Safety is the name of the game for Access Hire New South Wales and Sydney Metro Northwest

Wednesday 19 October 2016 @ 09:59

Sydney Metro Northwest (formerly known as North West Rail Link) is the first stage of Sydney Metro and is Australia’s biggest public transport project. Sydney Metro Northwest will cost $8.3 billion and will deliver reliable, high capacity, public transport to Sydney’s North West for the first time. It is planned to be open to commuters by the end of 2019. In 2014, the New South Wales Government awarded Northwest Rapid Transit (NRT) consortium the operations contract to deliver the project.

Employment and safety

The project’s construction phase will involve thousands of construction workers. The tunnelling phase alone is expected to support around 900 jobs. With so many workers involved, issues of safety on the 16 worksites of the North West Rail Link are paramount, and it’s for this reason, NRT designated the week starting 25 July 2016 as Sydney Metro Northwest Safety Week, which elevated work platform (EWP) supplier, Access Hire New South Wales, and Genie was delighted to support.

“Safety is the number one priority for our customers and for our business,” said James Howell, Sydney General Manager of Access Hire New South Wales (AHNSW), which is a major EWP supplier to many of the operators involved with NRT. “We put our machines up in the air, working at height. This is the highest risk operation on any worksite in Australia so we take safety very seriously, and this is why we were keen volunteers at the NRT Safety Week.”

To this end, Access Hire New South Wales had Peter McGrath, NSW Service Manager attend Safety Week, along with Major Projects Manager Clint Haggett, Sydney Sales Manager Gary Johnson, and NSW Sales Manager David Tripodi. Access Hire New South Wales also invited Mitch Ely, Genie National Operations Manager, Terex AWP, and Mal McIntosh, Genie Training and Technical Support Manager Asia Pacific, Terex AWP Australia.

In addition to its executive support, Genie supplied expert technical advice on the Bienergy GS™-2669 RT rough terrain scissor lift and a Z-34/22 DC lift with Operator Personal Alarm (OPA), both of which were demonstrated at Access Hire New South Wales trade display as part of Safety Week. The Genie machines were fully optioned (as standard AHNSW specification) with the latest safety features, in keeping with the NRT Safety Week theme. Howell said: “It was great having the guys from Genie there as they know the products well. Having the OEM there in support proved how important safety is to those customers, and it was critical to our backing of Safety Week.”

Ely concurred, “Access Hire New South Wales was involved in some of the events, and Genie supported them. We set up a stand at a jobsite and the workers from Northwest walked through a small expo type situation, which focused on safety solutions. We were supporting Access Hire New South Wales and were proud to be there.

“It’s very important we support our customers such as Access Hire New South Wales. As a manufacturer, we’re not fully exposed to Tier 1 customers. To get exposure we need to assist and work with our rental customers.”

Genie Lift Pro gets a look in at Safety Week

Safety Week was another opportunity to promote the comprehensive Genie Lift Pro™ Machine Specific Operator Training. “We talked a lot about Genie Lift Pro,” said Ely. “We found that everyone was interested in the program as a possible Tier 1 construction company product.”

Howell agreed, “It’s a fantastic innovation and a game changer for the industry. So many sites are moving to include Verification of Competency as part of their induction process. These site standards can vary from project to project, so having Genie Lift Pro in place where people are validated on the equipment they’re going to use, means that Safety Officers on a construction site can feel confident that operators know what they’re doing.”