Free heavy vehicle safety workshops for national forestry

The Australian Forestry Contractors Association (AFCA) will host its next round of free safety workshops for forestry workers in regional NSW, Victoria and South Australia. Sourc: Timberbiz

The NHVR has joined forces with AFCA, providing funding for the Forestry Logistics Safety Program under the Heavy Vehicle Safety Initiative.

NHVR Stakeholder Manager John Gilbert said it is imperative Australia’s forestry workers have a safe environment and the training is providing much-needed support and advice, particularly in relation to truck rollovers.

“These workshops provide crucial information on load restraint, key impacts on vehicle stability when transporting forestry products and emerging technologies in this high-risk industry,” Mr Gilbert said.

“Training can make all the difference in keeping safety at the forefront of people’s thinking about how they carry out their work and NHVR is keen to support the initiative.”

AFCA has developed the workshop content in partnership with expert load restraint engineering consultants, Engistics to address forestry specific haulage challenges such as load restraint and managing truck rollover using static rollover threshold.

Workshops have already been delivered in Albany and Bridgetown in Western Australia and Caloundra Gympie and Dalby in Queensland, and Tasmania attracting more than 150 industry stakeholders across the supply chain.

“The workshops provide information on legal obligations of securing loads; the stability of vehicles transporting forestry products and how to minimise truck rollover risk, identifying deficiencies in existing load restraint systems, and emerging new technologies and their use,” Stacey Gardiner, AFCA’s general manager said.

“The sessions also cover chain of responsibility and proposed changes to the law, recent load restraint research and testing, rollovers and incident investigation findings including who is responsible when things go wrong.

“This is crucial information for all stakeholders in our in our sector and participants who have already attended have said it has been invaluable.”

The sessions are aimed at all supply chain members who have a role or influence in the forestry haulage task and can influence the Chain of Responsibility obligations under the Heavy Vehicle National Law.

This includes forest management companies and their staff, forestry contracting businesses and operators who load wood, truck drivers, workers who schedule the task and unload the wood and processors who accept wood from trucks.

Registrations are still open for the following sessions.

For more information about the National Heavy Vehicle Safety Initiative visit www.nhvr.gov.au/hvsi

To register for the Forestry workshop visit http://www.afca.asn.au/flst-info-rego