Health, Safety and Environment Policy

Purpose. This policy sets out the commitment of CAQA Gasline Networks to the health and safety of its people, contractors and the public, and to the protection of the environment in every activity on the network.

1.Purpose

Natural gas is a flammable, pressurised product carried under public roads and into homes. This policy states the standard of health, safety and environmental performance that the business will hold itself to and that every worker and contractor must meet. It applies to every site, vehicle, depot and facility that Gasline operates.

2.Policy statement

Gasline will operate the network so that no worker, contractor or member of the public is harmed by its activities and so that the environment is not damaged. The business will maintain a health, safety and environment management system that meets the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Victoria), the Gas Safety Act 1997 (Victoria) and the accepted safety case. Safety will take priority over supply and over cost in every decision.

3.Responsibilities

The General Manager is accountable for this policy and for the resources needed to apply it. Managers must implement the management system in their departments and must stop any work that cannot be done to the procedure. Every worker must follow procedures, use the permit to work system, wear the personal protective equipment specified and report hazards, incidents and near misses on the day they occur.

• General Manager: accountable for the policy and the safety case
• Department managers: implement procedures and authorise workers
• HSE and Compliance Manager: maintain the system and audit it
• Workers and contractors: follow procedures and report

4.Key controls

The business will apply a permit to work system to every task on live gas assets, will locate and prove all utility assets before excavation, and will maintain exclusion zones and fire precautions at every escape. Workers will only perform tasks for which they hold a current authorisation on the training and authorisation register.

• Permit to work for all work on live gas assets
• Locate, prove and protect before any excavation
• Continuous gas monitoring in confined and excavated spaces
• No ignition sources inside an exclusion zone
• Current authorisation before any task

5.Environment

Gasline will minimise unaccounted for gas and venting, will manage spoil, water and waste from excavations to the environmental procedure, and will restore every worksite to the road authority or landowner standard. Environmental incidents must be reported in the same way as safety incidents.

6.Consultation and review

Health and safety representatives will be consulted on changes to procedures, equipment and rosters. The HSE committee will meet every two months and will review incident trends, audit findings and corrective actions. This policy will be reviewed annually and after any serious incident.