It’s another milestone for the MacKays to Peka Peka Alliance. They’ve just been named as finalists for Safety Innovation in the 2014 Site Safe Construction Health and Safety Awards. And Alliance Manager Alan Orange is over the moon.
“The Alliance is 100% committed to the safety, health and wellbeing of everyone working on M2PP. Our goal is always zero harm in everything we do. We believe that all work related injuries, illnesses and incidents are preventable, and we do everything we can to keep our team safe and well.
“On a massive construction job like this, getting the health and safety message out isn’t always easy, so we’ve gone out of our way to make it simple for everyone to understand how to stay safe on the job.”
To that end, the Alliance has created a series of short animated clips that cover a range of safety topics, including lifting, heights, big machines, ladders and protective gear, among others. The clips can be accessed using smartphones, tablets, YouTube and QR codes.
NZ Transport Agency Acting State Highways Manager Selwyn Blackmore says it is exciting to see the Alliance’s innovative Health and Safety work being recognised at a national level.
“The M2PP team has made Health and Safety a priority from the start. From pioneering new world-leading surveying technologies through to ongoing knowledge-sharing workshops with our forestry and earthworks contractors, the Alliance is leading the way in Health and Safety.”
Mr Orange says that these new clips have staff more engaged than ever in working safely across the project.
“Using this new approach, we’ve been able to take entire health and safety guideline manuals and distil them into a form that everyone can understand—al in around 90 seconds. The new animated clips have proved very popular with Alliance staff, and we’re getting overwhelmingly positive feedback about them.
We’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback from our team and are looking forward to rolling out even more of them over time.”
While Mr Orange agrees with the Site Safe Awards judges, who called them “unique and innovative”, he says that they are just one part of a much larger picture.
“We have built strong Health and Safety practices into this project from the planning stage up. Our goal is to get every member of our team home safe each night, healthy, in one piece and ready to come back for another day on the job.
“Our entire team is committed to staying safe, but we also know that we can always do better. We want to inspire other projects with our safety focus—not just in the Wellington region, but all around New Zealand.”
To learn more about M2PP’s Health and Safety approach, please visit the MacKays to Peka Peka channel on youtube.com. You can see the full range of animations, as well as a number of other videos about the project.
The transformation of Tommo, the M2PP project’s Civil Superintendent (real name Peter Thompson).
