Health & Safety

People are at the heart of what we do; we want them to get home safely at the end of their work day. We have a range of health and safety tools to help make this happen.

TESTING

Anyone working in a forest while under the influence of drugs and alcohol puts themselves and others at risk. We are drug- and alcohol-free and have a testing programme run by The Drug Detection Agency (TDDA). TDDA not only tests after an incident and for probable cause, it also provides regular random tests. Our testing programme means it’s highly likely anyone using drugs or alcohol will be caught.

MONITORING

We have a goal of “zero harm” in our forests. Our lost-time incidents (LTls) system records any incidents as well as near hits. We analyse these to see what we can learn so they do not happen again. We tell our people not to walk past something that is being done incorrectly and to speak up if they are unsure or are uncomfortable about anything they see.

TRAINING & RECOGNITION

We provide a 50% subsidy to our contractors for approved contractor training. Every year we kick off with a Safe Start breakfast – an opportunity for contractors to come together so we can present awards for training and being drug- and alcohol-free, reiterate key health and safety messages and hear from a guest speaker.

CERTIFICATION

Safetree Contractor Certification is an industry-standardised assessment. We require all our contractors to be Safetree-certified and offer financial and other assistance to help them achieve this. We also have highly-skilled Safetree Certified Tree-Fallers who carry out the difficult task of manual tree-felling.

TOPSPOT

TopSpot audits contractors, enabling them to measure where they sit relative to their peers in other parts of the country and pick up on improvements in technique and safety practices. Our harvesting contractors joined TopSpot in 2012 and in 2018 we decided to bring our silviculture contractors on board with TopSpot too.

NEW INITIATIVES

We are always open to introducing new initiatives. These have included hand-held radios for loading log trucks, personal locator beacons for people working alone, Protos helmets for field staff, driver training and workstation assessments for our office staff.

VISITOR SAFETY

We have developed strict safety guidelines for visitors to the forest and expect everyone to adhere to these.