Policy and Research

Examples of policy and research work includes:

Workplace Health and Safety in the Construction Industry, a discussion paper prepared with Barry Durham and Peter Rozen. This discussion paper is available in the publications page released by the Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry. A feature of the discussion paper was to introduce the topic of safe design into the inquiry. The safe design topic enjoyed broad support from the industry and the final report recognized the value of safe design and included recommendations to advance safe design in the building and construction industry. Mainly this is to be through the role of the government as a key client in the building and construction industry. This is given effect through the role of the Federal Safety Commissioner.

Work-Related Fatalities Prevention Project. See a paper titled Work Related Fatalities Prevention Project in the publications section. Two Victorian WorkCover Authority documents followed this project: Health and safety in forest operations: recommended practices; and Working safely with trees: recommended practices for the amenity tree industr

Evaluation of the Victorian Nurse Back Injury Prevention Project, was conducted by University of Ballarat for the Department of Human Services, Victoria. The Nurse Back Injury Prevention Project was based on sound occupational health and safety and ergonomic principles in that it sought to innovate work practices in patient movement to eliminate lifting of patients. For some time the handling of patients was seen as an unchangeable fact - however it has emerged that by setting a goal and bringing all the stakeholders together that new ways of working can be found. The evaluation showed that a reduction in workers compensation costs could be detected at the time of the intervention.

Evaluation of Health and Safety Representative Training in South Australia. This project was conducted for the WorkCover Corporation of South Australia. The report is available via the WorkCover website or here in the publications page. A paper was subsequently published about this evaluation: Culvenor, J., Cowley, S. & Harvey, J. 2003, ‘Impact of Training of Health and Safety Representatives on Concepts of Accident Causation and Prevention’, Journal of Occupational Health and Safety - Australia and New Zealand, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 279-292. This paper is available in the publications page.

Occupational Health and Safety Priorities for the Queensland Coal Mining Industry. This project was funded by the Australian Coal Association Research Program. The report is available via the ACARP website or here in the publications page.

Information about other research publications can be seen on the publications page.