Submitted by Bruce Macdonald on Tue, 2012-08-14 08:18

The FOA was honoured to have as one of our guests at a recent board meeting; Mr. Peter Lineen.  Mr. Lineen presented an informative and enlightening presentation to the board members regarding the BC Forest Safety Council. As the FOA is striving for and seeking out ‘Best Practices’, we are always trying to bring forward anyone who can help us reach this goal. Having some similar concerns with Safety and by allowing us the opportunity to study the BCFSC approach regarding safety concerns, we came away from the presentation with more knowledge and some fresh ideas on how to best advance our efforts with safety.

In 2004 and 2005 the harvesting sector of the province experienced a tremendous surge in the number of fatalities in the industry. As a result of this unfortunate fact, a taskforce was assembled along with a series of inquests to focus on and make recommendations for addressing these accidents. In 2005 the task force presented a ‘Forest Safety Task Force Report’ which released 20 recommendations. Of those 20 recommendations, a co-ordinated approach to managing Safety across the board by managing safety across BC was brought forward.  The industries response to this recommendation was the establishment of the BC Forest safety Council.

Mr. Lineen stated that since the Councils inception, fatalities have dropped to half from their previous numbers. As we can learn from the methodology used by the BC Forest Safety council, the FOA board took away from the presentation many useful ideas and suggestions. Mr. Lineen was kind enough to offer any assistance he and the council can provide us as we strive forward with making the skies safer for everyone.