CEO, Firewize
17 Mar, 2020
The Firewize Infection Prevention & Control Policy sets out the framework for employees, agents and contractors (workers) in relation to infection prevention and control in the workplace. This policy is intended to help prevent the risk to health and safety of workers and the public from preventable infection, contamination or exposure. Notwithstanding this, humans are always infected with some type of pathogen, most of which rarely, if ever, become symptomatic. We have also published a STATUS page where you can find a concise update on every part of our business. https://firewize.com/status
The Firewize Employee Wellbeing & Business Continuity Plan is the working document that sets out the plans and actions we have embraced for our employees, customers, sub-contractors and suppliers. The plan is an active working document and is constantly being updated as we learn about best practices in managing infection prevention while carrying out our essential fire safety maintenance obligations.
As at July 7, 2020 we have amended our employee wellbeing and business continuity plan to place each of our team members in one of FOUR colour coded groups. The members of each team& will be identified by a corresponding silicone wristband (BLUE, GREEN, PINK AND ORANGE). Each team will undergo additional training to ensure they understand their infection control and social distancing obligations.
As at August 6, 2020, Firewize has developed and published a CoVID-19 Safe Work Plan - This mandatory document has been prepared consistent with the Victorian State Government guidelines.
From the very beginning, we understood the importance of vaccinations to help minimise the risks from CoVID-19, as such we encourages our team to get vaccinated and protect themselves from infection. As at October 22, 2021 100% of our team have received both their first and second CoVID-19 vaccination.
We also maintain a register of vaccinations with details for each employee, including the date of each vaccination as well as the vaccination they received. This will help should the need for booster shots be required.
Due to the private and confidential nature of the each workers vaccination status we have elected to rely on the Service Victoria App as the method of validation of worker vaccination using their CoVID-19 Digital Certificate.
Prior to developing a Safe Work Method Statement ("SWMS"), you need to conduct a Job Hazard Analysis ("JHA"). By completing a JHA you can identify the inherent risks in undertaking the work. Once these risks have been identified you can then create a Safe Work Method Statement. Infection prevention and control is somewhat unique so we are currently working on a new JHA template for our team.
Despite not having a JHA yet, we have developed a template that can be used as the basis for a Safe Work Method Statement ("SWMS") for Infection Prevention & Control. The SWMS is available to our teams now and will be published online for you to review. As part of preparing the SWMS, we also identified that we also need a tool to help us quantify exposure risk, so we created this tool for our team which you can see below.
To help manage risk, we have created our own Infection Exposure Risk Calculator to help provide guidance on the adoption and application of risk control measures consistent with the principles of the hierarchy of controls.
The Infection Exposure Risk Calculator may be used to help inform us in regard to the application of a Exposure Risk Job Hazard Analysis, Safe Work Method Statements and the hierarchy of controls.
A toolbox talk is a short safety talk, normally delivered at the workplace (not a training room) and on a specific subject matter. It should be short ( 5 – 10 minutes) and to the point with a specific safety message. The objective is to raise awareness of a particular aspect of the work but to do it on a regular basis so that the good safety message is reinforced.
In relation to infection prevention and control, we have developed a number of short videos covering the following subjects;
