As a team of dedicated machine safety engineers and consultants, TEG Risk is committed to helping businesses operate safely and sustainably. We understand that manufacturers across New Zealand and Australia are often under intense time pressures, making it easy to overlook critical areas like machine safety. However, ensuring robust machine safety measures isn’t just about operational performance—it’s a core aspect of due diligence for directors and executives, essential to protecting both people and business integrity.
We’ve written this blog to inform directors about why machine safety is non-negotiable, even for time-poor businesses, and the serious due diligence obligations that fall on directors to mitigate these risks.
The Importance of Machinery Safety Standards
Machines are integral to modern manufacturing, driving efficiency and minimising human error. The powerful machinery our clients rely on streamlines operations and boosts productivity. However, this power also carries significant risks and safety responsibilities. Machine-related accidents remain a serious concern, often resulting in severe injuries, fatalities, and costly disruptions. At TEG Risk, we are dedicated to implementing robust health and safety systems that address these critical risks, working to protect both lives and livelihoods across the industry, through our hazard identification and risk assessments, consulting and workplace safety training programmes.
Directors have a duty to carry out due diligence and ensure that machine safety is managed effectively under New Zealand safety regulations. As was seen with the recent Ports of Auckland CEO (Gibson) prosecution there are serious consequences of a breach of this due diligence duty. Non-compliance with these can lead to costly prosecution by WorkSafe New Zealand or Maritime NZ. With machinery safety standards being critical for demonstrating conformity to laws, it’s valuable to look at specialised machine safety software and contact experts to help advise you to find the right solution for your business. In doing so you’ll ensure following best practice critical risk evaluation risk control in your work environment.
Challenges of In-House Machine Safety Risk Assessments (MSRA)
At TEG Risk we’ve seen many businesses lack the time, skilled personnel, or resources to properly monitor and review machine safety risks and ensure compliance with required controls (known as Control Monitoring) . The cost of neglecting machine safety can be devastating, both in human and financial terms. Here are some potential consequences:
- Increased accidents and injuries: Neglecting safety such as neglecting to review machine guarding requirements, can lead to machine-related accidents, causing serious injuries or fatalities. The physical and emotional toll on workers and their families is immeasurable, and the impact on employee morale can also be severe.
- Legal penalties: Failing to meet legal obligations can result in hefty fines, legal battles, and even criminal charges for directors and executives. In some cases, these penalties can reach into the millions of dollars, especially if a failure to meet a duty is is proven.
- Reputational damage: A company’s reputation is one of its most valuable assets. A publicised safety failure can lead to loss of business, damaged relationships with suppliers and clients, and long-term brand damage. In today’s world, where corporate responsibility is increasingly scrutinised, even a single accident can have far-reaching consequences.
- Operational downtime: Machine accidents can cause significant downtime, halting production and delaying projects. For businesses already struggling with tight deadlines, this can be a disaster, resulting in lost revenue and contract penalties.
AT TEG Risk we want to help you avoid incidents, fines, and prosecution by offering structured risk management systems that are critical for the health and safety of your business.
Director Due Diligence in Health and Safety Management
Directors are required to exercise due diligence to ensure that their companies meet health and safety obligations, as well as understand the consequences of breach of hazard identification and risk assessment. Machine safety risks need regular review to avoid exposing people to avoidable risks. Directors must consider whether their internal teams have the competency resources and processes to meet their due diligence duties.
- Personally And Proactively Acquire And Maintain Knowledge
- You don’t need to be a subject matter expert, but you should understand key operations, be able to describe critical risks and controls, as well as understand the importance of a workplace risk assessment..
- Regularly meet with workers about the risks and controls they operate with.
- Establish systems to report on information flow of health and safety (H&S) issues (e.g., insights into “work as done” for your meetings).
- You don’t need to be a subject matter expert, but you should understand key operations, be able to describe critical risks and controls, as well as understand the importance of a workplace risk assessment..
- Understand Work As Done V Work As Imagined
- You cant rely solely on information provided to you; you must be proactive and seek out real-world practices (beyond policy and procedure)
- Engage directly with workers (or their representatives) to understand their day-to-day work.
- Conduct workplace inspections or observations of high-risk activities with experts.
- Ensure there are processes for obtaining unfiltered information and request it yourself.
- You cant rely solely on information provided to you; you must be proactive and seek out real-world practices (beyond policy and procedure)
- Ensure There Is Sufficient Investment In Critical Control Management
- Ensure there are sufficient resources available for critical control management.
- Set an expectation that critical risks will have hard engineering controls in place (you may need a specialist engineer!).
- Carry out a deep dive into the effectiveness of critical risk controls.
- Where hard critical risk controls are not implemented then request written information on the justifications/decision making process.
- Ensure there are sufficient resources available for critical control management.
- Verify The Competence Of People Who Have Health And Safety Critical Control Responsibilities
- You can rely on the expertise of others by your organisation needs to ensure they are competent
- Confirm people responsible for H&S have the right skills, knowledge, experience, training, authority, capacity, capability, etc., through robust processes.
- Request the process that your organisation has to verify the competence of H&S Advisers (internal or external) .
- You can rely on the expertise of others by your organisation needs to ensure they are competent
- Carry Out Effective Monitoring And Review
- Use a reliable methodology to independently verify information and safety performance and ensure it is fully actioned.
- Initiate independent assessments of systems, programmes and physical conditions
- Use a reliable methodology to independently verify information and safety performance and ensure it is fully actioned.
- Request implementation updates on all independent reports.
To help you implement the above, TEG Risk are independent experts (with the qualifications and experience to prove it) to provide the independent advice of where you sit on machine safety and as engineers the controls we recommend will be hard/effective controls. We have safety programme management consultants who work with your team onsite to produce a tailored machine safety programme for your business to implement any actions and ensure they remain in place and effective.
Outsourcing to Machine Safety Experts
Managing machine safety and conducting thorough risk assessments requires specialised knowledge. TEG Risk offers expert Machine Safety Risk Assessments (MSRA), monitoring, and regular reviews to ensure your business remains compliant without the strain on internal resources.
Outsourcing your machine safety systems with TEG Risk brings targeted expertise and advanced tools to safeguard your operations. Our tailored services means we can assess machine safety comprehensively, identifying risks and required hard controls. Our reports and tools (MinRisk) make it easy to determine the current status of controls and track the implementation of any control measures – all of which will strengthen your demonstration of due diligence.
TEG Risk provides workplace safety training courses around machine safety which will help build the competency of your directors and officers as well as your internal advisers. Our machinery risk assessments are detailed and insightful and extend to areas like Lockout/Tagout (LOTO) helping you meet PCBU requirements and protect your most valuable asset: your employees.
Partnering with TEG Risk ensures alignment with regulatory standards, and demonstrates due diligence reducing exposure to legal risks to directors and offices while raising standards, fostering a culture of safety excellence.
Directors should consider whether their business has the time, specialised expertise, and resources to effectively manage machine safety risks in-house, consider workplace safety training programs—or if partnering with TEG Risk offers a more reliable, streamlined solution. No time to get this done inhouse? Need someone who understands as well as best practice hazard identification and risk control? Book your next Machine Safety Risk Assessment with us today by calling Hamish .