Wenita Safe Start Breakfast

Jan 22, 2020 | News

On Tuesday, January 14, Wenita held its annual Safe Start Breakfast at the Taieri Rugby Club with all harvesting, silviculture, roading and transport crews. This year we had 176 people attend the event.

Wenita CEO David Cormack kicked the event off with some safety messages and also awarded all the principal contractors gift vouchers for high-vis vests for each of their crew members. This was for their effort in helping to achieve an LTI- (lost-time incident) free 2019. In fact, Wenita has been LTI-free for 19 months.

The breakfast’s main guest speaker was Neil Thomas (pictured) from Forestsafe, and his presentation was on Growing Our Safety Culture. For more information on the Safety Culture Programme you can visit the Safetree website. All Wenita crews will have the first safety-culture assessment in February.

The second guest speaker was Mark Murray from WorkSafe. He gave a presentation on risk management and statistics from 2019. Wenita Woodflow Manager Alec Cassie and David finished the morning off with 2019 Health and Safety and Top Spot Awards. This year’s award winners for the Health and Safety Awards were:

Health and Safety Awards

  • Runner up Health and Safety Person for 2019 in Logging – Jacob Jenkins
  • Overall Health and Safety person for 2019 in Logging – Blair McColl
  • Runner up Health and Safety Person for 2019 in Transport – Nick Cayford
  • Overall Health and Safety Person for 2019 in Transport – Russell Ischia
  • Runner up Health and Safety Person for 2019 in Forestry – Cody Armishaw
  • Overall Health and Safety Person for 2019 in Forestry – Dean Barrett

Top Spot Awards – Pruning

  • 1st equal, period 1 – Dean Barrett (McHoull Contracting)
  • 1st equal, period 1 – Nick Allan (McHoull Contracting)
  • 3rd period 1 – Michael Scott (Johnson Forestry Services)
  • 1st period 2 – Leo Hughes (Forest View Contracting)
  • 2nd period 2 – Nick Morgan (Johnson Forestry Services)
  • 3rd period 2 – Casey Patterson (McHoull Contracting)
  • 1st full year – Nick Morgan (Johnson Forestry Services)
  • 2nd equal, full year – Dean Barrett (McHoull Contracting)
  • 2nd equal, full year – Nick Allan (McHoull Contracting)