The following is a brief summary of changes to Part 2 of the Code that your organization should be aware of. Part 2 of the Code relates to hazard assessments. What is interesting is that an organization is now responsible to not only employees but also any contractors on a worksite with regards to worksite hazards. Section 7(5) states: “A prime contractor must ensure that any employer on a work site is made aware of any existing or potential work site hazards that may affect that employer’s workers“.

This change now requires that the contractors on a worksite must be informed of any hazards. In previous code editions, this was not stated or clarified. The word “Prime Contractor” was included to ensure where the responsibility lies on job sites where there is a prime contractor/contractor relationship.

To illustrate - let’s take a fictional company, ABC Home Repair. This company not only has regular employees on staff, but also contracts out work to contract tradesmen. The owner/operator/site manager of ABC Home Repair is responsible for the safety of these contractors and is required to alert them to any hazards on the worksite.

Another important change to note is Section 8(1): “An employer must involve affected workers in the hazard assessment and in the control or elimination of the hazards identified.” The change now utilizes the word “must” instead of “where reasonably practical”, found in previous editions of the code. To clarify the statement further, the term “involve” can include (but not limited to) field level hazard assessments, checklists or hazard assessments. While many organizations practice some type of hazard assessment, from “field level” to higher level assessments, it is important to implement multiple levels of hazard assessments - integrating each and involving workers in all of them.

Next time I’ll discuss some points covered in Part 14 - Lifting and handling loads. This detailed section covers the topic of manual handling and will be of great interest to healthcare workers, food processing and material handling plants, and professional trades but can also impact even office workers.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Case Study, Ergo Tips, Ergonomic News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.