By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
What counts as a PCBU in a stonemasonry business?
Most stonemasonry businesses in New Zealand are a PCBU, a person conducting a business or undertaking, under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, whether the owner is a sole stonemason doing templating and install from a small workshop or running a crew that cuts benchtops, memorials, cladding and paving on a CNC. That status brings a duty that does not shrink because the business is small.
According to the Introduction to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, a PCBU must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers, and a self-employed stonemason carries the same duty toward their own health and safety: the page states “A PCBU who is a self-employed person must also ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, his or her own health and safety while at work.” The duty is broad rather than a single checklist item. It covers a workshop and plant that is safe to work in, safe systems for cutting, polishing, templating and install, safe handling and storage of stone, substances and sealing products, welfare facilities for the crew, the training and supervision workers need, and monitoring both worker health and workshop conditions over time.
What does WorkSafe expect for silica dust from cutting and polishing stone?
Cutting, grinding and polishing natural stone, engineered stone and sandstone creates respirable crystalline silica dust, and this is the duty WorkSafe treats most seriously for a stonemason's workshop, above ordinary dust and ventilation housekeeping. It sits at the centre of how a cutting room for benchtop fabrication is expected to run.
The Silica dust in the workplace guidance says a PCBU has a duty to eliminate, or use controls to minimise worker exposure to RCS dust: “As a PCBU, you have a duty to eliminate, or use controls to minimise worker exposure to the hazard of, and risks from, RCS dust.” Where the risk cannot be eliminated, the same guidance is direct: “If you can’t eliminate risks, you must minimise them so far as is reasonably practicable.” Before cutting, grinding or polishing engineered stone, a WorkSafe quick guide on silica dust says, “Before starting work using artificial/engineered stone, you must complete a risk assessment and review your controls.” A WorkSafe safety alert on accelerated silicosis repeats that duty for engineered stone, “Before starting work using engineered stone, businesses must complete a risk assessment and review their controls,” and goes further: uncontrolled cutting, grinding, sanding, drilling and polishing of engineered stone is treated as unacceptable and something that must not be undertaken. On personal protective equipment, the guidance is blunt: “PPE is the least effective control measure.” A PCBU must still provide suitable PPE for the crew unless another PCBU supplies it or a worker genuinely and voluntarily chooses to provide their own.
What other duties apply in the workshop and on site?
Beyond silica, regulations set duties around exposure monitoring, competent assessment and keeping records that apply to a stonemason's workshop and to installs out on a building site, and they apply whether the job is a full kitchen benchtop run, a one-off memorial or a small sandstone restoration repair.
Under the Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016, a PCBU with management or control of a workplace must ensure that no one is exposed to a substance hazardous to health above the prescribed exposure standard, and where the PCBU cannot be certain the standard is being met, exposure monitoring must be carried out. WorkSafe's guidance on general risk and workplace management adds that monitoring must be done by, or under the supervision of, a competent person: “Monitoring must be carried out by, or under the supervision of, a competent person.” That person needs the knowledge, skills and experience to run the monitoring and interpret it, and records of monitoring and control reviews are expected to be kept over time, not filed once and forgotten. Guidance from MBIE on engineered stone and crystalline silica notes that the primary duty of care in the Act already covers monitoring workplace conditions and worker health: “Section 36(3)(g) of the HSW Act clarifies that the primary duty of care that PCBUs have includes monitoring the conditions at the workplace.” None of this is a one-off task completed when the workshop opens. It is meant to be checked and reviewed as the jobs, the stone and the crew change.
This is general information, not legal, tax or employment advice. Check your own situation with the body named here or a qualified adviser.
How do you keep these duties sorted without losing billable hours to paperwork?
The real answer sits in your own job data, not memory, because it is your own records of which jobs cut engineered stone, who wore what PPE and when a risk assessment was last reviewed that prove the duty was met, not a sense that the workshop is generally careful about dust. A decision based on a feeling about the workshop is usually based on an old picture of it.
Think about how many different jobs run through a stonemason's year: benchtop fabrication for a kitchen company, a memorial order, a cladding install, a sandstone restoration, a paving job. Each one can involve a different mix of natural stone and engineered stone, different cutting and polishing time, and a different crew member on the tools. Trying to hold all of that against the health and safety duty from memory, worked out at the end of a busy quarter, is where gaps appear.
This is where AI agents change what the office carries. An AI agent is software that does a job the way you would do it yourself, with your prices, your wording and your rules, applied to your own records rather than a generic form. One agent can hold the record of which jobs used engineered stone and whether a risk assessment was reviewed before the cut started. Another can chase up and log PPE handed out and signed for, against each job and each crew member, instead of that living in someone's memory or a drawer of paper dockets. That is data first: the proof sits against the job as it happens, so when WorkSafe, an insurer or a customer asks, the answer comes from your own records, not from trying to reconstruct a year of cutting and polishing from memory.
Where can you check the current rules?
- Introduction to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 - what a PCBU is and the primary duty of care.
- Silica dust in the workplace - WorkSafe's duties on eliminating and minimising RCS dust exposure.
- WorkSafe quick guide on silica dust - risk assessment, controls and health monitoring consent for work with engineered stone.
- Safety alert: accelerated silicosis - why uncontrolled cutting, grinding, sanding, drilling and polishing of engineered stone is treated as unacceptable.
- Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016 - exposure standards and when monitoring is required.
- General risk and workplace management guidance - who can carry out monitoring and how records should be handled.
- MBIE: work with engineered stone and materials containing crystalline silica - how the primary duty of care applies to monitoring.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts from the stonemason's own job and workshop data through the Trade Business Intelligence, not from a generic safety checklist, because the real gap is usually specific: one job type, one crew member, one piece of plant where the record is thin. Greg Allan built his own trade business before coaching others, and looks at where health and safety duties actually connect to how jobs are quoted, run and recorded, so the fix goes in at the root rather than as a yearly scramble. The how of setting that up, including where AI agents fit against a stonemason's own jobs, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member and built for owners who are open minded, innovative and willing to share what they learn.
