Health and safety in roading and infrastructure.
Civil and roading work brings together mobile plant, live traffic, excavations, underground services and multiple contractors on sites that change every day. QHSE works with contractors and asset owners on the critical risks and on the arrangements between the parties that decide whether those risks are actually controlled.
What matters here
A roading site is never the same two days running. The plant moves, the traffic management changes, the excavation deepens, the subcontractors change over, and the people managing it are usually managing three other sites as well. The critical risks are stable enough: people and mobile plant in the same space, live traffic through or past the works, excavation collapse and underground services, and working at height on structures. What changes daily is whether the controls for them are in place on this site, this morning.
The sector also has more than one PCBU on almost every job. The principal, the head contractor, the subcontractors and the traffic management provider all hold duties for the same work, and the Health and Safety at Work Act expects them to consult, cooperate and coordinate. That is where many of the gaps sit: not in anyone's system, but between them.
Rob Feasey, principal of QHSE, has worked in roading and infrastructure among other high-risk sectors, and assesses the work where it happens, on site, with the crews and the supervisors.
Critical risks in this sector
What QHSE does here
- Critical risk identification and controls assurance for mobile plant, traffic, excavation and working at height, checked on site.
- Contractor and subcontractor management review: how the overlapping duties between the parties are agreed, communicated and checked in practice.
- SafePlus assessments assessed on site rather than in the office, with deep dives on the risks that change from day to day.
- ACC AEP audits and readiness reviews for contractors in the Accredited Employer Programme.
- Independent investigation of serious incidents and near misses where an outside investigator is wanted, and root cause analysis training for site and project teams.
- Officer due diligence for directors and owners of contracting businesses, whose duty follows every site.
- Readiness for the 2027 HSWA changes, including the provisions for smaller contractors with fewer than 20 workers.
- Quality systems aligned to ISO 9001 for contractors who need them for tenders and client audits.
Who it suits
Civil and roading contractors, head contractors and subcontractors, traffic management providers, and the councils and asset owners who engage them, from a small crew to a regional contractor.
Discuss your organisationFrom first call to close-out
Talk
A conversation about the organisation, its sites, its people and what is worrying it.
Scope
A written scope and a fixed fee wherever possible, with the critical risks or the system elements to be looked at agreed up front.
Look
Time on site with the people doing the work, looking at how it is really done rather than how the paperwork says it is done.
Report
A written report with evidence, findings and prioritised recommendations, presented in person to the leadership team.
Follow through
Help closing the gaps where the organisation wants it, or a plan it runs itself, with QHSE available by phone either way.
Describe the sites.
Get in touch and describe the organisation.