evatech

Safety Management Services
Nelson, New Zealand

AgriBusiness. Issue 68. Mar/Apr. 2008 HSNO-Series. Bruce Evans

The how and when of HSNO compliance

 

A school caretaker vents his feelings over just who is going to do the compliance work anyway. Gazette notices and NZ Standards explained.

 

I really felt for the caretaker of a local school recently. I was visiting the school to revalidate its Location Certificate for the third year. The normally sizeable pile of pool chlorine – the reason for my visit in the first place - had been whittled down to below HSNO threshold levels by the pressures of lots of swimmers and a long hot summer.

The experienced caretaker was up to his neck in compliance matters and I was a good target for him to let off his feelings on a wide range of beaurocratic matters.

He was in the midst of testing all the electrical appliances and tagging them as required by the school for some electrical inspection and also fitting in his second test of the daily water quality check as required by the new swimming pool requirements.

His management of the pool water quality was just like his chlorine storage (excellent) but he wonders who is ever going to check on the electric tagging and the water quality tests he is so fastidiously keeping records of while awaiting some undetermined compliance visit.

Discontent about who is going to do what compliance check (if ever) was further inflamed when I raised the issue of his school’s Stationary Container Certificate required by HSNO by the end of this month for the diesel boiler that powers its heating system.

“I suppose you cannot do that while you are here and some other b…compliance agent will be required to do that as well! It will be just like the Governments anti-tagging plan to restrict aerosol paints to those under 18. I wonder who the heck is going to enforce that and how?”

 

“It will be just like the b….farmers and the water quality issues - who the heck is checking on them and who do you trust when you look at the conflicting finger pointing when there is a contamination issue?”

 

By now the discussion was focused on the doubts as to just how all the checking is carried out and by whom, not on the actual necessity for each worthwhile case.

The caretaker was not arguing the need for some compliance but rather that there is a clear need for coordinated agencies and transparent understandable rules that you don’t have to hire a lawyer to understand, or search high and low for interpretation.

The transport compliance issues of the proposed banning of hand-held cell phones in cars and speed detection devices were seen as yet further examples of worthwhile compliance necessities unlikely to be ever funded sufficiently by Government and therefore unlikely to ever be enforced correctly.

We parted company on friendly terms with his Location Certificate revalidated for another year and the promise that I would provide his school details on the “Code of Practice for the Management of Existing Stationary Container Systems”.

It’s only 100 pages long and full of non-prescriptive solutions to their latest challenge to the schools compliance.

Codes of Practice and Standards in place of Regulation:

This ERMA issued Code is prefaced by a few salient comments like…

“this COP provides a means of compliance with the HSNO Regulations and that it provides standards against which Test Certificates can be issued. Users of this Code it warns are advised that Regional and District Councils may have requirements that are in addition to this Code….”

 

Therefore don’t be surprised if some other means of compliance will also meet acceptance by authorities or if your local council has different ideas to ERMA about something as simple as bunding or secondary containment or even the Standard that should be used as the bench mark. A problem arose recently because a District Council would not accept an application under the Building Code unless it met an Australian Standard, even though it met another standard approved under HSNO.

Clarification was sought from the Department of Building and Housing which advises that no Standards referenced under the Building Code are ‘mandatory’.

Approval using another COP or Standard other than the Australian one is acceptable if it can be shown that the other Standard provides at least the same level of safety.

This can mean that there is often a long list of acceptable standards listed by ERMA as a means of compliance.

In some recent consent applications in which I have been involved there have been some unhelpful differences between requirements driven by local body district plans, and those driven by HSNO. These reg’s now scattered through various amendments and Gazette notices etc were supposed to be ‘non-prescriptive’ as part of the NZ style that regulations have taken since the passage of the Resource Management Act in 1991.

They may have started out as non-prescriptive but as time, amendments and countless Gazette notices have made their impact the requirements are now a lot more prescriptive in some areas and Standards often provide that prescriptive solution to the regulatory requirement.

Governments like Standards, because they are a means of achieving desirable outcomes as an alternative to prescriptive regulations.

The question arises – why does the government use such documents in this way rather than simply write the means of compliance into regulations/legislation?

That’s the theory, but the actual process involves interpretation of those Standards and the Regulations by different organisations and individuals within and thus we have the joys of non-prescriptive solutions.

The ‘standard system’ can work and an example of that can be found in NZS 8409 that is signed off by ERMA as a means of compliance.

In its flammables section it suggests that AS 1940 provides the specification for flammable Class 3 storage cabinets for retailers.

Have a look at a new website for details of one manufacturer’s solutions to Class 3 cabinets referencing the Standard AS 1940. http://www.eslind.co.nz/cabinets/flammable_liquid_cabinets/index.htm