Stand-by Rescue
What is Stand-by Rescue? This is where you have trained, qualified and experienced persons who are able to perform rescue and first aid procedures at your work site. This can be done as a dedicated group that focuses directly on your work alone or it can be done as part of an overall Emergency Response Team (ERT), where the team is covering the whole site or work place.
Depending on the situation, job and abilities of your stand-by rescuers, you teams rescue plan may only require the basics of training for example simple use of a tripod and haul system combined with basic first aid may be enough to cover the job you’re doing. However, if you’re conducting works with multiple trades and higher risk works, you may need your team to be qualified in a higher discipline such as confined space rescue, vertical rescue, or even a Certificate III Mine Rescue and Emergency Response.
Remember if you’re a Person Conducting Business or Undertaking (PCBU) you have a duty of care to provide a safe workplace, this includes emergency procedures specifically if you’re doing high risk work such as confined space or heights work where there’s a risk of a fall or asbestos works.
Now, people do get confused between terms stand-by and stand-by rescue. They are in most cases separate positions.
A stand-by is a dedicated watcher, observer, sentry and other various names it’s been called, that has a specific task of ensuring safety for workers in a hazardous environment. For example in confined space works, by the WHS regulations you must have a stand-by for every confined space job. This person requires specific training, qualifications and has a lot of responsibilities such as monitoring safe atmosphere/conditions, continuous communications, controlling entry and exit, complete understanding of the risk assessment, permit and rescue plan and initiating emergency response procedures. And it’s the last part of initiating emergency response procedures where it becomes a separate position in most cases. As the stand-by cannot make entry into the confined space, that person must maintain safety and control of the space and therefore must initiate the stand-by rescue team. These are the workers who are trained, qualified and experienced to make entry if necessary and perform the rescue.
So if you decide that this is all too much for your business, because you rarely require these positions and don’t want to spend the money on initially training workers and maintaining their competency, providing and maintaining all the necessary rescue and first aid equipment, developing a rescue plan and rehearsing this plan to ensure it is effective, you can outsource these positions to a third party, but remember they are two separate positions and will require different levels of training and qualifications. Make sure they know what they are doing, as we said before you have a duty of care to provide a safe workplace, just because the company you hire say they can provide these positions make sure to check their qualifications and experience. Your spending that money to ensure safety for your workers and this is one area where you do get what you pay for.
Contact Sydney Rescue Consultants and discuss our Stand-by and Stand-by Rescue Services.
