‘It’s a balancing act... There’s so many competing values that you’re working with’
WorkSafeBC has released a video on how to maintain faller safety when planning a layout for a harvesting operation.
“As an occupational safety officer, when I do my inspections of a harvesting operation, one thing I look at is the planning behind it. And that starts with the layout engineer and the work that they do in putting the blocks together,” said Dean Redknap, occupational safety officer at WorkSafeBC.
The video talks about the layout engineer’s thoughts through the process and how to ensure the safe execution of the plan when it is finally put into action. It deals in particular with how different factors affect the overall harvest plan.
“They’d target a block of value and they traverse the block, they walk the block. They’re looking at streamed drainages, they’re looking at resource features, timber value and accessibility and basically coming up with an overall block harvest plan,” said Terry Anonson, supervisor of prevention field services at WorkSafeBC.
“You really try to envision how machineries are [going to] move on a slope, how you’re [going to] get access into areas, and then also what’s [going to] be left long term,” said Nicole Huber, assistant forestry supervisor and layout engineer.
Overall, workers and employers alike can learn from the video how to balance things out to ensure that those involved in the actual operation are safe.
“It’s a balancing act. The visuals, safety, culturally-modified trees, the streams and then the timber; There’s so many competing values that you’re working with,” said Shane Simard, operations engineer and layout engineer.
The video is available here.
