Health, Safety and Environmental Requirements on Construction Sites
Domain 1 tests how a carpenter keeps a site legal and safe in New Zealand: the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, the working at height and asbestos regulations, and environmental controls under the Resource Management Act 1991. Expect questions that ask you to pick the correct control, recognise a notifiable event, or name the first step before a wall is disturbed.
Legal duties
- The PCBU holds the primary duty to ensure health and safety "so far as is reasonably practicable"; workers must take reasonable care and follow reasonable instructions.
- Every site needs an induction, a hazard register or site-specific safety plan, and regular toolbox meetings.
- Some events must be notified to WorkSafe: a death, a notifiable injury or illness, or a notifiable incident such as a structure collapsing, an uncontrolled escape of gas or asbestos, or plant contacting overhead lines.
Managing the work
The hierarchy of controls earns marks: eliminate the hazard, substitute, apply engineering controls (edge protection, scaffold), then administrative controls, with PPE last. Under the Health and Safety at Work (Working at Height) Regulations 2015, work from the ground where possible; where you cannot, use edge protection or a scaffold. A ladder suits only light, short-duration tasks, set at 1 in 4 with three points of contact.
Asbestos and environment
Treat buildings constructed before 1 January 2000 as containing asbestos until sampling proves otherwise. Sampling is required before demolition or renovation, and licensed removalists handle friable material or large areas of non-friable ACM. Keep silt out of stormwater using sediment fences and kerb protection, bund fuel, and never wash tools or concrete slurry into a stormwater drain.
Worked example
A carpenter must fix fascia 2.6 m above a concrete path. The work cannot be eliminated, and a ladder is unsuitable for sustained two-handed fixing, so the answer is a mobile aluminium tower or scaffold with guardrail and toe board - not a stand-off ladder with tools hanging off it.
Traps that cost marks
- Listing PPE as the first control rather than the last.
- Treating the hazard register as paperwork instead of a live control.
- Assuming a 1990s house is asbestos-free.