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By Scott Davidson, ManagerSafety

O

n October 3rd, I attended the Vancouver Island Safety Conference in Qualicum.  Representatives from the forest Industry, Labour, Worksafe BC, and the BC Forest Safety Council were on hand to share their thoughts on how safety in the workplace can be improved both in the bush and on the mill floor.  The focus of the conference was to establish the challenges that the industry is facing today and to outline the priorities for the future.  The outcomes will be sent out in the upcoming BC Forest Safety Newsletters, but here are some of the key points that were discussed:

Challenges in a curtailed industry:

• There are more experienced workers doing unfamiliar jobs, testing the limits of their physical ability
• There are less people doing a wider variety of jobs
• Substance abuse is ongoing with different types of drugs in the workplace
• There is less recruiting and training for young workers who wish to enter the forest industry
• Workers not staying focused on the tasks at hand as personal and financial hardships are being dealt with on a daily basis
• Site coordination is difficult as different contractors try to complete their jobs in a timely manner on increasingly tighter budgets
• Extended OT hours for senior employees leading to fatigue at work

These challenges are not easily answered in light of the world economic situation which is straining the budgets of the forest industry companies on Vancouver Island.  The idea is to set a target and prioritize the steps to be taken to continually improve on the safety standards of today and the near future.

Priorities to focus on:

• Training of new/young workers by experienced workers extending into the secondary education system
• Increase the accountability of all workers to comply with safety standards
• Publish and distribute the "best practices" of companies to share the good tools that are being used industry wide
• Further engage all employees in the safety programs, not just committee members and management

Some of these ideas are broad and need further defining to develop an effective action plan, but they do outline some of the goals that we can work towards.  Within the Coulson Group of Companies we encourage the open communication of safety based ideas between all employees in order to remedy outstanding issues.  Whether you have solutions to some of these industry wide problems or a solution to a small fix-it item, please forward your ideas to the safety committee.