A utility’s most precious asset is its people, and to ensure everyone is safe on the job this company is calling to abolish unsafe infrastructure access.
In 2019 a comprehensive analysis of Australia’s ageing infrastructure highlighted the risks workers face when accessing these assets, now six years on, a Queensland-based access specialist is calling for radical change in the way workers interact with enclosed assets to save lives.
Mass CEO, Paul Harazim, said Infrastructure Australia’s Australian Infrastructure Audit 2019 had been a call to action for many infrastructure operators such as water and sewerage utilities.
“Much of Australia’s water and sewerage pipes, pump stations, valve pits, reservoirs and treatment plants was built before the 1970s, and the assets were only designed to last about 50 years,” Mr Harazim said.
“The Infrastructure Audit and industry focus on how to deal with ageing assets has prompted many utilities to program extensive asset renewal and maintenance programs.
“While improvements are great, around 80 per cent of water and sewerage assets are underground and challenging – if not downright dangerous – to get into and work on.”
According to Mr Harazim, crews have to lift access lids that can weigh up to 60kg, posing a risk for injury if not done correctly – and on top of that pump wells can also be up to 18m deep, which means harnesses have to be worn.
He also highlighted that confined spaces in sewers are full of toxic gases, so it’s essential that maintenance crews wear respirators to keep themselves safe.
The high-risk nature of these sites also means more paperwork for utilities that are already faced with a skills shortage.
“If you are servicing a pump station twice a year, which is what many utilities do, this is a couple of days of completing safety paperwork and then following detailed on-site safety procedures like installing lifting gear and getting workers into harnesses. That’s an expensive process if you have a portfolio of hundreds of pump stations and lots of crew members to train,” he said.
However, Mr Harazim explained that safety risks and administrative controls could be eliminated by standardising the way workers access infrastructure.
“Removing the physical risk means that administrative controls like procedures and permits are no longer required,” he said.
“It turns hundreds of sites into one because you only need one set of controls.”
Something had to change
Mr Harazim said that he was concerned that accessing assets was contributing to deaths and serious injury and illness claims across the country.
“Unsafe access to pits, pipes, pump station wells and reservoirs is closely related to falls from heights, manual handling injuries and slips and trips incidents,” he said.
Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia published by Safe Work Australia in 2024 showed that falling from a height was the second highest contributor to all worker deaths in 2023 (15 per cent or 29 deaths).
Of the more than 138,000 serious work-related injury and illness claims in 2023, body stressing (body strains), and falls, trips and slips were the top two contributors to claims (32.7 per cent and 21.8 per cent respectively).
Armed with this information, Mr Harazim knew something had to change.
“We realised we need to implement a standard method of access to protect all workers,” he said.
“Mass is so focused on improving safety in the water and sewerage industry that we started the first annual water industry safety forum across the country in 2022.
“We have also updated the South East Queensland Design Code with standard drawings for aluminium access covers and the City of Logan’s and City of Gold Coast’s sewage pump station standard drawings.”
Mr Harazim said this work builds on the pioneering safety access work that Sunshine Coast company McBerns has done – as well as feedback from customers and colleagues.
For Mass, standardisation has meant auditing access arrangements at customers’ assets, designing access improvements, prioritising improvements and manufacturing and installing standard, safe covers, grates, rails and lids.
“We supported one major Queensland utility to upgrade about 600 assets over three years. This meant replacing time-consuming and unproductive administrative controls for each site with a standard work method and installing safer lids, grates, rails and hatches,” Mr Harazim said.
“Now, this utility can use two people, and not a whole team, to lift a couple of pumps from a deep pump station well, clean and check them, replace them and drive away before the neighbouring utility can even fill out their safety checklist.”
As a result, Mr Harazim said utilities were seeing that safer access to assets was encouraging maintenance while containing costs.
“It’s making maintenance less of a chore. We estimate that standard access to underground assets results in a 50 per cent time saving and a 90 per cent cost saving associated with routine maintenance,” he said.
“For an urban utility, that’s millions of dollars saved each year in operating costs”.
But, Mr Harazim has no intention of stopping at Queensland, and he said that Mass plans to expand its safe access consulting services in 2025 –26 around Australia.
“Some have called us water industry disruptors and that’s fine with us. Major change is overdue to protect workers and enhance productivity in the infrastructure sector.” U
