“Industry takes the lead and secures funding to improve formwork safety on construction sites.
Education, Innovation and Collaboration will be critical enablers of success”.

Article published in Inside Construction magazine April/May 2023.

The Formwork Industry is taking the lead and it's industry Association has secured funding to improve formwork safety on construction sites, with a focus on education, innovation and collaboration as critical enablers of success.

The SafeWork Australia Work Health and Safety (WHS) Strategy 2023-2033, which was released in the last fortnight, is a national WHS strategy agreed to by all states and territories aimed at reducing workplace fatalities, injuries, and illnesses and sets a national vision of safe and healthy work for all, providing a platform for delivering key work health and safety (WHS) improvements.

The Formwork Industry Association (FIA) supports this strategy and looks forward over the next decade to continuing our commitment to healthier, safer workplaces.

This strategy notes that generally whilst fatality and injury rates have fallen over the last decade, the progress has slowed. They say…

"Education, Innovation and Collaboration will be critical enablers of success".

something the FIA have been saying and actioning for the past few years!

According to the strategy, Construction remains one of the highest contributors of fatalities and serious injuries and has one of the highest frequencies of serious claims per million hours worked.

The FIA believe if you lift the competency of individual workers in the industry, increased safety, productivity, and quality will follow.

Which has led us to look at the long-term solutions to the issues our industry face. The need for the Australian formwork industry to build its own education and skills pathway ...

"A new education and skills pathway to improved safety and better buildings, towards a relevant formwork qualification that includes new RPL processes, a new industry recognised accreditation scheme and micro credential learning and verification of competency processes that build a worker’s skills and capabilities".

This is a pathway to accredited training but one that needs urgent steps to re-engage the learner and enable accessible education for formworkers.

We must remember that these workers left school and education at an early age, that there is no need (at present) for them to attain any qualification to work on site (other than a white card), and there are no incentives for workers to upskill or improve their competencies, or for their employers to assist.

On top of this, access to training is difficult, lengthy, inflexible, and unresponsive to industry needs and the processes for keeping track of workers training, competency, skills and qualifications, are often costly and both time and labour-intensive.

With an ageing workforce and a future skilled labour shortage the industry must act now to build a secure and safe future for itself and its workers.

FIA CEO, Michael Sugg, commented “A key factor in improving industry safety, quality and productivity is to lift the competency of its workers. As the SafeWork Australia Work Health and Safety (WHS) Strategy 2023-2033 states, "Education, Innovation and Collaboration will be critical enablers of success".

As a start, we need to re-engage the formworker in learning, build their confidence and pride, and provide incentives for learning before we can ensure there is a demand for certified training provided by the Departments of Education and funded by the government”.

FIA President Jason Andrijic stated, “Over the past 2 years the Formwork Industry Association Board has been working with industry to develop this pathway. Stage 1 proposes the re-engagement of workers in learning and focusing on WHS issues to improve safety and a pathway to certified training. We are pleased to announce, with the support of the NSW Department of Education, that we can launch the first part of our pathway, the Safe Formworker Program”.

Image: Part 1 of the Formwork Education and Skills pathway.

So, what is the Safe Formworker program and how do workers access it?

Developed in consultation with the formwork industry this program is a pathway for workers to receive micro credential learning on formwork specific WHS issues to increase awareness of formwork safety.

Delivered via a modern mobile learning experience, the Safe Formwork Program offers bite-sized mobile courses that your team actually enjoy, complete with gamification and real rewards built-in.

With video and image-based learning, along with gamification, it is hoped to re-engage workers in learning, tackle the language barriers and prepare workers for further learning, whilst covering the important aspects of formwork WHS issues and improving formwork safety awareness on site, so that workers can return home safely at the end of the working day.

More than just a training course, access provides not only education on specific formwork skills and positive awareness of the industry risks, but it also provides each worker with their own individual access for 1 year, refresher courses, access to additional courses, a place to store their licences, white card, and any other training certificates, making everyone's life a lot easier.

Feedback from a recent pilot program was exceptional with heads of safety saying “…I have been in the formwork industry for 20 years, and have not come across training like this, which is easy to understand and complete, and relevant to the work I do.”

The program includes 5 courses and 13 lessons and can be viewed on the FIA website. Each lesson takes only 5 mins or less and can be delivered in toolbox talks or on rain affected days in the shed.

FIA vice-president, Stefano Calautti, commented that “when we rolled the program out during toolbox talks on site, where workers were able to access the program easily via their mobile phones, we found that the change in atmosphere and attention given by our workers was incredible. All workers were fully engaged in the learning and the gamification aspect of the lessons delivered engagement in the room, with workers sharing their phones and scores with one another”.

Worker’s feedback included comments that it was ‘easy to use’, ‘relevant to my work’, ‘it makes me feel safer that my workmates are doing the course as well’.

After a successful pilot program and confirmed industry support from both construction and formwork companies, we are pleased to announce that the NSW Government, through the Department of Education, who are keen to work with industry and create a pathway to certified training and improving safety on site, has agreed to fund the placement of 1000 workers through the program in the coming months.

“This is quite a task, and we are extremely grateful for the Department’s support”, commented Sugg, who is currently presenting the program to various construction and formwork companies and discussing how this can be implemented on various projects.

With contractual requirements on every government infrastructure project and learning targets and quotas the program enables companies to report easily on statistics and overcome the ‘tick box’ mentality to training that currently exists.

The SafeWork Australia WHS strategy 2023-2033 report states that achieving reduced worker injuries, illnesses, and fatalities, requires embedding good WHS practices, innovating and deepening knowledge of WHS risks to broaden understanding of workers and collaborating consistently to respond to WHS challenges. Something this FIA Safe Formworker Program certainly achieves.

The report goes on to say that companies need to make sure that on their projects there is meaningful and relevant training to workers in a way they can understand. It supports the continuation and strong focus on compliance and enforcement by regulators, with a particular focus on systematic WHS management.

If you don’t, the risk is the regulators will investigate the quality of your systems, and in particular training, to hold you accountable.

Andrijic is very positive about the new formwork education and skills pathway getting off to a good start with the Safe Formworker program. He states, “The feedback and responses have been very promising and with 100 workers already through the program I am sure we can hit our targets.”

Re-engaging workers in learning and covering important WHS aspects is a priority of the program, and, from early reports, it certainly looks like ‘education innovation and industry collaboration’ will be critical enablers in the success of the SafeWork Australia WHS strategy and improvements in safety awareness on site in the formwork industry. FIA CEO Sugg commented “as a result we all firmly believe we will see not only improved safety, but productivity and quality on projects”.

Details of the program can be found here on the FIA website and safety managers are encouraged to contact CEO Michael Sugg to discuss support on how to achieve the target of 1000 workers through the program to improve site safety.