N E W S 14-15-16 November 2017 Claudelands Event Centre, Hamilton The very best learning experience for engineers in NZ Register now at: www.nmec.co.nz 14 October 2017 How the health and safety gravy train is sucking the productivity out of NZ manufacturing Lifting the Game of Maintenance Engineering EN250 UC academics awarded $10.7m for new research endeavours University of Canterbury (UC) Science and Engineering researchers have gained $10.7 million in funding for five Smart Ideas proposals and two Research Programmes in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s 2017 Endeavour Round. The seven new UC research projects will be funded for the next three to five years under MBIE’s Endeavour Fund, which invests in excellent science that has the potential to positively impact New Zealand economically, environmentally and socially. Smart Ideas are defined as innovative research projects that have a high potential to benefit New Zealand, while Research Programmes support ambitious, well-defined research ideas, which have high potential to positively transform areas of future value, growth or critical need to New Zealand. One of the UC Smart Ideas (funded over three years) is low carbon magnesium oxide cement and hydrogen manufactured from olivine basalt ($999,999), headed by Dr Allan Scott. Are you being suckered by the health and safety gravy train? You can save money immediately by reading this. Test and tagging of electrical appliances and leads is not a legal requirement in New Zealand industrial plants. If you Google it you'll find any amount of references convincing you that it is a legal requirement, but follow those links and you will always come to the test and tag industry many of whom are cultivating this fallacy and who ultimately benefit financially from your confusion. In the view of the MESNZ this is but one example of the unhelpful 'smoke and mirrors' rubbish that gets seized upon and promoted by health and safety advisors and HR practitioners, particularly within larger organisations. What is happening is these misleading health and safety processes become de-facto norms and get mimicked by the media and smaller organisations who think that because the big plants are doing it, then it must be the specified standard that needs to be adopted in all industrial operations large or small. I’ve spent over 30 years safely running New Zealand’s largest hot forging and heat treatment plant, and I make no apologies for this confrontational approach. Other examples are: compulsory wearing of safety glasses, hard hats and hi-viz vests in industrial plants; proliferation of orange cones; stress-inducing beepers on machinery, and banning of ladders. Opinion by Barry Robinson, MESNZ chairman
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