Moree Plains Shire Council
Moree Plains Shire Council – Mavim in Process
John Egan: “We want a proactive
culture within our organisation, a place where you can come to work and
understand what’s required of you in terms of your job, and in order to
ensure your health, safety and welfare, as well as that of your
colleagues, volunteers, and the public – Mavim is going to help us
achieve that.”
Current Situation:
- We have a lot of documentation, policies, procedures and safe work method statements but all that information sits on an “O” drive and one of the things we don’t have the ability to do is to bring that information together into an easy access manual.
- There are many external contractors and volunteers (up to 100 during emergency response situations such as floods and fire) who need information about what’s expected of them in terms of OH&S standards so we can manage our risk and ensure the quality of their work.
- Apart from the fact that we have a virtually infinite number of procedures and related documentation, we were recently audited by the Local Government Association (LGA), something which is happening across the board at local government level. The LGA’s new mandate requires every council to have a risk management system in place to manage OH&S and quality issues.
Expectations of Mavim:
- We want a proactive culture within our organisation, a place where you can come to work and understand what’s required of you in terms of your job, and in order to ensure your health, safety and welfare, as well as that of your colleagues, volunteers, and the public.
- To be able to document all our procedures and policies and then publish them on the internet & intranet so every employee has access to the latest information for any given task, role or policy.
- To develop an induction tool for new employees and a recruitment tool for potential employees and contractors that works simultaneously as an introduction to who Moree Plains Shire Council is for the public and an auditing tool for the contractors we hire.
- We need to be able to demonstrate that we have taken every precaution and identified every hazard related to every conceivable action undertaken within the council itself and on its behalf. As such, we require a tool that can document the evolution of a procedure, from its initial importation into the manual, through whatever amendments are made to it via a feedback loop, and finally to its current manifestation as the latest version, we can then demonstrate that we have a systematic approach to managing risk. Mavim has the application to allow us to do that and as a consequence we can potentially save ourselves a great deal of time and money, up to 75% off the $1.1m cost of a workplace death and serious accident payout. That’s a serious benefit in anyone’s language.
Result:
- At this stage we are still in the “describing” phase of implementation. I am working closely with Florian Hoornaar (MD, Mavim Australia) at making the transition as smooth as possible. Although it is hard work at this point, I can see the potential of the Mavim software in our organisation is virtually limitless.
