Procedure: Control of access to restricted locations

Purpose

This procedure describes how the Australian National University (ANU) manages access to restricted locations in the workplace. The Control of access to restricted locations procedure ensures the legal and other obligations of the Work Health and Safety Act, 2011 (Cth) and Work Health and Safety Regulations, 2011 (Cth) the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act (SRC Act), 1988 (Cth) are defined for managing the health and safety of all workers. The Control of Access to Restricted Locations procedure is implemented to ensure that there are sufficient controls placed on any area designated as restricted access.

Definitions

Induction is a term used to describe a set of minimum training and information that when completed gives that person an authority to enter an area.

Competent Person means a person who has acquired, through training, qualifications, experience, or combination of these, the knowledge and skill enabling the person to inspect, test or repair machinery/equipment or installations of plant.

Where the person undertaking the repair, service or maintenance is not an employee of the University then they shall:

• Be provided with induction information whereby specific University precautions and any special instructions are provided;
• Be conversant with this procedure; and
• Ensure that they adhere to isolation instruction requirements.

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) refers to the lowest tier of safety protection in hazard management. Examples include protective footwear, gloves and clothing. PPE is selected on the basis of giving a measure of protection from a given hazard that is present to the worker.

Procedure

1. This procedure covers those areas or locations that have had a hazard assessment completed and one of the implemented controls is to restrict access to authorised workers only. It is intended to provide minimum requirements for maintaining restricted access.

Hazard assessment

2. It is a requirement for the person responsible for the area designated as a restricted access area to ensure that the hazard assessment is complete and that the controls are implemented.
3. It is necessary to consider all other forms of controls as well in the workplace. Restricting access is an administrative control and needs to be considered after other control measures have been precluded.
4. Consider seeking advice from Work Environment Group during the Hazard Assessment stage before using access restriction as a form of control.

When to restrict access

5. There may be several reasons identified to restrict access to a specific area. Due to the broad nature of WHS, three questions have been developed to assist you in determining if there is a need to restrict access in a given workplace. The person responsible for the area is required to conduct a hazard assessment and needs to ask:

• Is there a legislative requirement? Examples include confined spaces and construction work. These have legislative requirements to restrict access to trained people.
• Does the workplace present unacceptable risks to untrained people entering the workspace? If that is the case then measures need to be taken to restrict access to only those trained people.
• Is it practicable to restrict access? This needs to be considered carefully with a number of other measures. By following the WHS Hazard Management procedure it is necessary to consider other measures such as elimination, substitution, and engineering controls first. These controls may be more effective before and should be discounted before looking at restricted access, which is an administrative control.

6. The person responsible for the area, after determining that restricted access is required, shall then consider methods to ensure that restricting access will be an effective control.

Controls

7. To ensure that only the correct people enter, it is necessary to determine what allows that person to be authorised. This means that such a person needs to understand a set of requirements that allow that person to complete their tasks safely. These include:

• Legislative requirements such as confined space training for confined spaces;
• Emergency procedures;
• Safe work practices;
• Minimum PPE requirements;
• Who the person responsible for the area is;
• Who their supervisor or manager in this space is; and
• Any other requirement that has been determined to allow such a person to work safely in that workspace.

8. It is necessary to record the entry and exit of authorised people to a restricted space. Often this will require and include the use of a register to record the entry and exit details of people entering and leaving the space. This register may be in the form of an entry permit system or in the case of a door an access log generated by the swiping in and out using security passes.
9. The person responsible for the area is required to approve the controls that are put in place to restrict access.

Monitor and review

10. A necessary part of ensuring effective access restriction is the ongoing monitoring and review of the workplace. Monitoring can take the form of a workplace inspection which would include a requirement to determine that those people present in the workplace are in fact authorised to be there. It should also include checking the effectiveness of the register that records all entry to, and exits from, that workplace.
11. The workplace inspections should include a determination of the effectiveness of the physical barriers to limit access. These inspections then shall form part of the regular review of the workplace under consideration.
12. Reviews shall be triggered when there are incidents that have restricted access as a root cause for that incident. The person responsible for the area is required to ensure these reviews are completed.

Resources

13. Work Environment Group and local area WHS officers are resources for the person responsible for the area to use as sources of advice to assist in any part of this process.

Records

14. The person responsible for the area designated as restricted access is responsible for maintaining a register that records the entry and exit of people from the restricted access area. They are also responsible for the workplace inspection records and the induction records for those duly authorised to enter the workspace.
15. The person responsible for the area designated as a restricted access area is to ensure that reviews of the hazard register and emergency procedures are maintained.

Training and competency requirements

16. The person responsible for the area must ensure that authorised people identified in this procedure are competent in working safely in the restricted access area. This includes any of those competency requirements previously identified in the hazard assessment.

Sources