How do you practice Health & Safety?

Kia Ora,

To the next part of the issues raised by the angry man's emails is basically "How do you practice Health & Safety?"

He asks what are my systems for health & safety? Also having no qualification does not entitle me to comment on health & safety issues. That is probably the crux of the issue there.

This individual dimisses my experience from the military, in the  NZ security industry & work in Iraq.

Health & safety especially in a service like security does not rely just on a system. In fact due to nature of the work carried out by the profession what is more important is Common Sense coupled with Experience (not a bit of paper or formal course) & a culture of dynamic Risk Assessment.

The type of Risk Assessment you get trained to carryout in the NZ military. From early days young soldiers get told "as you move along look for places to take cover if such & such happens" it is a type of Risk Assessment.

Initially though young soldiers are more concerned about how hard the physical requirements are, but as time goes by  those sort of  actions become second nature.

They then add in actions like looking for possible booby traps when moving whilst carrying up to 100kg plus packs without having to go through the whole process consciously.

So does this transfer to the civilian environment? Yes!

In fact, & I will go into this more in a later blog, at times other security personal have said "I think so fast", it is not that, but my military training kicking in when situations call for it, which often means when confronted with an issue they have never confronted before. 

Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety - CD-Rom

With inadeaquate training or awaremess of health & saftey instinctively, my civilian counterparts are still thinking of the first step whilst myself & army comrades are already on step four or higher. So it appears to them that we are thinking very fast.

An example of the level of military training over what the industry provides was an incident early in my time in the industry.

I was on duty in a complex when I was paged to reception & handed a small case. Apparently someone was concerned it had been sitting in the middle of reception for three hours. Of course from the staff reaction it appeared they thought it was a bomb. Straight away I knew there was one type of bomb it wasn't.

When I was relieved a few hours later by another ex military person, his first reaction was "you didn't call the bomb squad?". No, because of our superior training as soon as I was handed it the check list we used to use in the army popped right into my head.

As I walked outside with the case, I ran through it & realized there was no way this was a bomb. The only mistake I made was opening in view of the staff, from a health & safety point of view which was not good.

That staff still thought it was a bomb was shown by fact that even though it was dark t they were watching & as I opened it, were seen to dive under the counter.

From there another difference came out between a person with a military background to those without. Not for the first time after an incident that worked out well, my civilian counterparts could not work out why myself or any military person would then look to learn from lessons & improve our performance for the next time.


Whilst in Iraq this dynamic way of looking at things was to the fore as the whole situation & threats were ever changing your risk assessment was also dynamic. It was health & safety at its extreme. But again that good training kicked in without much fuss.

Security in NZ requires much the same thinking as any Standard Operating Procedures will not cover all contingencies. Thats if the company has them.

During my initial NZQA security course (a well run one with plenty of hands on training unlike most courses) the question was asked of an OSH inspector as to where security fitted in since much of the industries work fell outside OSH at that time. Also that many places had procedures but no body actually knew what they were.

The reply was that is correct, but security's role was to identify hazards as encountered & report them.  They then directed their reply to me & said as ex army you know the drills if there is an accident happens during live firing? Yes of course. Well that is the OSH procedure for an accident.

More recently an incident involving an associtated industry responding to a call out & a serious accident occuring due to the fact that like security they entered a business without prior knowledge of it.

After discussion with a Health & Safety officer from the department of Labour at a business seminar, I was asked would I be interested in joining a group looking at this issue. To date though nothing has come of it.

But the discussion  had been about how the military teach you, as I said in the beginning to have a dynamic risk assessment culture,  this is what they felt they needed to install in industries who respond to premises they don't usually visit or are not fully aware of all dangers.

This culture far outways any system or piece of paper, although in conjunction with a system can be very robust.

Due to time contraints it is not unusual, in fact most common place to see security racing from one premises to another without slowing to take in account as to risks they maybe rushing too.

Someone who worked security in Australia once told me a story about their first night alone. They were rushing due to time, came around a corner to be confronted by three pers wanting his firearm. He hadn't yet being issued  or been able to obtain one.

It reminded me what I often see with NZ security racing around corners to you don't know what.

My assessments of the security situation here in NZ is based on security knowledge, experience & risk assessment.

I have often been told & more so recently by some I worked alongside in Iraq, we can all see it  coming, don't wear yourself out trying to educate people. When these things happen if you set yourself up correctly, then we will be able to walk in as the industry here has no idea what it is doing.

Occupational Health at Work

Personally I believe in trying to stop it from happening here & making the place truly safe to live in. To do that you have to ensure the basic security & Health & Safety are taken care off.

                                               http://www.foxhoundsecurity.co.nz