By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why is a stretched field crew a safety risk, not just a wellbeing issue, for a surveying business?
A surveying business can tick every induction form and incident register and still be running an unsafe operation if the field crew and the principal surveyor are worked past their limit, because fatigue affects judgement behind a GPS unit, a drone controller or a chainman's pole just as much as a missing hard hat does, and the law treats that judgement as part of the job.
A busy stretch of back to back boundary surveys, subdivisions and set outs for builders can push a small crew hard through a season. A surveyor who runs a title search, drives to a set out, then sits down to draft the plan that night is making the same calls on measurement and accuracy on hour twelve as on hour two. Most owners would never send a crew member onto a roadside job without the right gear. Fewer treat a tired crew the same way, even though the risk to a measurement, a plan or a person on site is real either way.
What is a surveying business owner's primary duty of care under HSWA?
Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA), a surveying business owner is what the law calls a PCBU, a person conducting a business or undertaking, and WorkSafe New Zealand says every PCBU carries a primary duty of care, whether that is a self-employed surveyor working solo or one who employs a field crew, according to the Introduction to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015.
That duty means ensuring, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers such as employees, contractors, subcontractors and apprentices, and making sure the work does not put other people at risk, which for a surveyor can mean a landowner, a site visitor, a council officer or a passer by near a boundary peg, as set out in Conducting asbestos surveys. WorkSafe also lists duties around identifying hazards, eliminating or minimising risk, and keeping plant such as survey vehicles, drones and GPS gear maintained, according to Regulations, legal requirements and rights. A self-employed surveyor working alone owes that same duty to their own health, not only to any crew they employ.
If the surveying business is run through a company, a director or other officer also carries a personal due diligence duty under HSWA, separate from the company's own duty, meaning they must take proactive steps to make sure the business actually meets its obligations rather than assuming it does, according to WorkSafe's page on Officers' due diligence.
What extra duties apply when your crew is doing set outs or boundary surveys near live traffic?
A lot of set out, detail and boundary survey work happens on or beside a road, so WorkSafe treats working near live traffic as its own risk area, and says this will usually need some form of temporary traffic management in place around the worksite, according to Working near live traffic.
If the job is on a state highway, Waka Kotahi will usually expect its own traffic management guidance to be followed, and a traffic management plan for that site should be put together by someone suitably qualified to do it. This sits alongside the surveyor's own licence and professional obligations, and it changes by road and by council area, so checking current requirements for the specific road is worth doing before the crew sets up on it.
What are your duties when subbies, drafters or other PCBUs are working with you, and if something goes wrong on site?
A surveying business rarely works alone on a job. A developer, a builder, a subcontracted field crew or a drafter working on the plan are often all PCBUs on the same project, and WorkSafe says a PCBU cannot contract out of its health and safety duties or push the risk onto someone else in that chain, though PCBUs can agree between themselves how overlapping duties will be met, according to PCBUs working together. A PCBU also has a duty to ask for and take into account the crew's own views on health and safety, and to give them an ongoing way to raise concerns.
If a serious incident happens on a job, such as a vehicle rollover, a fall or an injury on site, WorkSafe says the regulator must be notified as soon as possible, and the site must be preserved rather than cleared or altered, according to What events need to be notified?. Separately, a PCBU has a duty to provide first aid for workers, and a surveyor's field vehicle, if that is where the crew member works from between jobs, should carry a portable first aid kit kept secure in the vehicle, according to First aid at work.
This is general information, not legal, tax or employment advice. Check your own situation with the body named here or a qualified adviser.
How can your own job and crew data keep these duties met, with AI agents carrying the paperwork?
An owner relying on memory to know whether the crew is stretched, whether every induction was logged, or whether the drone operator has flown too many long days in a row is working from a picture that is already out of date. A data first view of the business, built from the owner's own job and crew records, shows that picture as it stands this week, not as it was remembered.
An AI agent is software that does a job the way the owner would, following their own wording and their own rules, and it can take on the paperwork side of these duties, the induction forms, the incident register entries, the first aid checks, so that nothing sits half-done in someone's head or a folder that only one person opens. A second AI agent watching crew hours across set outs, subdivisions and boundary jobs can flag when the same two field hands have run long days back to back, before that turns into a tired crew member making a call behind the GPS that they would not make rested.
Picture a surveying business where the induction forms, the incident register and the onboarding paperwork for a new field hand were spread across a paper folder, a laptop and a separate group chat for site messages, with nobody quite sure which version was current. The owner built his own tool around the business, pulling in job information and bringing the forms, the site specific inductions, the incident register and onboarding together in one place, so the record sits where the work already happens instead of somewhere separate that has to be remembered.
Where can you check the current rules?
- Introduction to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015: the core HSWA duties that apply to every PCBU, including a surveying business.
- Regulations, legal requirements and rights: what a PCBU must do about hazards, risk and safe plant and systems of work.
- Conducting asbestos surveys: how the primary duty of care applies to self-employed surveyors and those who employ them.
- Working near live traffic: traffic management duties for set outs and boundary work near roads.
- PCBUs working together: duties when a developer, builder or subcontracted crew share a job.
- Officers' due diligence: the personal duty carried by a director of a surveying company.
- What events need to be notified?: what counts as a notifiable event and what to do on site.
- First aid at work: first aid duties, including for mobile field crew working from a vehicle.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts from the owner's own job and crew data through the Trade Business Intelligence, not from a checklist, because a surveying business can look compliant on paper while the people running it are stretched past what is sustainable. Greg Allan says “stress isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just the force applied in a certain area”, and the coaching looks at where that force is landing in the owner's own numbers, on which jobs, on which weeks, on which crew member, before it becomes an incident rather than a pattern. The how, working through what that data shows for a particular surveying business, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who is open minded, innovative and willing to share what they learn.
