NZFIA News

the new Zealand forklift Industry association kicked off its new financial year starting April 1 bringing it into line with other associations.

Last year, the NZFIA changed from subscription renewals on the anniversary of the member joining, to a renewal at the beginning of our financial year...

ovEr thE PaSt three months, our CEO (we think you know him!) has travelled the country on our behalf attending a series of Worksafe run Forklift Operator Safety Workshops. These workshops were focussed on operators and their managers and presented ideas on health and safety initiatives, how to develop a good H&S culture around forklift use, traffic management plans and guidance. It also gave them exposure to some examples of the proximity sensing equipment available in the market. We had a real good opportunity to give the Association exposure to potential members and talk to the Industry about what their needs are. This in-turn has allowed us to align our plans for the year to meet some of these needs. A big discussion point was on the availability for employers to have confidence that the training and assessment of an operator was at a high level and consistent across the country. This led onto the issue of the approved code of practice (ACOP) being so out of date and missing some recent improvements to the safety and operation of forklifts. We really enjoyed our time at these events and got to meet a lot of good people in the industry. It has helped grow the Membership quite considerably too. Prior to these roadshows, it was identified that we needed to be more encompassing of the Industry and have all interested parties able to be members. The board set a new Membership category – “User” – to allow Forklift owners/users to join the Association. This has been well received through-out the roadshows and has had quite a few of the big forklift fleet operating companies join, so that they can stay abreast of the issues in the Industry, have their say and get the latest information available. We welcome them all on board. Going forward, the Association is pushing ahead on developing and running a forklift operator competency training and assessment programme. “Silvercard” Forklift Competent Operator courses are coming soon! We are not out to compete against other training providers but work with them and others to provide a consistently high-level course, delivered nationally with a well-recognised competency attainment for operators. Leading on from that is the NZQA unit standards for forklift operation are up for review. Competenz, the managers of the unit standards for NZQA, has formed a group to look at the standards and improve them where necessary to meet the requirements of the qualification’s framework. An issue that has arisen from the early meetings of this review team, is the ability to point or refer the unit standards to a modern and accepted standard. As mentioned, the current Approved Code of Practice is out of date with current methods, legislation and technology. WorkSafe does not have the resources to create a document and don’t want to be telling industry how it should be done as such. They won’t get the ACOP revoked until there is other guidance to point to either. This has lead us as an Association to consider writing our own industry best practice guideline for operation and training. Not an unsurmountable task, but a big task none the less. It is going to need support and resources from all involved in the industry and we want to allow everyone to have their say about it, without it slowing the process too much. The idea is to develop a document that Industry as whole owns and refers to along with NZQA unit standards and Worksafe using it as reference.

Lastly, NZFIA is in the throes of updating our website which will include a webstore not too dissimilar to the offerings on the HIANZ site. There will be more targeted forklift related stationery there to purchase. We are also creating a “Find a Member” page, “Find a Supplier” page, resources and members only benefits pages. It will be a real step up from our current one. We look forward to having that up and running July/August. That’s our lot for now, the year ahead is very promising, and we look forward to quite a bit of growth throughout the year. If you are not currently a member, head over to our website www.nzfia.org.nz to see the benefits of being one. ■