BUSINESS UNITS: People, safety & risk – Continued
A GREAT IDEA SOLVES SAFETY ISSUE Across New Zealand, OnGas fills over 600,000 LPG cylinder bottles every year and before filling, each bottle is leak-tested via the industry standard method of applying soap solution from a spray bottle activated by squeezing the trigger. As you can imagine that’s a lot of squeezing every day for the 60 fillers and driver/fillers, potentially causing soft tissue injuries to hands, wrists, forearms right up to the shoulder and neck. Napier health and safety representative Nakia Holland had a great idea to adapt the overhead pneumatic teat sprayers he’d used in the dairy industry so that a similar tool could be used to leak-test the LPG cylinders. A prototype was quickly developed and tested at the Palmerston North depot before being refined and rolled out across all 10 other depots up and down New Zealand. Since then, there have been no further reports of pain and discomfort relating to hands, wrists, or elbows in the OnGas LPG filling teams. “It does give me a bit of satisfaction to know something I did is helping the whole country,” Nakia said.
Won
Nakia’s idea received the Workplace Best Initiative to Address a Health Risk Award.
PHOTO CREDIT MICHAEL SCHULTZ PHOTOGRAPHY
Nakia Holland introduced an idea that received the WorkSafe New Zealand Best Initiative to Address a Work-Related Health Risk Award.
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