These kind of rules or safety regulations don't apply to just mining companies. You'll find that a lot of the time it is easier for them to have blanket rulings. Hence, anytime outside you must be wearing a hardhat. It doesn't always make sense, but the whole point of such rules and SOPS included, it covers all manners of idiots. Elrico, I completely agree with the stupidity of harnesses on small platforms. I used to have to wear a harness if I was ever more than 1500mm from the ground, which is just ridiculous, as most harness lanyards don't open until after 2metres. Instead you're just stuck getting caught up in the lanyard all the time.

These rules aren't always effective. But sometimes it's easier just to deal with them.

The issue is that what actual safety risk is there, beyond a bird taking a dump on you..

I supose the point im making is with this policy, you could effectivly lose you job, for not wearing a hard hat while walking to the shitter, in an area that should be risk free, so why the requirement to wear a hard hat, glasses etc..

This is the bit that shits me about people in an office who come up with this shit, they think it might be a risk so they create some half assed policy without real forthought into it...

Im all for safety, but im also all for common sense, and this is where mining is going wrong, there are more accidents because people are not forced to think for themselves, and some muppet in a safety office who rarely actually goes onsite gets to create this shit because the policy he brought out two months prior has made people not think for themselves some more and more people get hurt...

when i was on the engineering team for fmg in the perth office at the hyatt centre we were not allowed to use the fire stairs on the 1st floor as they were considered more hazardous than the lifts

Not allowed to use the stairs in the woodside building, unless its in an emergency.

As for hardhat policy, its not that bad, stupid yes, but not that bad. Ive built roads not even on mine sites with nothing but blue sky overhead, yet still have to have a hard hat on. Also, if its open pit, id be slapping on the brim/back flap piece, although not very stylish, keeps that sun off you and makes being burnt not as bad/less likely.

Good luck with the job though.

they also drug tested the whole office lol, ive never had that on a project before

Safety is great and im all for it but like others have said - when it becomes a sheer ass covering exercise it becomes a joke.

At least you have a ohs teams that actually do something. We have to fill out near miss slips when there is no soap in the toilets at our work, then the regional manager has to sign off on someone buying the soap, as its classed as capex.

How many more accidents occur now because of people assuming safety is someone elses responsibility? i.e. if they haven't told me to wear a hard hard, I must therefore be safe and no need to check my surroundings.

A lot of this holding everyone's hands all day is a load of shit.

I was working for Komatsu a few years ago in the spare parts stores in welshpool. As they had field service guys that went to site frequently, everyone had to fall under the same rulings. Drug testing before starting employment, and random drug and alcohol testing. If a forklift had a indicator not working it had to be tagged out of service etc. We even had these cards that we had to carry around, telling us how to assess risk before doing a job.

Best they had though, any contractor coming on site had to be drug screened. At one point we had 3 out of 5 forklifts out of service as we could not get a repair guy that would do the drug screening.

Our policy is basically, once you swipe in at the security gate, hard hats are mandatory.

Your site rule may sound stupid etc but there is a purpose and that's to implement culture change. By enforcing a procedure that workers get into a habit of wearing a hard hat anytime they walk outside a crib room, eliminates the risk of people forgetting to wear them. How many times have you, or know of another worker who has gotten out of their LV, drill rig, truck etc and forgotten their hardhat or left it at the crib hut etc? If you say never then you must be on the only minesite in aus that doesn't have that happen lol.
The problem with the whole safety & procedures issue is that every rule has been implemented due to an incident. As small as the incident may be, the fact is is there has been lost time (due to sick bay, incident report etc) which in turn = money. In turn, rules and procedures are put into place to accomodate all people.

As you would notice Denver, the boom which brought on the skills shortage also brought with it the Coles nightfill people who couldn't steer a $3mil truck let alone walk safety to have a shit in the toilet without banging their head on some sort or railing because they couldn't use their eyes.

Trust me man, your site isn't the only one!

saddly forcing people to wear a hard hat everywhere, won't stop people being forgetful when they hop out of a car or machine, its human nature..

as for the nightfil tards, don't get me started, theres some world class fuckwits where i am atm..

ive only been mining for 3 years and not what i consider an expert as you learn shit every day, but theres some outright clowns who shouldn't be alowed to use a butter knife, let alone a dump truck..