Site Safe Foundation Passport: what the Review of Understanding covers

Most people book the course because a site will not let them start without a card. Almost nobody is told what the assessment at the end actually involves, which is why a straightforward check produces more nerves than it should.

What is the Site Safe Review of Understanding?

A short multiple-choice assessment sat at the end of a Foundation Passport course, confirming you have taken in the key concepts. It is a check on understanding rather than an examination designed to fail people, but it is a real assessment, and the content underneath it is the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015.

Who needs to do it?

Anyone whose site access depends on holding a current Site Safety Card, which in practice means most people working on a commercial construction site in New Zealand: trades, apprentices, labourers, and a good many people who visit sites without working on them.

Worth being precise about the reason. The card is not something the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 names or requires. It is a site access requirement set by principal contractors, who use it as evidence that everyone on site has covered the same baseline. That is why the requirement varies between sites and why nobody can tell you it is legally mandatory.

What topics does it cover?

What is a PCBU and what are its duties?

A PCBU is a person conducting a business or undertaking, usually the company rather than an individual. It holds the primary duty of care: to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers and of others affected by the work.

The phrase so far as is reasonably practicable is the one to understand properly. It is not a licence to do the cheap thing; it weighs the likelihood and severity of harm, what is known about controlling it, and the cost, with cost only relevant where it is grossly disproportionate to the risk.

What is the hierarchy of controls?

1. Elimination: remove the hazard entirely. Always the first question.
2. Substitution: replace it with something less hazardous.
3. Isolation: separate people from it.
4. Engineering controls: guarding, ventilation, physical barriers.
5. Administrative controls: procedures, training, signage.
6. PPE: last, and never a substitute for the controls above it.

The exam point, and the site point, are the same: PPE is the bottom of the hierarchy. An answer that reaches for a hard hat when the hazard could have been eliminated is the wrong answer.

What counts as a notifiable event?

Under HSWA 2015, notifiable events are deaths, notifiable injuries or illnesses, and notifiable incidents, including certain near misses that exposed someone to serious risk. They must be reported to WorkSafe, and the scene generally must not be disturbed until permitted.

The concept people get wrong is that a near miss can be notifiable. Nothing has to have hit anyone. Worked questions on all of this are here.

What are the three ideas the assessment keeps coming back to?

1. Elimination beats management. If a hazard can be removed, controlling it is the wrong answer, however well controlled it would be.
2. Duties are shared, not transferred. More than one party can hold a duty for the same work, and a contract cannot move a statutory duty off you.
3. Harm does not have to occur. Exposure to serious risk is the trigger for a notifiable incident, not injury.

If you understand those three properly, most of the assessment answers itself, because almost every question is one of them in site clothing.

How long is a Site Safety Card valid for?

Two years, after which it needs renewing. That two-year cycle is why this is knowledge worth actually retaining rather than holding just long enough to pass.

It is also worth diarising. A card that lapses does not stop you working in any legal sense, but it can stop you getting through the gate on a Monday morning, which amounts to the same thing.

How should you prepare?

Understand the hierarchy of controls in order, know who holds which duty, and be able to say what makes an event notifiable. Those three carry most of the assessment.

If your work takes you onto the road corridor as well as onto sites, the same HSWA duties sit underneath temporary traffic management, where the framework itself changed recently and a good deal of older training is now out of date.