Serious Injury Prevention Initiative
The Serious Injury Prevention Initiative (SIPI) is focused on preventing serious injuries in the Transportation and Warehousing, Trade, Public, and Service sectors. In 2022, the SIPI team is partnering with the Construction High Risk Strategy team to prevent incidents involving workers being struck by mobile equipment in workplaces.
- Our goals
- Our focus
- What you can do
Our goals
The goal of the 2021–2023 Serious Injury Prevention Initiative is to ensure that employers are diligent in their efforts to prevent workers from being struck by vehicles or mobile equipment. To achieve this, we will take a risk-based approach and engage workers and employers with a blend of education, consultation, and enforcement activities.
Our focus
2022 inspectional approach
For 2022 inspections, prevention officers will take a risk-based approach to ensure that the most significant risks are effectively managed. This approach involves workers and employers identifying hazards, evaluating risks, and implementing the appropriate controls specific to the on-site activities. In addition, it focuses on employers ensuring these efforts are effectively communicated to workers and monitored through foundational occupational health and safety systems such as orientations, training, supervision, incident investigations, worksite inspections, and (where applicable) joint health and safety committees that are robust and well supported.
We will focus efforts on employers that provide traffic control and construction services at workplaces, including roadwork or large civil or residential projects (e.g., high-rise construction) where pedestrian-workers interact with mobile equipment. We will ensure that employers and other duty holders are compliant with the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Regulation and Workers Compensation Act. The inspection scope includes confirming that workplaces are:
- Identifying hazards and assessing risks, and engaging workers in this process.
- Selecting controls based on a hierarchy of effectiveness, or order of controls. Employers should focus on elimination (removing the hazard) and engineering controls (isolating workers from the hazard).
- Implementing, monitoring, and modifying (as necessary) workplace plans to ensure ongoing effectiveness.
What you can do
The following resources will help you better understand and address the health and safety issues we're focusing on: