The Health & Safety at Work Act has identified working in isolated or remote situations as a hazard that must be managed.
The Health & Safety at Work General Risk and Workplace Management Regulations specifically require PCBUs (a person/entity conducting a business or undertaking) to manage any risks to the health and safety of their lone workers.
If risks cannot be eliminated, they must be minimised, as far as is reasonably practical. And because each work situation is different, PCBUs may need to consider the risks to lone workers on a case-by-case basis, unless there are specific codes of practice or industry guidelines already in place.
Under the new rules, PCBUs must also have an effective way of communicating with their lone workers.
SiteConnect has now implemented the new lone worker notification feature:
- When a PCBU1 creates a site, they can specify the site’s opening and closing times. They can also specify if after hours notifications should be sent or not.
- After 30 minutes from closing time of a site, all onsite users are prompted, asking them if they are still onsite.
- If they did not respond to the first prompt, a second prompt goes out 60 minutes after closing time.
- If they did not respond to the second prompt, 75 minutes after the site’s closing time, all site managers are notified that the user is still onsite.
- No further prompts are sent after the 75 minutes elapsed.
All SiteConnect users assigned to a site, can access the contact details of site managers from the site dashboard.
