By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
What counts as a health and safety duty on a concreting site?
Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, the person who runs a concreting business in New Zealand is treated as a PCBU, a person conducting a business or undertaking, whether the business is one person or a full crew. WorkSafe New Zealand, the government agency that regulates work health and safety, says a PCBU must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, a work environment without risks to health and safety, safe plant and structures, safe systems of work, and safe use, handling and storage of plant and substances. Introduction to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015
For a concreter that duty is not an office form. It is formwork and reo laid out so nobody trips carrying steel across the site, a pump truck checked and positioned before a pour day starts, and a crew briefed on where the exposed aggregate finish stops and where fresh pour starts. WorkSafe also says a PCBU must make sure workers have the training, instruction and supervision to work safely, and must keep PPE such as masks and gloves maintained and replaced so it keeps doing its job. General risk and workplace management A one-person outfit pouring a driveway still carries this duty alone; a crew running a slab and kerb job for a builder carries it across everyone on site that day.
What are the biggest hazards on a pour day?
The hazards most specific to concreting are respirable crystalline silica dust, manual handling of heavy wet concrete, and the equipment used in concrete pumping. WorkSafe New Zealand names concrete, alongside bricks, stone and sand, as a material that creates silica dust when it is cut, ground, drilled, sanded or polished, and says a PCBU must complete a risk assessment and eliminate the risk so far as is reasonably practicable. Silica dust in the workplace
Cutting a control joint, grinding back a polished concrete floor, or drilling into a cured slab can all throw up dust, and the duty to assess and control it sits with the business before the saw starts, not after someone coughs. Concrete pumping carries its own duties too: WorkSafe says PCBUs must make sure workers are trained to recognise a blockage and a worn pipe or pipeline fitting, and that pumping equipment is properly inspected and maintained. Concrete pumping Wet cement itself is a hazard well before the pump arrives on a weather-delayed pour day; WorkSafe’s own pumping guidance notes wet cement can burn skin it sits against, and that gloves and boots must not trap it there. Concrete Pumping Health and Safety Guidelines
What must happen if someone gets hurt on site?
If a job causes a serious injury, such as a burn needing treatment beyond first aid, that is a notifiable event, and WorkSafe New Zealand says the PCBU managing the site must preserve it until an inspector allows work to resume, then keep a record of what happened. What events need to be notified?
On a pour day booked around a pump truck and a builder’s schedule, the instinct is to clean up and keep pouring. The duty runs the other way. The site has to stay as it is until WorkSafe clears it, which can cost the booked pump slot, the crew’s day, and whatever job is queued in behind it. This is general information, not legal, tax or employment advice. Check your own situation with the body named here or a qualified adviser.
How does safety connect to the margin on every job?
Every hour lost to an incident, a stop-work, or retraining a crew member after a near miss comes straight off the gross profit margin priced into that job, not off some separate safety line. Treating inductions, supervision and PPE as background admin is the same habit as leaving gross profit margin unchecked until month end, so the real cost only shows up at the bank account once a pour day has already gone wrong.
As the one on site, you are usually the one who clocks that the trench sits too close to the kerb, that a crew member is dry shovelling near the mixer without a mask, or that the ready-mix truck has backed up where nobody can see it. That is the same scanning habit that finds a customer an extra metre of edging or a better exposed aggregate finish. Your duty of care starts with seeing what a client or a tired crew member cannot, not with a form filled in afterwards. Data first means checking that against your own job data: which jobs ran inductions and toolbox talks properly, which pour days lost time to a hazard or a near miss, and what that actually cost against the margin you quoted. This runs the same whether the work is a suburban driveway or a commercial slab, because it starts from the business’s own data, not from where the business is based.
How can AI agents help with inductions and incident records?
An AI agent is software that does a job the way you would, using your own wording, your site rules and your forms, and it can carry the paperwork around inductions, toolbox talks and incident records so nothing depends on memory on a busy pour day. For a concreter juggling several sites and a crew that changes with the season, that paperwork is the first thing to slip, and it is exactly the record WorkSafe expects kept.
Picture a concreting business where site inductions, incident records and onboarding for new crew members were spread across a notebook, a filing cabinet and a phone, while crew messages ran through a separate group chat altogether. The owner built his own app for the team: it pulls in the job information for each site and brings the forms, the site-specific induction, the incident register and new starter onboarding into one place, so a labourer starting on a slab job this week sees the same induction the foreman expects, and the record of it sits where it can be found again. An AI agent can sit behind that, doing the chasing and the filing the owner’s way so the crew’s safety and the paperwork trail stop depending on whoever remembers to do it.
Where can you check the current rules?
- Introduction to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 explains what a PCBU is and the primary duty of care under the Act.
- General risk and workplace management covers training, instruction, supervision and PPE duties toward workers.
- Silica dust in the workplace sets out the risk assessment and control duties for silica dust from concrete work.
- What events need to be notified? lists what counts as a notifiable event and what a PCBU must do.
- Concrete pumping covers training, equipment checks and overlapping duties on pumping sites.
- PCBUs working together explains overlapping duties when a concreter works alongside a builder or other subbies.
- Concrete Pumping Health and Safety Guidelines details wet cement and manual handling hazards around pumping.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts from the concreter’s own numbers, not a general safety checklist. Greg Allan looks first at where time and margin are actually lost on real jobs: which pour days ran over, which incidents or near misses cost crew hours, and whether inductions and training are recorded or just remembered. That is usually where the real problem starts, not in a missing form but further back in how the job was briefed and set up. Greg teaches that the crew is the one thing an owner cannot let slip: “if you drop the glass ball, it scratches it and that scratch will never come out.” The how, including the systems and agents that carry this work, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who joins it.
Looking for a business coach who starts from your numbers? Concreter Business Coach or every answer for concreters.
