Brisbane-based Speedie Contractors lauded for campaign to reduce trips and falls at work.
A Brisbane asphalt haulage company has won a National Safety Award for reducing risks to its 35 employees.
Speedie Contractors has introduced a new cleaning process that ensures workers do not have to climb into the body of trucks to effectively clean them.
Operations manager Tim Knowles says this had been a problem, even with a company policy directing staff not to go to those lengths.
Staff used ladders to get in and out of the truck body to manually remove residual material, placing them at risk of trips and falls.
The solution has proved to be a set of three vibrating plates placed beneath the body of each truck.
The plates work to agitate the load when the tipper is raised, effectively shaking loose any residual material.
“During three weeks of trials, drivers reported that there were zero occasions where they felt they needed to enter the truck body to manually remove residue,” the National Safety Council of Australia, which oversees the awards, says.
The solution is now being rolled out across the entire fleet of 32 rigid trucks. It has been combined with an education campaign, titled ‘NO Body in the BODY’.
Speedie Contractors was one of two winners in the Best Solution of a Workplace Health and Safety Risk category of the National Safety Awards of Excellence.