Huon Aquaculture (Huon) is a major Tasmanian aquaculture and food processing enterprise, employs over 800 people. Huon farms Huon Salmon and Ocean Trout, producing 36,000 tonnes of fish annually, selling fish across Australia and internationally, and is a recognised world leader in marine farming technologies.
The company operates multiple offshore fish pens around the state, a fish processing, packing and value-added facility in Tasmania and NSW, plus additional assets in Western Australia including a processing facility in Perth and a 2,200-hectare lease off Geraldton.
Managing workplace safety in marine environments poses unique challenges with many risks and potential hazards that are not present anywhere else. This initial phase of the project is all about managing workplace health and safety in that challenging environment.
Spread across many locations with both off-shore and freshwater fish farming operations, and processing factories in multiple states, Huon needed to ensure incident, hazard and risk management was managed according to standardised procedures. But they also needed the flexibility to cater for vastly different operating environments, reporting streams and workflows.
The nature of the business also means that incidents may need to be reported to multiple parts of the organisation (e.g., an event at sea could involve marine operations, safety management, and maintenance). All this can lead to complexity in reporting – meaning incidents may not get reported or actioned as promptly as needed.
Huon also need the ability to involve operational managers in the initial triage of incidents and – for serious incidents – ensure everyone was kept informed as the investigation process progressed. But the key was that the new system needed to be easy to use, so that staff would embrace process changes that would be introduced along with the new system.
Huon chose Riskteq for its ability to provide a flexible incident and hazard reporting solution for their challenging work environment. Incidents can be reported from anywhere, notifying key people, and allowing managers to do an initial triage before passing on the safety group to undertake investigations.
Riskteq was able to offer Huon Aquaculture what was needed to achieve their objectives. Multiple investigations can be undertaken if required, collating meeting notes, photos and other documentation giving Huon Aquaculture easy access to all the supporting information for decisions around contributing factors and the root cause. Notifying external agencies such as WorkSafe or Police can be done easily, and hazards identified and actioned quickly so that potential incidents are avoided.
Riskteq was chosen because of its depth of function and flexible workflow engine, combined with a very easy to use mobile incident and hazard reporting process. It provides a solution to the uniqueness of a business such as Huon. Its flexibility allows us to tailor the needs of each independent (but related) section of the business to provide an OHS Management System that will not only assist Managers to meet their legislative obligations but will provide a tool set to assist in continually improving OH&S Performance. The team at Riskteq understand our OH&S Strategy, listen to our issues and provide options as solutions. This consultative process allows us to effectively drive the shift in safety culture.
Huon also found Riskteq’s breadth of modules gave them a pathway to fully integrated safety, risk and compliance management across the organisation.
Huon staff are now able to report incidents and hazards from anywhere, notifying the required people in one simple process. If a critical incident does happen, all key people are informed straight away and can monitor progress as the issue is resolved.
Incident and hazard reporting processes have been standardised across the organisation and monthly reporting is much more streamlined, with data easy to collate. But the most valuable outcome is that Huon has been able to progress further down the path of providing a safe workplace for employees, no matter where they are working.
This is the first phase of a larger project with the goal of achieving a single integrated solution for workplace safety, risk and compliance management. The next phase will focus on risk management processes across the entire company, using the power of Riskteq to support process development as the organisation improves risk management maturity. Then there will be a range of areas including sustainability and environmental management, inspections, and compliance management.
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