Design Approach
Understand the importance of safe design in various industries and explore the considerations involved in the design process.
Safe design begins at the concept development phase of a structure when you’re making decisions about:
the design and its intended purpose
materials to be used
possible methods of construction, maintenance, operation, demolition or dismantling, and disposal
what legislation, codes of practice, and standards need to be considered and complied with.
Consider how safety can best be achieved in each of the lifecycle phases, for example:
Designing a machine with protective guarding that will allow it to be operated safely, while also ensuring it can be installed, maintained, and disposed of safely.
Designing a building with a lift for occupants, where the design also includes sufficient space and safe access to the lift well or machine room for maintenance work.
Five Principles of Safe Design
Explore the five principles of safe design, enabling health and safety promotion throughout the product lifecycle.
Principle 1: Persons with control—those who make decisions affecting the design of products, facilities or processes are able to promote health and safety at the source.
Principle 2: Product lifecycle—safe design applies to every stage in the lifecycle from conception through to disposal. It involves eliminating hazards or minimizing risks as early in the lifecycle as possible.
Principle 3: Systematic risk management—apply hazard identification, risk assessment, and risk control processes to achieve a safe design.
Principle 4: Safe design knowledge and capability—should be either demonstrated or acquired by those who control design.
Principle 5: Information transfer—effective communication and documentation of design and risk control information amongst everyone involved in the phases of the lifecycle is essential for the safe design approach.
These principles have been derived from Towards a Regulatory Regime for Safe Design [note that this is a 230-page document and somewhat outdated]. For more [useful] detail see Guidance on the principles of safe design for work.
Figure 1, Model of Safe Design Process
Ergonomics and Good Work Design
Learn how safe design incorporates ergonomics principles and promotes good work design for a healthy and safe work environment. Safe design incorporates ergonomics principles as well as good work design.
Ensure workplace hazards and risks are eliminated or minimized so all workers remain healthy and safe at work.
It can involve the design of work, workstations, operational procedures, computer systems, or manufacturing processes.
Responsibility for Safe Design
Discover the parties responsible for ensuring safe design in different stages of the lifecycle and the importance of collaboration.
When it comes to achieving safe design, responsibility rests with those groups or individuals who control or manage design functions. This includes:
Architects, industrial designers, or draftspersons who carry out the design on behalf of a client.
Individuals who make design decisions during any of the lifecycle phases such as engineers, manufacturers, suppliers, installers, builders, developers, project managers, and WHS professionals.
Anyone who alters a design.
Building service designers or others designing fixed plant such as ventilation and electrical systems.
Buyers who specify the characteristics of products and materials such as masonry blocks and by default decide the weights bricklayers must handle.
Safe design is achieved more effectively when all the parties who control and influence the design outcome collaborate on incorporating safety measures into the design.
For more information on who is responsible for safe design see Guidance on the principles of safe design for work, the Principles of Good Work Design Handbook, and the model Code of Practice: Safe Design of Structures and WHS Regulations.
Design Considerations for Plant
Explore the essential considerations when designing plant equipment to ensure safety throughout its lifecycle. Examples of things we should consider when designing plant include:
All the phases in the lifecycle of an item of plant from manufacture through use, to dismantling and disposal.
Design for safe erection and installation.
Design to facilitate safe use by considering, for example, the physical characteristics of users, the maximum number of tasks an operator can be expected to perform at any one time, and the layout of the workstation or environment in which the plant may be used.
Consider intended use and reasonably foreseeable misuse.
Consider the difficulties workers may face when maintaining or repairing the plant.
Consider types of failure or malfunction and design the plant to fail in a safe manner.
Product Lifecycle
Understand the significance of considering the product lifecycle in safe design and how it contributes to sustainability.
The lifecycle of a product is a key concept of sustainable and safe design. It provides a framework for eliminating the hazards at the design stage and/or controlling the risk as the product is:
constructed or manufactured
imported, supplied, or installed
commissioned, used, or operated
maintained, repaired, cleaned, and/or modified
de-commissioned, demolished, and/or dismantled
disposed of or recycled.
Create a safer product by eliminating or controlling the hazards and risks that could impact on downstream users in the lifecycle. Do this during design, manufacture, or construction. In these early phases, there is greater scope to design out hazards and/or incorporate risk control measures that are compatible with the original design concept and functional requirements of the product.
Designers must have a good understanding of the lifecycle of the item they are designing, including the needs of users and the environment in which that item may be used.
New risks may emerge as products are modified or the environments in which they are used change.
Safety can be further improved if each person who has control over actions taken in any of the lifecycle phases. Take steps to ensure health and safety is proactively addressed, by reviewing the design and checking it meets safety standards in each of the lifecycle phases.
Subsequent stages of the product’s lifecycle should not go ahead until the preceding phase design reviews have been considered and approved by those with control.
Figure 2: Lifecycle of Designed Products
Figure 2, Safe Design Lifecycle.
Benefits of Safe Design
Discover the benefits of implementing safe design practices, including injury prevention, cost reduction, and compliance with legislation.
It is estimated that inherently safe plant and equipment would save between 5–10% of their cost through reductions in inventories of hazardous materials, reduced need for protective equipment, and the reduced costs of testing and maintaining the equipment.
The direct costs associated with unsafe design can be significant, for example retrofitting, workers’ compensation and insurance levies, environmental clean-up, and negligence claims.
Since these costs impact more on parties downstream in the lifecycle who buy and use the product more, the incentive for these parties to influence and benefit from safe design is also greater.
A safe design approach results in many benefits including:
prevent injury and disease
improve the useability of products, systems, and facilities
improve productivity
reduce costs
better predict and manage production and operational costs over the lifecycle of a product
comply with legislation
innovate, in that safe design demands new thinking.
Legal Obligations
Learn about the legal duties imposed on different parties involved in the design process to ensure health and safety compliance.
Australian WHS laws impose duties on a range of parties to ensure health and safety in relation to particular products such as:
designers of plant, buildings, and structures
building owners and persons with control of workplaces
manufacturers, importers, and suppliers of plant and substances
persons who install, erect or modify plant.
These obligations may vary depending on the relevant state, territory, or Commonwealth WHS legislation.
Those who make decisions that influence design such as clients, chief financial officers, developers, builders, directors, and managers will also have duties under WHS laws if they are employers, self-employed or if they manage or control workplaces.
For example, a client who has a building or structure designed and built for leasing becomes the owner of the building and may therefore have a duty as a person who manages or controls a workplace.
There are other provisions governing the design of buildings and structures in state and territory building laws. The BCA is the principal instrument for regulating architects, engineers, and others involved in the design of buildings and structures.
Although the BCA provides minimum standards to ensure the health and safety of building occupants (such as structural adequacy, fire safety, amenities, and ventilation), it does not cover the breadth of WHS matters that may arise during the construction phase or in the use of buildings and structures as workplaces.
In addition, there are technical design standards and guidelines produced by government agencies, Standards Australia, and relevant professional bodies
Healthy and Safe by Design
Explore how the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy emphasizes the elimination and minimization of hazards through effective design.
This is one of the Seven action areas in the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2012-2022.
Hazards are Eliminated or Minimised by Design
The most effective and durable means of creating a healthy and safe working environment is to eliminate hazards and risks during the design of new plant, structures, substances, and technology and of jobs, processes, and systems. This design process needs to take into account hazards and risks that may be present at all stages of the lifecycle of structures, plant, products, and substances.
Good design can eliminate or minimize the major physical, biomechanical, and psychosocial hazards and risks associated with work. Effective design of the overall system of work will take into account, for example, management practices, work processes, schedules, tasks, and workstation design.
Sustainable return to work or remaining at work while recovering from injury or illness is facilitated by good job design and management. Managers have an obligation to make reasonable adjustments to the design of the work and work processes to accommodate individuals’ differing capabilities.
Workers’ general health and well-being are strongly influenced by their health and safety at work. Well-designed work can improve worker health. Activities under the Australian Strategy build appropriate linkages with healthy worker programs to support improved general worker well-being as well as health and safety.
National activities support the following outcomes:
Structures, plant, and substances are designed to eliminate or minimize hazards and risks before they are introduced into the workplace.
Work, work processes, and systems of work are designed and managed to eliminate or minimize hazards and risks.
END: Safe Design in Australia
My name’s Simon Di Nucci. I’m a practicing system safety engineer, and I have been, for the last 25 years; I’ve worked in all kinds of domains, aircraft, ships, submarines, sensors, and command and control systems, and some work on rail air traffic management systems, and lots of software safety. So, I’ve done a lot of different things!
Good work design can help us achieve safe outcomes by designing safety into work processes and the design of products. Adding safety as an afterthought is almost always less effective and costs more over the lifecycle of the process or product.
Introduction
The Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2012-2022 is underpinned by the principle that well-designed healthy and safe work will allow workers to have more productive lives. This can be more efficiently achieved if hazards and risks are eliminated through good design.
This handbook contains ten principles that demonstrate how to achieve the good design of work and work processes. Each is general in nature so they can be successfully applied to any workplace, business, or industry.
The ten principles for good work design are
structured into three sections:
Why good work design is important;
What should be considered in good work design; and
How good work is designed.
These principles are shown in the diagram in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Good work design principles.
This handbook complements a range of
existing resources available to businesses and work health and safety
professionals including guidance for the safe design of plant and structures
see the Safe Work Australia Website.
Scope of the Handbook
This handbook provides information on how to apply good work design principles to work and work processes to protect workers and others who may be affected by the work.
It describes how design can be used to set up the workplace, working environment, and work tasks to protect the health and safety of workers, taking into account their range of abilities and vulnerabilities, so far as reasonably practicable.
The handbook does not aim to provide advice on managing situations where individual workers may have special requirements such as those with a disability or on a return to work program following an injury or illness.
Who Should Use this Handbook?
This handbook should be used by those with
a role in designing work and work processes, including:
Persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) with a primary duty of care under the model Work Health and Safety (WHS) laws.
PCBUs who have specific design duties relating to the design of plant, substances, and structures including the buildings in which people work.
People responsible for designing organizational structures, staffing rosters, and systems of work.
Professionals who provide expert advice to organizations on work health and safety matters.
Good work design optimizes work health and safety, human performance, job satisfaction, and business success.
Information:Experts who provide advice on the design of work may include: engineers, architects, ergonomists, information, and computer technology professionals, occupational hygienists, organizational psychologists, human resource professionals, occupational therapists, and physiotherapists.
What is ‘Good Work’?
‘Good work’ is healthy and safe work where the hazards and risks are eliminated or minimized so far as is reasonably practicable. Good work is also where the work design optimizes human performance, job satisfaction, and productivity.
Good work contains positive work elements that
can:
protect workers from harm to their health, safety, and welfare;
improve worker health and wellbeing; and
improve business success through higher worker productivity.
What is Good Work Design?
The most effective design process begins at the earliest opportunity during the conceptual and planning phases. At this early stage there is the greatest chance of finding ways to design-out hazards, incorporate effective risk control measures, and design-in efficiencies.
Effective design of good work considers:
The work:
how work is performed, including the physical, mental and emotional demands of the tasks and activities
the task duration, frequency, complexity, and
the context and systems of work.
The physical working
environment:
the plant, equipment, materials, and substances used, and
the vehicles, buildings, and structures that are workplaces.
The workers:
physical, emotional, and mental capacities and needs.
Effective design of good work can radically transform the workplace in ways that benefit the business, workers, clients, and others in the supply chain.
Failure to consider how work is designed can result in poor risk management and lost opportunities to innovate and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of work.
I suspect that many of us have seen badly-designed work, which results in workarounds or waste, or both. A little fore-thought can prevent this.
Top Tip
The principles for good work design
support duty holders to meet their obligations under the WHS laws and also help
them to achieve better business practice generally.
For the purposes of this handbook, a work designer is anyone who makes decisions about the design or redesign of work. This may be driven by the desire to improve productivity as well as the health and safety of people who will be doing the work
The WHY Principles
Why is good work design important?
Principle 1: Good
work design gives the highest level of protection so far as is reasonably
practicable
All workers have a right to the highest practicable level of protection against harm to their health, safety, and welfare.
The primary purpose of the WHS laws is to protect persons from work-related harm so far as is reasonably practicable.
Harm relates to the possibility that death, injury, illness, or disease may result from exposure to a hazard in the short or long term.
Eliminating or minimizing hazards at the source before risks are introduced in the workplace is a very effective way of providing the highest level of protection.
Principle 1 refers to the legal duties under the WHS laws. These laws provide the framework to protect the health, safety, and welfare of workers and others who might be affected by the work. During the work design, process workers and others should be given the highest level of protection against harm that is reasonably practicable.
Prevention of workplace
injury and illness
Well-designed work can prevent work-related deaths, injuries, and illnesses. The potential risk of harm from hazards in a workplace should be eliminated through good work design.
Only if that is not reasonably practicable, then the design process should minimize hazards and risks through the selection and use of appropriate control measures.
New hazards may inadvertently be created when changing work processes. If the good work design principles are systematically applied, potential hazards and risks arising from these changes can be eliminated or minimized.
Information: Reducing the speed of an inappropriately fast process line will not only reduce production errors, but can also diminish the likelihood of a musculoskeletal injury and mental stress.
Principle 2: Good
work design enhances health and wellbeing
Health is a “state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (World Health Organisation).
Designing good work can help improve health over the longer term by improving workers’ musculoskeletal condition, cardiovascular functioning, and mental health.
Good work design optimizes worker function and improves participation enabling workers to have more productive working lives.
Health
benefits
An effective design aims to prevent harm, but it can also positively enhance the health and wellbeing of workers, for example, satisfying work and positive social interactions can help improve people’s physical and mental health.
As a general guide, the healthiest workers have been found to be three times more productive than the least healthy. It, therefore, makes good business sense for work design to support people’s health and wellbeing.
Information: Recent research has shown long periods of sitting (regardless of exercise regime) can lead to an increased risk of preventable musculoskeletal disorders and chronic diseases such as diabetes. In an office environment, prolonged sitting can be reduced by allowing people to alternate between sitting or standing whilst working.
Principle 3: Good
work design enhances business success and productivity
Good work design prevents deaths, injuries, and illnesses and their associated costs, improves worker motivation and engagement, and in the long-term improves business productivity.
Well-designed work fosters innovation, quality, and efficiencies through effective and continuous improvement.
Well-designed work helps manage risks to business sustainability and profitability by making work processes more efficient and effective and by improving product and service quality.
Cost savings and productivity improvements
Designing-out problems before they arise is generally cheaper than
making changes after the resulting event, for example by avoiding expensive
retrofitting of workplace controls.
Good work design can have direct and tangible cost savings by
decreasing disruption to work processes and the costs from workplace injuries
and illnesses.
Good work design can also lead to productivity improvements and
business sustainability by:
allowing organizations to adjust to changing business needs and streamline work processes by reducing wastage, training, and supervision costs
improving opportunities for creativity and innovation to solve production issues, reduce errors and improve service and product quality, and
making better use of workers’ skills resulting in more engaged and motivated staff willing to contribute greater additional effort.
Figure 1, The WHY Principles
The WHAT Principles
What should be considered by those with design
responsibilities?
Principle 4: Good work design addresses physical, biomechanical, cognitive, and psychosocial characteristics of work, together with the needs and capabilities of the people involved
Good work design addresses the different hazards associated with work e.g. chemical, biological, and plant hazards, hazardous manual tasks, and aspects of work that can impact mental health.
Work characteristics should be systematically considered when work is designed, redesigned or the hazards and risks are assessed.
These work characteristics should be considered in combination and one characteristic should not be considered in isolation.
Good work design creates jobs and tasks that accommodate the abilities and vulnerabilities of workers so far as reasonably practicable.
All tasks have key characteristics with associated hazards and risks, as shown in Figure 2 below:
Figure 2 – Key characteristics of work.
Hazards and risks associated with tasks are identified and
controlled during good work design processes and they should be considered in
combination with all hazards and risks in the workplace. This highlights that
it is the combination that is important for good work design.
Workers can also be exposed to a number of different hazards from a single task. For example, meat boning is a common task in a meat-processing workplace. This task has a range of potential hazards and risks that need to be managed, e.g. physical, chemical, biological, biomechanical, and psychosocial. Good work design means the hazards and risks arising from this task are considered both individually and collectively to ensure the best control solutions are identified and applied.
Good work design can prevent unintended consequences which might arise if task control measures are implemented in isolation from other job considerations. For example, automation of a process may improve production speed and reduce musculoskeletal injuries but increase the risk of hearing loss if effective noise control measures are not also considered.
Workers have different needs and capabilities; good work design
takes these into account. This includes designing to accommodate them given the
normal range of human cognitive, biomechanical and psychological
characteristics of the work.
Information: The Australian workforce is changing. It is typically older with higher educational levels, more inclusive of people with disabilities, and more socially and ethnically diverse. Good work design accommodates and embraces worker diversity. It will also help a business become an employer of choice, able to attract and retain an experienced workforce.
Principle 5: Good work design considers the business needs, context, and work environment.
Good work design is ‘fit for purpose’ and should reflect the needs of the organization including owners, managers, workers, and clients.
Every workplace is different so approaches need to be context-specific. What is good for one situation cannot be assumed to be good for another, so off-the-shelf solutions may not always suit every situation.
The work environment is broad and includes: the physical structures, plant and technology, work layout, organizational design and culture, human resource systems, work health and safety processes, and information/control systems.
The business organizational structure and culture, decision-making processes, work environment, and how resources and people are allocated to the work will, directly and indirectly, impact on work design and how well and safely the work is done.
The work environment includes the physical structures, plant, and technology. Planning for relocations, refurbishments, or when introducing new engineering systems are ideal opportunities for businesses to improve their work designs and avoid foreseeable risks.
These are amongst the most common work
changes a business undertakes yet good design during these processes is often
quite poorly considered and implemented. An effective design following the
processes described in this handbook can yield significant business benefits.
Information: Off-the-shelf solutions can be explored for some common tasks, however usually design solutions need to be tailored to suit a particular workplace.
Good work design is most effective when it
addresses the specific business needs of the individual workplace or business.
Typically work design solutions will differ between small and large businesses.
However, all businesses must eliminate or minimize their work health and safety risks so far as reasonably practicable. The specific strategies and controls will vary depending on the circumstances.
The table on the next page demonstrates
how to step through the good work design process for small and large
businesses.
Good design steps
In a large business that is downsizing
In a small business that is undergoing a refit
Management commitment
Senior management make their commitment to good work design explicit ahead of downsizing and may hire external expertise.
The owner tells workers about their commitment to designing-out hazards during the upcoming refit of the store layout to help improve safety and efficiency.
Consult
The consequences of downsizing and how these can be managed are discussed in senior management and WHS committee meetings with appropriate representation from affected work areas.
The owner holds meetings with their workers to identify possible issues ahead of the refit.
Identify
A comprehensive workload audit is undertaken to clarify opportunities for improvements.
The owner discusses the proposed refit with the architect and builder and gets ideas for dealing with issues raised by workers.
Assess
A cost-benefit analysis is undertaken to assess the work design options to manage the downsizing.
The owner, architect, and builder jointly discuss the proposed refit and any worker issues directly with workers.
Control
A change management plan is developed and implemented to appropriately structure teams and improve systems of work. Training is provided to support the new work arrangements.
The building refit occurs. Workers are given training and supervision to become familiar with a new layout and safe equipment use.
Review
The work redesign process is reviewed against the project aims by senior managers.
The owner checks with the workers that the refit has improved working conditions and efficiency and there are no new issues.
Improve
Following consultation, refinement of the redesign is undertaken if required.
Minor adjustments to the fit-out are made if required.
Table 1 – steps in good work design for large and small businesses
Principle 6: Good
work design is applied along the supply chain and across the operational
lifecycle.
Good work design should be applied along the supply chain in the design, manufacture, distribution, use and disposal of goods and the supply of services.
Work design is relevant at all stages of the operational life cycle, from start-up, routine operations, maintenance, downsizing and cessation of business operations.
New initiatives, technologies, and changes in organizations have implications for work design and should be considered.
Information: Supply chains are often made up of complex commercial or business relationships and contracts designed to provide goods or services. These are often designed to provide goods or services to a large, dominant business in a supply chain. The human and operational costs of poor design by a business can be passed up or down the supply chain.
Businesses in the supply chain can have
significant influence over their supply chain partners’ work health and safety
through the way they design the work.
Businesses may create risks and so they
need to be active in working with their supply chains and networks to solve
work health and safety problems and share practical solutions for example, for
common design and manufacturing problems.
Health and safety risks can be created at
any point along the supply chain, for example, loading and unloading causing
time pressure for the transport business.
There can be a flow-on effect where the
health and safety and business ‘costs’ of poor design may be passed down the
supply chain. These can be prevented if businesses work with their supply chain
partners to understand how contractual arrangements affect health and safety.
Procurement and contract officers can also positively influence their own organization and others’ work health and safety throughout the supply chain through the good design of contracts.
When designing contractual arrangements
businesses could consider ways to support good work design safety outcomes by:
setting clear health and safety expectations for their supply chain partners, for example through the use of codes of conduct or quality standards
conducting walk-through inspections, monitoring, and comprehensive auditing of supply chain partners to check adherence to these codes and standards
building the capability of their own procurement staff to understand the impacts of contractual arrangements on their suppliers, and
consulting with their supply chain partners on the design of good work practices.
Information: The road transport industry is an example of the application of how this principle can help improve drivers’ health and safety and address issues arising from supply chain arrangements. For example, the National Heavy Vehicle Laws ‘chain of responsibility’ requires all participants in the road transport supply chain to take responsibility for driver work health and safety. Contracts must be designed to allow drivers to work reasonable hours, take sufficient breaks from driving and not have to speed to meet deadlines.
The design of products will strongly impact both health and safety and business productivity throughout their lifecycles. At every stage, there are opportunities to eliminate or minimize risks through good work design. The common product lifecycle stages are illustrated in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3 – common product lifecycle
Information: For more information on the design of structures and plant see ‘Safe design of structures’ and Managing the risks of plant in the workplace and other design guidance on the Safe Work Australia website.
The good work design principles are also
relevant at all stages of the business life cycle. Some of these stages present
particularly serious and complex work health and safety challenges such as
during the rapid expansion or contraction of businesses. Systematic application
of good work design principles during these times can achieve positive work
health and safety outcomes.
New technology is often a key driver of change in work design. It has the potential to improve the quality of outputs, efficiency, and safety of workers, however introducing new technology could also introduce new hazards and unforeseen risks. Good work design considers the impact of the new initiatives and technologies before they are introduced into the workplace and monitors their impact over time.
Information: When designing a machine for safe use, how the maintenance will be undertaken in the future should be considered.
In most workplaces, information and communication technology (ICT) systems are an integral part of all business operations. In practice, these are often the main drivers of work changes but are commonly overlooked as sources of workplace risks. Opportunities to improve health and safety should always be considered when new ICT systems are planned and introduced.
Figure 4, The ICT Triad
The HOW Principles
Principle 7: Engage decision-makers and leaders
Work design or redesign is most effective when there is a high level of visible commitment, practical support, and engagement by decision-makers.
Demonstrating the long-term benefits of investing in good work design helps engage decision-makers and leaders.
Practical support for good work design includes the allocation of appropriate time and resources to undertake effective work design or redesign processes.
Information: Leaders are the key decision-makers or those who influence the key decision-makers. Leaders can be the owners of a business, directors of boards, and senior executives.
Leaders can support good work design by
ensuring the principles are appropriately included or applied, for example in:
key organizational policies and procedures
proposals and contracts for workplace change or design
managers’ responsibilities and as key performance indicators
business management systems and audit reports
organizational communications such as a standing item on leadership meeting agendas, and
the provision of sufficient human and financial resources.
Good work design, especially for complex issues will require adequate time and resources to consider and appropriately manage organizational and/or technological change. Like all business changes, research shows that leader commitment to upfront planning helps ensure better outcomes.
Managers and work health and safety
advisors can help this process by providing their leaders with appropriate and
timely information. This could include for example:
identifying design options that support both business outcomes and work health and safety objectives
assessing the risks and providing short and long term cost-benefit analysis of the recommended controls to manage these risks, and
identifying what decisions need to be taken, when and by whom to effectively design and implement the agreed changes.
Principle 8:
Actively involve the people who do the work, including those in the supply
chain and networks
Persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) must consult with their workers and others likely to be affected by work in accordance with the work health and safety laws.
Supply chain stakeholders should be consulted as they have local expertise about the work and can help improve work design for upstream and downstream participants.
Consultation should promote the sharing of relevant information and provide opportunities for workers to express their views, raise issues, and contribute to decision-making where possible.
Effective consultation and cooperation of all involved with open lines of communication will ultimately give the best outcomes. Consulting with those who do the work not only makes good sense, it is required under the WHS laws.
Information: Under the model WHS laws (s47), a business owner must, so far as is reasonably practicable, consult with ‘workers who carry out work for the business or undertaking who are, or are likely to be, directly affected by a matter relating to work health or safety.’ This can include a work design issue.
If more than one person has a duty in relation to the same matter, ‘each person with the duty must, so far as is reasonably practicable, consult, co-operate and co-ordinate activities with all other persons who have a duty in relation to the same matter’ (model WHS laws s46).
Workers have knowledge about their own job and often have suggestions on how to solve a specific problem. Discussing design options with them will help promote their ownership of the changes. See Code of practice on consultation.
Businesses that operate as part of a supply chain should consider whether the work design and changes to the work design might negatively impact on upstream or downstream businesses. The supply chain partners will often have solutions to logistics problems that can benefit all parties.
Principle 9:
Identify hazards, assess and control risks, and seek continuous improvement
A systematic risk management approach should be applied in every workplace.
Designing good work is part of the business process and not a one-off event.
Sustainability in the long-term requires that designs or redesigns are continually monitored and adjusted to adapt to changes in the workplace so as to ensure feedback is provided and that new information is used to improve the design.
Good work design should systematically apply the risk management approach to workplace hazards and risks. See Principle 4 for more details.
Typically good work design will involve ongoing discussions with all stakeholders to keep refining the design options. Each stage in the good work design process should have decision points for review of options and to consult further if these are not acceptable. This allows for flexibility to quickly respond to unanticipated and adverse outcomes.
Figure 5 outlines how the risk management
steps can be applied in the design process
Continuous improvements in work health and safety can in part be achieved if the good work design principles are applied at business start-ups and whenever major organizational changes are contemplated. To be most effective, consideration of health and safety issues should be integrated into normal business risk management.
Figure 5 – Steps in the good work design process
Principle 10: Learn
from experts, evidence, and experience
Continuous improvement in work design and hence work health and safety requires ongoing collaboration between the various experts involved in the work design process.
Various people with specific skills and expertise may need to be consulted in the design stage to fill any knowledge gaps. It is important to recognize the strengths and limitations of a single expert’s knowledge.
Near misses, injuries and illnesses are important sources of information about poor design.
Most work design processes will require collaboration and cooperation between internal and sometimes external experts. Internal advice can be sought from workers, line managers, technical support and maintenance staff, engineers, ICT systems designers, work health and safety advisors, and human resource personnel.
Depending on the design issue, external experts may be required such as architects, engineers, ergonomists, occupational hygienists, and psychologists.
Information: If you provide advice on work design options it is important to know and work within the limitations of your discipline’s knowledge and expertise. Where required make sure you seek advice and collaborate with other appropriate design experts.
For complex and high-risk projects, ideally, a core group of the same people should remain involved during both the design and implementation phases with other experts brought in as necessary.
The type of expert will always depend on the circumstances. When assessing the suitability of an expert consider their qualifications, skills, relevant knowledge, technical expertise, industry experience, reputation, communication skills, and membership of professional associations.
Information: Is the consultant suitably qualified? A suitably qualified person has the knowledge, skills, and experience to provide advice on a specific design issue. You can usually check with the professional association to see if the consultant is certified or otherwise recognized by them to provide work design advice.
The decision to design or redesign work should be based on sound evidence. Typically this evidence will come from many sources such as both proactive and reactive indicators, information about new technology, or the business decisions to downsize, expand or restructure or to meet the requirements of supply chain partners.
Proactive and reactive indicators can also be used to monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of the design solution.
Information: Proactive indicators provide early information about the work system that can be used to prevent accidents or harm. These might include for example: key process variables such as temperature or workplace systems indicators such as the number of safety audits and inspections undertaken.
Reactive indicators are usually based on incidents that have already occurred. Examples include the number and type of near misses and worker injury and illness rates.
Useful
information about common work design problems and solutions can also often be
obtained from:
work health and safety
regulators
industry associations and
unions
trade magazines and suppliers,
and
specific research papers.
Figure 6, Sources of Work Design Information
Good Work Design: Summary
The ten principles of good work design can be
applied to help support better work health and safety outcomes and business
productivity. They are deliberately high level and should be broadly applicable
across the range of Australian businesses and workplaces. Just as every
workplace is unique, so is the way each principle can be applied in practice.
When considering these principles in any work design also ensure you take into account your local jurisdictional work health and safety requirements.
My name’s Simon Di Nucci. I’m a practicing system safety engineer, and I have been, for the last 25 years; I’ve worked in all kinds of domains, aircraft, ships, submarines, sensors, and command and control systems, and some work on rail air traffic management systems, and lots of software safety. So, I’ve done a lot of different things!
I have made some changes to the text to improve the layout and correct minor problems with Figure numbering in the original document. ‘Top Tips’ are my own, based on my 10+ years of experience working in system safety under Austalian WHS.
Want some good guidance on Safe Design? In this 52-minute video from the Safety Artisan, you will find it. I take the official guidance from Safe Work Australia. Then I provide some value-adding commentary on it, based on my 10+ years of experience working system safety under Australian WHS Law.
This guidance integrates seamlessly with Australian law and regulations, as it is designed to be consistent. However, it is genuinely useful in any jurisdiction.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Safety Artisan, where you will receive safety training via instructional videos on system safety, software safety, and design safety. Today I’m talking about design safety. What we’re going to be talking about is safe design, and this safe design guidance comes from Safe Work Australia. I’m showing you some text taken from the website and adding my own commentary and experience.
Topics
The topics that we’re going to cover today are – a safe design approach, five principles of safe design, ergonomics (more broadly, its human factors). Who has responsibility, doing safe design through the product lifecycle, the benefits of it, our legal obligations in Australia (but this is good advice wherever you are). Lastly, the Australian approach to improving safe design in order to reduce casualties in the workplace.
Introduction
The idea of safe design is it’s about integrating safety management, asset identification, and risk assessment early in the design process. We do this to eliminate or reduce risks throughout the life of a product, whatever the product is, it might be a building, a structure, equipment, a vehicle or infrastructure. This is important because in Australia, in a five-year period, we suffered almost 640 work-related fatalities, of which almost 190 were caused by unsafe design or design-related factors contributed to that fatality. So, there’s an important reason to do this stuff, it’s not an academic exercise, we’re doing it for real reasons. And we’ll come back to the reason why we’re doing it at the end of the presentation.
A Safe Design Approach #1
First, we need to begin safe design right at the start of the lifecycle (we will see more of that later). It’s at the beginning of the lifecycle when you’re making your bad decisions about requirements. What do you want this system to do? How do we design it to do that? What materials and components and subsystems are we going to make or buy to put this thing together, whatever it is? Thinking about how we are going to construct it, maintain it, operate it, and then get rid of it at the end of life. There are lots of big decisions being made early in the life cycle. And sometimes these decisions are made accidentally because we don’t consciously think about what we’re doing. We just do stuff and then we realise afterwards that we’ve made a decision with sometimes quite serious implications.
A big part of my day job as a consultant was trying to help people think about those issues and make good decisions early on when it’s still cheap, quick and easy to do. Because the more you’ve invested into a project, the more difficult it is to make changes. This is both from a financial point of view and if people have invested their time, sweat and tears into a project, they get very attached to it and they don’t want to change it. There’s an emotional investment made in the project.
The earlier you get in, at the feasibility stage let’s say, and think about all of this stuff the easier it is to do it. A big part of that is where is this kit going to end up? What legislation codes of practice and standards do we need to consider and comply with? So that’s the approach.
A Safe Design Approach #2
So, designers need to consider how safety can be achieved through the lifecycle. For example, can we design a machine with protective guarding so that the operator doesn’t get hurt using it, but also so the machine can be installed and maintained? That’s an important point as often to get at stuff we must take it apart and maybe we must remove some of those safety features. How do we then protect and maintain when the machine is maybe opened up, and the workings are things that you can get caught in or electrocuted by.
And how do we get rid of it? Maybe we’ve used some funky chemicals that are quite difficult to get rid of. In Australia, I suspect like many other places, we’ve got a mountain of old buildings that are full of asbestos, which is costing a gigantic sum of money to get rid of safely. we need to design a building which is fit for occupancy. Maybe we need to think about occupants that are not able bodied or they’re moving stuff around in the building they don’t want to and need a trolley to carry stuff around. we need access, we need sufficient space to do whatever it is we need to do.
This all sounds simple, obvious, doesn’t it? So, let’s look at these five principles. First of all, a lot of this you’re going to recognise from the legal stuff, because the principles of safe design are very much tied in and integrated with the Australian legal approach, WHS, which is all good, all consistent and all fits together.
Five Principles of Safe Design
Principle 1: Persons with control. If you’re making a decision that affects design and products, facilities or processes, it is your responsibility to think about safety, it’s part of your due diligence (If you recall that phrase and that session).
Principle 2: We need to apply safe design at every stage in the lifecycle, from the very beginning right through to the end. That means thinking about risks and eliminating or managing them as early as we can but thinking forward to the whole lifecycle; sounds easy, but it’s often done very badly.
Principle 3: Systematic risk management. We need to apply these things that we know about and listen to other broadcasts from The Safety Artisan. We go on and on and on about this because this is our bread and butter as safety engineers, as safety professionals – identify hazards, assess the risk and think about how we will control the risks in order to achieve a safe design.
Principle 4: Safe design, knowledge and capability. If you’re controlling the design, if you’re doing technical work or you’re managing it and making decisions, you must know enough about safe design and have the capability to put these principles into practice to the extent that you need to discharge your duties. When I’m thinking of duties, I’m especially thinking of the health and safety duties of officers, managers and people who make decisions. You need to exercise due diligence (see the Work Health and Safety lessons for more about due diligence).
Principle 5: Information transfer. Part of our duties is not just to do stuff well, but to pass on the information that the users, maintainers, disposers, etc will need in order to make effective use of the design safely. That is through all the lifecycle phases of the product.
So those are the five principles of safe design, and I think they’re all obvious, right? So, let’s move on…
[The full videos continues.]
My name’s Simon Di Nucci. I’m a practicing system safety engineer, and I have been, for the last 25 years; I’ve worked in all kinds of domains, aircraft, ships, submarines, sensors, and command and control systems, and some work on rail air traffic management systems, and lots of software safety. So, I’ve done a lot of different things!
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