What We Need to Know

Quality is the name of the game when we talk about contractor project management plan. Each plan needs quality assessment and evaluation for it to be successful. Yes, saving cash is even a vital issue but it must not dictate the entire project if the only goal is to save. The objective is to make something lasting and valuable for the years to come.

Many contractors reduce their price, but this normally comes with downgrading the services they offer. Contractors like this could work faster but faster doesn't guarantee you of strength and credibility of the work. Any contractor management plan can be manipulated to fit several requirements; it can still work with an inferior quality rate of materials but individuals involved will pay the cost somehow.

A realistic approach has to be specified in a contractor project management plan. It is easy to create words that are abstract in nature but in reality are empty. The changes also ought to be understood with the kind or type of work performed by each one. An abrupt change in the work setting and the pace can alter the entire scheme.

Few contractors will save a lot more by working faster, while for some it would be better to maximize the time given without speeding to ensure that quality of work, health and safety is done. The contractor management plan must be able to accommodate the changes that the land area will offer. The terrain and the circumstances wouldn't be the same for every project. The ability to blend in and work with any type of surrounding and geographic area gives contractors the edge.

The contractor project management plan has to be able to handle changes in the size of the person projects it would handle. The expansion that would take place must be received well. The performance has to be upgraded including the tools that would be used.

Performance must be evaluated periodically in order to improve quality. The number of individuals working with the project must be sufficient until the end of the project duration. Changes have to be dealt with utmost care and the change of leadership has to be planned thoroughly just in case there's a need to do so. Devotion with the plan and the mission has to be remembered occasionally. Character clashes with the people working on the project have to be minimized. The differences must instead be used to come up with something more sensible.

Construction Project Management Plan is a comprehensive document that is ready to customize to your specific project; it is reviewed and amended regularly to reflect the current requirements in the Australian building and construction industry. CPMP is OHS compliant for all federal, state and territory requirements.

Guide to a Safe Work Place

Maintaining a Safe Workplace is as important as running a successful business because unless you have a safe working environment, you are hardly likely to see any progress. It is a manager's job to see that all security measures are adhered to in order to keep accidents at work from occurring. Besides this, accidents can cost you a lot of money and even the loss of a day's work. It is therefore essential that you have a safe workplace that is free from any kind of health hazard, as this will keep your employees happy and they will perform better at their jobs.

It should also be noted that you alone as a manager cannot bring in all the changes or take the entire responsibility of creating a safe workplace. You will need to involve your employees to help you preserve a safe and healthy workplace. It is they who can identify and inspect hazards so that they can be avoided. For this, you may even require a training process that will help employees recognize any discrepancies that may arise due to bad equipment or machinery or any other thing that might cause health hazards. A manager should be friendly and be able to relate with the employees so that they can without any hesitation report their problems directly. A common perception that employees have is of not being able to level with their peers or seniors. This is the very notion that you need to get out of their minds by being open to their suggestions and even including them in your policies that are made for managing a safe workplace. However, running a safe workplace must begin with you and it is you who has to set the goals for the others to follow.

The very first step to avoiding accidents at work is to formulate a policy that emphasizes the benefits of a safe workplace. You must give your full commitment and expect the same from your employees. Also insist on getting to the root cause of any accidents at work so that they can be prevented from being repeated again. Assign someone who will be accountable for maintaining a safe workplace and ensure that the person understands his or her duties well or you could hold the person responsible for negligence.

The safety of your employees is of vital importance and is also their legal right. You must therefore have provisions in your safety policy that any employee exposed to health hazards at the workplace or injured in an accident at work, shall be compensated for it. You may have to pay for hospitalization or even an operation. Occupational therapy is also a good way of checking on the mental, physical and psychological well being of your employees. The need for introducing occupational therapy is being widely seen by entrepreneurs and small businesses as well.

Occupational therapy uses consequential occupations to encourage good health thereby helping people improve their work performance and do their jobs in a more balanced way. As a manager you must be able to recognize any problems that your employees may face and help resolve them and even recommend occupational therapy. Keeping a safe workplace that is free of health risks or injury is an absolute way of creating a happy environment and success for your business.

Safety Management Series - Make It Safe, And Legal

In my professional OHS consulting practice I often see clients who have become frustrated by "chasing the regulations." Their desire to comply with the legal requirements is honourable and a very wise business choice. It also pays to make our workplaces safe and healthy for our valuable employees. This is especially true in our day and age of diminishing workforce, increased world competition and challenging economic times. A contracting company needs to stay sharp to survive.

Wanting to have a safe work method statements and to comply isn't enough; we need a strategy to make it happen. Here's what's worked successfully for many who realize that making it safe is only half of the challenge and making it legal is the second half.

Trouble is in almost all jurisdictions that I'm aware of, this act of driving through an intersection against a red light is not legal. Our goal in business is to do both.

Let's start with a simple process.

1) Find the harmful energies (Hazard Assessment)

Find the harmful energies that could cause you grief. Electrical, mechanical, chemical, kinetic, gravitational and stored energies are some examples of energies that can all find a pathway to us unless we ensure they are controlled. Being hit with unwanted energy is a sure fire way to get hurt or damage our equipment.

2) Put barriers in place to stop the harmful energies (Hazard Control)

Once defined, these energies can be eliminated or in some cases you can put barriers in place to ensure the energies don't hit us. For example, if I need to work in a trench, I'm concerned about gravity working on the stored energy of the trench walls. If I go into an un-shored/protected trench then I'm putting myself in the way of energy. I can control that energy by barriers. These barriers don't have to be physical barriers. I can use the barrier of my knowledge not to enter the trench. I can also get training to know how to build safe shoring. Shoring is a great example of a barrier that effectively protects us from harmful energy. I can also use a trench cage to ensure that if the walls of the trench do collapse that I'm safely inside the cage unharmed by the release of the potentially harmful energy.

3) Check the applicable legislation for details of the prescribed hazard controls.

So once I've looked at either eliminating the harmful energies or the barriers I can put in place, I will probably have made it "safe". To follow our trenching example I could decide to shore the trench with lumber and screw-jacks. This could keep me safe from cave-in. I could guess the size of lumber I need and the number of screw-jacks but I could guess wrong. My shoring design may keep the walls of the trench from moving in on me, but may not meet the requirements of the local OHS laws. This is where I need to go to the web to check the regulations or look it up in my OHS regulation/code book.

4) Check your industry for best practices.

In my research I should also look for industry solutions to my safety challenges. Why re-invent a trench cage when I can just go buy or rent one? What are others doing to make it both safe and legal? Industry associations focused on safety are great sources of solutions to my safety challenges. Use them relentlessly.

5) Develop the safe work process to be used.

Now that I've decided on how I'm going to do the work, I need to develop a work process so that when I do this kind of work, I and my fellow workers are protected by the process used.

6) Educate and train those who need to comply with the work process.

We all need to know what is expected of us and we should be trained to do the work we're assigned. Learning how to shore using the company procedure is a barrier to me and my fellow workers from being injured or killed in a trench cave-in.

7) Observe that the work process is being followed.

Now that we have a plan to enter trenches we need to make sure that we always do it safely, Workplace inspections and observations tell us that we're doing it right. The old quality adage "Say what you do, do what you say and measure often" works really well in safety. Not only will you be ensuring you are following your own rules, but you will be meeting the legal requirements.

When we do it right we need to tell everyone that they've done a great job! If we need to adjust our processes, now is the time to do our improvements. Well there we have it, a simple process to make it safe...and to make it legal. Hopefully this will reduce any frustration you have around meeting the details of the OHS management plan regulations. Don't miss a step, your employees and your company's well-being is relying on it!

Safety Management Series

I believe that most folks are well-intentioned when it comes to the health and safety of themselves and others. I've never actually met anyone in any company during my over three decades of OHS management plan experience who actually wanted to hurt anyone. I think the problem is that some percentage of employers, managers and workers just don't know what activities they are to engage in to really make their workplace safe. Knowing what to do and how to do those things that make a safe work situation is a fundamental requirement of efficient and effective OHS problem-solving.

Good problem-solving requires us to be both efficient and effective. A problem solved inefficiently only causes other problems. A problem solved ineffectively isn't really solved at all. There are only four possible combinations of being effective and efficient. You either are or you aren't. No matter what state you find yourself in, there are practical things to do to improve not only your results, but the processes you use to achieve those results.

Effectively efficient: Doing the right things right

This is akin to driving a well-maintained boat with a super crew on board with a well-defined plan to get to the other side of the lake. We'll not only accomplish our goals, but we'll do it in record time with few problems, if any, to resolve along the way. The plan is solid, we have the right people in place, and we just need to execute the plan. Then, of course, we need to celebrate our accomplishment.

In managing OHS management plan issues, this means that your own evidence tells you that you are managing safety in a way that results in the creation of safety. You can see the evidence of safety when you look. Workers are working without taking unnecessary risks. You can observe workers following work procedures that they helped develop and are wearing proper protective clothing and equipment. The safety rules make sense to the people who need to follow them and the safety culture is observable. It feels good to be safe. Safety isn't a "program." It's the way that your company does its work.

If you find yourself in the effectively efficient state, then please keep doing what you are doing. Continue to strive to do the right things right. Start to measure not only your activities to make it safe, but the outcomes of those activities. Make sure you celebrate your successes. If you find yourself in the effectively inefficient state, then work on your processes. Refine how you are creating safety by reducing unnecessary steps in your plans and procedures. Engage the people that actually do the work to help you define the steps to efficiently get things done. If you find yourself in the ineffectively efficient state, stop the focus on how you are trying to create safety and think about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Challenge your current practices. Look for evidence-based solutions. Ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing. If you find yourself in the ineffectively inefficient state, then just quit - just kidding! Immediately start with finding out what to do, then think about how to do it in your culture. The road to excellence will be hard work, but rewarding.

Remember that every company is in some state of your OHS management plan development and delivery evolution. Components of what you are doing to create safety may very well be in a variety of states of both efficient and effective.

Ingredients to Effective Contractor Management

If you want to effectively manage workplace compliance, you need to manage your contractors’ compliance. No matter how robust, comprehensive or proven your OHS management systems maybe, if you have a non-compliant, or poorly trained, contractor onsite, it could all amount to nothing if an incident occurs. A reliable contractor management system has to be an essential part of any OHS management plan.

The five essential ingredients of an effective contractor management solution are:

1. A reliable contractor induction system

2. The ability to upload, track and manage compliance related documents

3. Comprehensive reporting capabilities

4. A reliable management plan

5. A dedication to making it all work!

Let's look a bit more closely at these five points:

1. Reliable Induction: While most companies have a contractor induction system in place, it is often out-dated, unreliable. How many companies still throw a handbook at their contractors, or stick them in front of a DVD and get them to sign a form? The fact is, if you track your contractor inductions or your contractors comprehension levels, you're doing very little to improve safe work method statement and nothing to improve compliance. Your first step in contractor management has to be inducting contractors through reliable, induction software with the capability to track inductions, measure comprehension and notify you when an induction needs to be renewed.

2. Capturing Relevant Documents: Insurances, licenses, company details they all need to be captured and checked before contractor even steps onto your site. Once you have them, they need to be managed so that when they expire or become outdated, you are automatically notified. You can then make sure they are renewed before you allow that contractor onsite again. You will also have a record of your activities to help ensure your company's compliance.

3. Comprehensive Reporting: The ability to report up-to-the minute activity associated with your contractor management is at the heart of demonstrating your commitment to safety. It provides you with the information you need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your contractor management system and sets you in the right direction for continual improvements.

4. Management Plan: Simply having a system in place is not enough. You need to have someone to oversee and monitor how well it's working and leading the charge for continual improvements. If you are building a system in-house, this means assigning someone to oversee the software development and maintenance. If you are outsourcing a solution, make sure you find a company that actually understands, and is dedicated to, the everyday issues of OHS managers, not just a software developing company.

5. Dedication: Without an organization-wide dedication to making the system work, your contractor management solution can fall apart very quickly. At every level, you need to build an understanding of why an effective contractor management system is important and what the benefits to the company are. In most organizations, there are many people involved in the implementation of your OHS management systems. It is likely that they haven't placed much importance on your contractor management in the past. You'll need to make an effort to change that.

Once you have your system in place and have established an understanding of the real differences it can make to your company, a fully functioning contractor project management plan template system has the power to improve workplace compliance and, more importantly, contractor safety.

Effective and Efficient OHS Management

I believe that most folks are well-intentioned when it comes to the health and safety of themselves and others. I've never actually met anyone in any company during my over three decades of OHS management plan experience who actually wanted to hurt anyone. I think the problem is that some percentage of employers, managers and workers just don't know what activities they are to engage in to really make their workplace safe.

Knowing what to do and how to do those things that make a safe work method statements situation is a fundamental requirement of efficient and effective OHS problem-solving. Good problem-solving requires us to be both efficient and effective. A problem solved inefficiently only causes other problems. A problem solved ineffectively isn't really solved at all. There are only four possible combinations of being effective and efficient. You either are or you aren't. No matter what state you find yourself in, there are practical things to do to improve not only your results, but the processes you use to achieve those results. Let's examine the four states of OHS management and see what we can do to celebrate or correct our approaches so that we'll become efficient and effective at creating safety.

Effectively efficient: Doing the right things right

This is akin to driving a well-maintained boat with a super crew on board with a well-defined plan to get to the other side of the lake. We'll not only accomplish our goals, but we'll do it in record time with few problems, if any, to resolve along the way. The plan is solid, we have the right people in place, and we just need to execute the plan. Then, of course, we need to celebrate our accomplishment.

In managing OH&S issues, this means that your own evidence tells you that you are managing safety in a way that results in the creation of safety. You can see the evidence of safety when you look. Workers are working without taking unnecessary risks. You can observe workers following work procedures that they helped develop and are wearing proper protective clothing and equipment. The safety rules make sense to the people who need to follow them and the safety culture is observable. It feels good to be safe. Safety isn't a "program." It's the way that your company does its work.

Effectively inefficient: Doing the right things poorly

This is like owning a boat in very poor running condition, having one broken paddle as an emergency backup, with a great navigation plan to make it across the lake: "We'll get there... someday." We'll breakdown along the way, we may hurt some crew members because we don't have the proper tools to repair the boat, we may even get to the wrong point on the lake before we finally reach our correct destination. There could be some time wasted just drifting aimlessly. Team members will be unhappy and a tad frustrated. Success of getting to where you are going will be less than satisfying because of the negative experience.

In OHS management plan, we are often doing the right things to make it safe; we just aren't very efficient at them. We have safety meetings for example, but the participants think they are a waste of time since we're having very poorly developed meeting strategies. There are good things happening at the meetings; they just aren't happening quickly enough.

Ineffectively efficient: Doing the wrong things very well

In this state we're really good at what we are doing, we're just doing the wrong things. We have a great boat in great condition travelling in circles. We're randomly reaching unplanned destinations that we never really intended to go to. If we reach the goal, it will just be because of luck.

Unfortunately, companies stuck in traditional approaches to safety are in this state; they are very efficient at orientations, for example, but the process isn't getting the correct results. All their staff have watched the orientation DVD; they just haven't retained any of the information.

Another common example is passing the same audit annually for several years. Let's face it: you aren't learning much by asking yourself the same questions you asked yourself a decade ago, even if the audit is done in record time.

Ineffectively inefficient: Doing the wrong things poorly

This is akin to driving a motor boat with a poorly performing motor and no rudder on a lake. You will slowly and with a great deal of noise go around in circles...and never really get anywhere. If you do get to the other side of the lake, it could be the wrong destination altogether. If you happen to get to where you wanted to be, you'd have to admit to yourself that it was mostly luck that got you there.

This state of your OH&S effort usually presents some, if not all, of the following observable symptoms:

• No safety processes defined;

• Working on the typical myths of OHS management;

• We offer to fire people for safety violations, but don't tell them they are doing a good job when they do;

• We efficiently hold safety "telling" meetings where there is no interaction; and

• We have rules of safe behaviour but never actually check to see if they are being followed.

There are certainly other areas of concern with ineffectively inefficient management. The key is to find out from others the successful ways to get you out of this state. Remember that every company is in some state of your OHS management development and delivery evolution. Components of what you are doing to create safety may very well be in a variety of states of both efficient and effective.