 I'm the manager of the infrastructure team with SafeWork New South Wales. We have an overall silica strategy but I guess it's important today for you to recognise that most of what I'm going to be covering while I will cover the overarching strategy is about what we in the construction and asbestos services team are doing with particularly the infrastructure and construction industry sectors. Our work health and safety roadmap was developed after we became SafeWork New South Wales. We split from the old work cover New South Wales into three sectors which was the workers compensation, the workers compensation regulator and obviously SafeWork which is the work health and safety regulator. Focus on really declining fatalities and serious injuries and particularly I think we're ever increasing focus on illness which I think is a really important focus that we probably haven't had as much to do with over a good 10-year history so it's really good to see that we are having a better focus in that space. We've got some clear action areas and I guess the one that really falls into this is about those high-risk calm in terms of those injuries and illnesses and it's also about us being an exemplar regulator so for us part of the work that we've been doing with the industry sector is really about getting buying from everyone across the industry and making sure that what we're doing is actually providing some benefit but also that we're able to bring industry along with us. So why are we focusing on silica? As part of the coming together of SafeWork there was a lot of analysis done on the data and international and national research. From that SafeWork came up with two specific chemicals that they were going to focus on and one of them happened to be silica. So we've put that in our health and safety in terms of controlling that exposure and that's across the board not only in the construction sector but across the board but I'm going to be talking about what we're going to do in the construction sector and obviously some of the biggest reasons why we're doing that is the amount of tunneling that is going on across the state but also the amount of work in sandstone and rock that's happening not only in tunneling but also in residential and excavation work that's happening across the state. So this is just an understanding of our hazardous chemicals and materials exposure strategy at focus around a number of different types of activities that we're doing which is both doing that site type activity inspections, getting out their workplace visits, creating that awareness around illnesses and particularly in relation to silica which I still think people don't have a great awareness of the effects and what those long term health effects are and we're also doing a lot of research so we've also had a work health and safety centre of excellence initiated. We've got a number of data researchers who are working at both the international and national level in terms of improving our data in that space. So what is it that we really want to achieve through this program? Firstly I think awareness is one of the big factors and still that lack of awareness is a real issue. We have the biggest construction boom that's ever happened in this state. We have workers working in these types of environments who have never been in that type of environment before and while we have some experienced people who have been, we've also got this whole range and a new group of people who are coming in who just don't have that awareness so that's a big part of what we're trying to do. It's also for us to understand and I think as an organisation for us we never had a full understanding of what was actually happening underground and probably as an organisation historically we haven't really had a lot to do with it apart from some of the major tunnel collapses and things that have happened in the past we haven't on an ongoing nature actually been down in the tunnels. So for us that was a big part of it, developing our own people in terms of understanding what's going on. To work collaboratively with industry and that's obviously a big part if we don't get industries buying into the things that we're doing we've already lost the caper. We have a lot of specialised and highly skillful people across the industry sectors who we need to work with and we need to get on board in terms of making this change that will be long term and hopefully will be of benefit to the future generations. We've conducted a number of site visits within the tunnels and that's every major tunneling project in the metropolitan region and been doing assessments, hygiene assessments, we've been actually looking at the data and we've been looking at the work practices that are happening across those tunneling contractors and really been gathering that information on what is good practice, what do we expect that we should see down there and what are some of the challenges or what are some of the areas where we think we can actually improve and make a difference in terms of reducing that silica exposure. Again continuing in collaborative discussions and I think we've initiated an air quality monitoring group which I'll talk about a little bit later but I think that's been a really successful way to get all the major players together and actually just start these discussions about where we're at and where as an industry do we want to get to. And I think certainly from my point of view it's been a really successful group to get together and actually shows what people can do where they have the will to actually get together and start talking about some of these things. I guess it's always important to when we are going about these things it's important to look at the good things that are happening and certainly in this industry sector as opposed to a number of other different sectors there are a lot of positive things happening in the silica space and I think as an industry sector it's an opportunity for them to actually influence and provide positive futures for other industry sectors where we can start making changes after the ones we've made in this industry. So without going through all of them some of the ventilation that we've seen is really good when it's put in place properly and it's really effective in terms of what you're trying to achieve. We have had use and it's consistent and inconsistent at times of misting systems the use of rattles and curtains blocking off areas of the workspace and setting up the proper ventilation to get rid of these dusts. Issues that prevent people having to get out of cabins. There was a lot of problems. You have positive pressure cabins which is fantastic but if you open in a door it takes away from the engineering control that you put in place. So in terms of that it's been really good and there's certainly been some good compliance rates in certain areas down in the tunnels. So there has been some really positive things that have occurred but along with that there's obviously also some challenges and some of the challenges that we're trying to work through at the moment with the different joint ventures is really what does that good practice looks like. For us as a regulator we've been going down and doing visits to all these tunnels and the practices across the tunnels are sometimes quite different. So the challenge for us and I think for the contractors themselves is to say firstly why are they different and if they are different are they providing the same level of safety that we would expect. So there's some of the things that we're really going to be working on over the next couple of months in terms of trying to achieve a better consistency and in particular that reducing the concentrations of silica just it is a challenge and there are areas where it's just sometimes very difficult to achieve but then there are other controls that you have to put in place if that is the case. The level of awareness we sort of talked about and I think across the board in this sort of environment there's always been a really heavy reliance on PPE and I think wherever we can look at options in terms of those engineering controls and how we can actually control these things at the source that's always going to be a much more positive benefit if we get to that space rather than the lower order controls. So one of the things we're really proud of is the Air Quality Working Group I think that's been a really significant achievement in terms of getting a group of people who are often opposed in terms of the types of contracts that they have together to actually come together and start talking which I think has actually been a major achievement and that committee is really about trying to say, you know, what are we about? This is not about getting anyone's technological advances or having an improvement in contract relationships this is all about sharing information on the health and safety and how we reduce the exposure to this type of dust and I think, you know, it was a hard to start with but now we're actually there I think it's really showing some good results. It's also about sharing the results of de-identified silica monitoring the mines do it really well, they have a really mature dust committee that are very mature in the way that they share information and I think if we could get to that space it would be a really positive environment and place to be in. It's about sharing what good practices are and in terms of those inconsistencies, you know, is this one better than this one or is this one better than this one and why is that, you know, is it going to create extra costs or resource issues or actually is that just the one that we all should be using so I think those conversations can all be beneficial and also obviously getting feedback on the challenges that are faced by everyone and one of the things that we see constantly is that the challenges remain the same across the tunnels and you're all facing the same challenges so if you can come together and deal with it on a conglomerate basis it's always going to be beneficial and also as a consultation mechanism for that guidance material I want to develop some what does actually best practice look like in this field so we've currently had three meetings we've got two subcommittees that have been initiated one is looking at health monitoring and I think, you know, for all of us in the room it's pretty clear that there's some real gaps in terms of the way different people are doing health monitoring and in particular in terms of the way that people move across different work sites how that health monitoring is affected is a real issue that we're actually trying to tackle and again come up with a consistent kind of approach to what that should look like there's also some work being done on this training package which is really around, you know, what does a good induction look like you know, where should our people be in terms of that education space before they get into a tunnel or one of these workplaces we've done some joint visits with hygienists as I mentioned before and that's across all the tunnels to have a look at the results and to just see what's going on down there and we've also done a couple of visits to the mine rescue facility and it's interesting to see the different approaches from the mine sector to the tunneling sector and obviously there are differences in terms of the types of environment that are down there but there's a lot of similarities as well so I think that's been a good thing for us just to finish off I'd like to say that it's been really great working with the industry we've now got a number of meetings with all the joint venture partners where we're actually going to discuss what we can do now in terms of some changes and how we can reduce that silica exposure with really basic things that can happen right now and then what are we going to do in terms of being able to work with you in some of these more complex areas of exposures where we haven't quite got to what best practice or even what compliance might look like for instance so particularly some of the back end works that are starting to happen benching, you know, even some of the above ground works I think we're quite there yet so looking forward to the next couple of months and being able to get to a place where we're being able to deliver a bit more in terms of what compliance looks like so thank you