2025 WA Civil Works Safety Forum

2025 WA Civil Works Safety Forum Program

Welcome to Country

Professor Simon Forrest

Raising the safety bar

Drawing on his extensive experience managing State Government water and transport infrastructure programs, Ashley Vincent will share his views on how clients and contractors can work together to achieve a step change in making our sites safer.

Health and wellbeing tools

Lisa Mitchell, HSE Regional Manager WA-NT, Laing O’Rourke

A comprehensive approach to safety integrates physical safety with psychological safety to improve health and wellbeing. This interactive presentation explores how to put that theory into practice on construction sites.

Technologies driving safer sites

Jeff Hugo, General Manager WA/NT, C.R. Kennedy

Nick Corr, Market Development Manager Safety Solutions, Aptella

Advancements in autonomous technologies, including AI, are improving risk detection and behaviour correction capabilities, and improving the overall safety of construction sites.

Simplifying safety – effective prestarts

Courtland Williams, Georgiou

Adam Shanley, Rob Carr

Steven Duggan, Georgiou

Anton Piccinin, Saltire Infrastructure

The prestart is a daily opportunity to refocus on safety and refresh important messages. Our experienced panellists share their thoughts and discuss the keys to delivering impactful prestarts.

Worksafe Commissioner’s address

Sally North, Worksafe WA Commissioner

Keynote address by Western Australia’s chief work health and safety regulator.

Fatigue, fairness, and liability: managing rosters and Award compliance

Craig Fordham Senior Associate, Employment Law HHG Legal Group

This presentation explores the legal, operational, and human challenges of managing worker fatigue in the construction industry through effective and Award compliant rostering practices.

Main Roads’ critical safety risks

Liz Tomuli, Main Roads WA

An overview of Main Roads’ Critical Risk Profile, including example incident root causes from our top three risks, Live Traffic, Vehicles and Driving, and Mobile Plant, and how WHS minimum control standards are embedded in contracts.

Crystalline Silica – practical prevention

Philip Roche, BMD

Sean Coyle, RJV

Graeme Silvester, CPB Contractors

Panellists from Worksafe and industry will discuss the most effective strategies for keeping workers safe from the harm of respirable crystalline silica on civil construction sites.

Measuring WHS success and the ‘illusion of safety’

Greg Smith, Partner – Workplace Relations, Jackson McDonald

In a presentation based on his recent book ‘Proving Safety’, Greg argues that traditional measures of WHS performance are neither effective nor legally compliant, and offers alternative ways of thinking about measures of safety.

Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE): Unlocking a new era of safety

Robert Osborn, Executive General Manager, Abaxa

Accurate utility location through SUE is not just risk mitigation; it’s a proactive commitment to protecting lives. Integrating Australian Standard AS5488 with real-world, high-precision subsurface data creates safer planning, excavation, and delivery of projects.

Drug trends – current and emerging

Glenn Dobson, Chief Executive Officer, The Drug Detection Agency

Drugs and their effects impact the health & safety of all workplaces. The ability to know what drugs are currently being used and what is happening globally plays a positive part in workplace health and safety.

Panel discussion: Themes and takeaways

Panellists TBC

The panel will discuss a wide range of the issues covered at the Safety Forum, provide their own perspectives, and respond to audience questions/comments.