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BioWorks wins Health and Safety award

Tuesday 1 November 2011, 2:53PM

By Greater Wellington Regional Council

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The exhaust muzzle that won the award.
The exhaust muzzle that won the award. Credit: Greater Wellington Regional Council

WELLINGTON

A couple of burnt legs has led to Greater Wellington Regional Council's BioWorks department winning the 3M Silver Award for Innovation in Health & Safety at a national conference held in Wellington last Thursday.

BioWorks specialises in possum and other predator control and their 17 staff cover about 200,000 hectares of the Wellington Region each year.

Contract Co-ordinator John Hopkirk says: "Our guys are working on farmland or in bush and it can get pretty steep and rough. They use motorbikes to get around their traps and bait stations, and minor falls at low speed happen from time to time. We can't stop that happening, but we can stop them getting burnt, when it does."

The problem started when two staff suffered painful burns, in separate incidents, after falling off motorbikes and getting a leg trapped against a hot exhaust pipe. Both staff had to have several weeks off while the burns healed.

The damage was done by a piece of unprotected pipe where the exhaust pipe leaves the engine.

"We've got 20 of these motorbikes, so we had to do something to make sure this didn't happen again."

"When the first guy burnt his leg we wrapped all the pipes in exhaust tape. The bikes are constantly under attack from mud, sand, cow dung and the tape was disintergrating quite quickly and was getting blown off when they washed down their bikes.

"After the second burnt leg, we needed a permanent solution right away. That's where the idea for exhaust muzzle came in.

"We put our heads together, came up with an idea and shot across to Langlands to see if they could make something to suit. They put together an exhaust muzzle and we tried it out. It worked brilliantly. It gets warm, but not scorching like the exhaust it's covering.

"Now we have an exhaust muzzle on every bike."

Claudia O'Neale, H&S Rep for BioWorks said creating a safety feature for the bikes ensuring no further staff get a serious burn is what really counts, but now also having national recognition for safety culture in difficult conditions is the icing on the cake.