Occupational Health and Safety in the Design and Manufacture of Workplace Plant

Abstract

This thesis examines how Australian firms that designed and manufactured workplace plant addressed occupational health and safety (OHS), and the factors shaping their responses to OHS. Little scholarly attention has been paid to these issues despite the serious OHS risks posed by unsafe plant, the OHS legal obligations of plant designers and manufacturers, a national OHS policy commitment to safe design, and OHS professional pressures for designers and manufacturers to make plant and other items as safe as possible in the first instance.

The thesis explores OHS in plant design and manufacture through three interlinked studies. These are: a review and analysis of the most important OHS legal obligations applicable to plant design and manufacture; an empirical investigation of the Victorian and South Australian OHS regulators’ inspection and enforcement with plant designers and manufacturers; and an empirical investigation, in the same two states, of responses to OHS by firms that designed and manufactured plant (plant designer-manufacturers).

The thesis contributes to understanding Australian plant designer-manufacturers’ responses to OHS, including their compliance with OHS legal obligations. It also contributes to understanding the role and influence of Australian OHS law, inspection and enforcement of the law, and other OHS legal obligations on firms’ responses to OHS. The thesis provides empirical evidence of the mixed but often mediocre performance of firms for assessment of plant risks and achievement of substantive OHS outcomes. It shows that only a small minority of firms comprehensively recognised the hazards for their plant, eliminated hazards or effectively minimised risks, and provided informative, user-friendly plant safety information. Only these firms that performed well for all OHS outcomes substantively complied with the prevention goals of their OHS legal obligations.

The central argument in this thesis is that plant designer-manufacturers’ responses to OHS were shaped by contextualised OHS knowledge and motivational factors. In turn, OHS knowledge and motivational factors were constituted in the operations of firms and their interactions with external actors, and through the personal histories, values and attitudes of key decision makers in firms. Australian OHS law, OHS regulators and other OHS legal obligations contributed to OHS knowledge and motivations in some firms but, even when they had some influence, they had to compete with other constituents of OHS knowledge and motivations. As a consequence, plant designer-manufacturers’ action on OHS was idiosyncratic, and often insufficient to ensure good performance for substantive OHS outcomes and compliance with OHS legal obligations.

The thesis concludes by identifying some important implications of the research for Australian OHS regulators, OHS policy makers, and industry and professional stakeholders, and proposes some strategic directions to address these implications. The implications relate to the design of Australian OHS law, inspection and enforcement policy and practice, and building the capacity of plant designers and manufacturers to address OHS effectively.