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Safety requirements

OHS and R Accreditation

To be eligible for award of certain categories of construction, maintenance and site-related contracts, tenderers will be required to have an Occupational Health & Safety Management System already accredited by a NSW Government Agency or Sydney Water.

For further information about accreditation, read the NSW Government's OHS Management Systems Guidelines - 4th edition.

For enquiries about accreditation with Sydney Water phone (02) 9722 3204 or email HealthAndSafety@sydneywater.com.au.

Contractor Safety

To improve contractor and subcontractor safety on Sydney Water worksites the following rules apply:

  1. Site Supervision and Subcontractor management

    A key element to ensuring site safety is the level of supervision and the competency of the supervisors of both contractors and subcontractors. A minimum safety competency standard for supervisors has been introduced. Tender assessments will review the contractor's processes for ensuring adequate site supervision.

  2. Tender assessment of safety costs

    Contractors who invest highly in safety management will not be penalised from a cost perspective when assessing tenders. This will ensure the appropriate level of investment for safety supervision and management.

  3. Recognition and reward

    In the past, the emphasis was on identifying and penalising poor contractor safety performance. Now, good safety performance will be recognised and rewarded too. Poor performance will continue to be penalised.

  4. Response to unsafe working

    There will be consequences for poor safety performance. Those who do not work safely will not continue to be rewarded by working for Sydney Water. The processes are intended to ensure consistency, fairness and equity in their application.

  5. Implementation and review

    These rules concerning the minimum competency standard applied from September 2007 and will be reviewed when assessing tenders.

From 1 Sept 2007, Sydney Water's contracts will require that a supervisor is to be nominated for each site, however where the site is a small team a supervisor may have responsibility over a number of sites and if this is the case a responsible person must be named for each site where the supervisor is not located physically. The level of competency for the responsible person must be directly related to the nature of the work and the level of risk identified in the risk assessment, prior to the commencement of any work. The size of the team needs to be determined in relation to the contract size and risks identified.

Sydney Water has adopted the specific competencies required by a supervisor or responsible person and the definitions in the Co-operative Research Centre (CRC) for Construction Innovation, Construction Safety Competency Framework, Task and Position Competency Matrix. (www.construction-innovation.info).

If you have any queries please phone the Sydney Water Safety Operations Manager on 9350 5303.