Introducing new LGW Workcare team member

Introducing LGW Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) team’s new Safety Consultant, Hal Waddington. The Local Government Workcare WHS team provides health and safety support and advice to Queensland local government scheme members and welcomed Hal in December 2020.

Hal’s role is to provide safety support and advice to 15 allocated councils divided into two geographical areas. He currently looks after 10 councils from Ipswich City Council out to the South Australian/Northern Territory border, ending with Bulloo Shire Council at its furthest point. He has also been assigned five5 North West Queensland region councils including Mt Isa, Burke, Cloncurry, Richmond and McKinlay, and is looking forward to visiting the Gulf Country for the first time to meet his member clients.

Hal joins LGW with an extensive career in safety, starting with Telstra as an occupational nurse where he looked after Queensland’s outback regions, providing occupation health services before moving into various safety service roles at district, state and corporate levels.

He then joined Defence Materiel Organisation at RAAF Base Amberley providing safety and environmental management support to 501WG F-111 engineering and maintenance functions until the aircraft was retired in December 2010. He then won an executive position within the peak safety organisation for Defence in Canberra as Assistant Director of Performance and Assurance WHS Branch. One of his first projects was to establish a WHS auditing capability across 14 Defence services and support organisations that incorporated legislative and AS/NZS4804 OHS requirements. The project incorporated building policy, procedures, reports establishing an audit team, implementation plan guidance for Groups and Services, two software solutions, data integrity, review guidance, training Defence WHS auditors and providing IT support. This project was a key highlight of Hal’s career with he and his team being awarded a commendation from the Secretary of Defence.

“Doing something at that national level was really quite challenging. There were a lot of customers involved in the process all wanting to know how it was going to fit together and how it was going to impact them, and what kind of resources they needed to implement the program” Hal said.

Whilst Hal’s recent experience was at the corporate level he has also functioned at district and state levels, which helps him understand his customers challenges and enable him to provide effective support.

In Hal’s experience, the concept of safety from one organisation to another doesn’t change significantly – it is about understanding the business context and risk profiles seeking first to understand the nuances and supporting business proposals with available data.

Hal’s role with LGW is focused on providing a safety service to his customers through identifying their vulnerabilities and advising on possible solutions for managing safety and preventing damage to their most valuable resource, their people. He is currently assisting his councils with meeting their Mutual Risk Obligations through WHS plans, strategies and risk identification.

Hal recently attended the LGW WHS Conference, giving him an opportunity to meet with several of his member councils identifying and discussing their top five risks, how they could work together and what LGW service were on offer.

“I would have to say it was really heartening because people reacted well, and we are working with our team to put together a proposed list of projects that would value add to what LGW currently offer. The conference was a great opportunity to network with our customers and good value for money and extremely useful networking.

“All safety colleagues attending the conference, that I talked to were committed professionals wanted to make a difference in the lives of their business colleagues. They were really committed to their jobs and it was exciting to meet folks that have the same kind of view of safety” Hal said.

Hal is a people person who enjoys meeting people and learning about the challenges they face, the solutions they put in place and how effective these have been.  You don’t know everything in life and you can always learn from others. Hal’s philosophy is to first seek to understand, which then establishes a good platform to move forward.

Hal has been spending a lot of time on the phone and in Zoom meetings to get to know his councils and he is looking forward to getting out to meet them in person soon.

When not at work, Hal spends his down time relaxing in the garden. He has recently revitalised an old hobby of bonsai gardening. Bonsai is an ancient art form in which ornamental plants, shrubs and trees are grown in containers and trained to a small, but still realistic natural form. Hal says it gives him a mini form of gardening without the exertion. He enjoys working on bonsai group plantings and said there are specific design elements such as an odd number of plants to provide a natural symmetry.