 Hello everyone. So for the last two and a half years an Australian research team has been exploring the issue of injury associated with work in hot conditions. So this has been done at the population level and whether it be analysis of workers compensation data, surveys of health and safety managers and representatives or analysis of interviews with workers this is the first time that the issue has been systematically investigated and that's the key point. When you do this sort of work you get a handle on which workers which jobs which industries and what types of injuries and the scope of the curve or the slope of the curve if you like relating injury and temperature as well as perceptions about what should be done for example more awareness and training or better management and control. So knowing the risk factors and what people think about management gives us an evidence base to progress this area so that's the second key point. In theory traumatic injuries Peter has alluded to can arise in hot conditions and without the worker experiencing frank illness so subjectively it doesn't look any different but injuries can occur and it might arise because of loss of concentration or reduced psychomotor performance or cognitive function or altered behavior if the worker takes off their PPE for example it could be all sorts of implications including chemical exposure for example. So what we believe is that the increased susceptibility of workers whether it's physiological or psychological interacts with existing hazards to increase the likelihood of injury. Those workplaces and tasks with multiple hazards or complicated tasks e.g. working with power tools or ladders or mobile plant might be a particular risk. It also negatively impacts on decision making processes resulting in poor or incorrect decisions that can lead to injury to individuals or damage to equipment and this can occur indoors as well as outdoors. More research is needed to understand the mechanisms by which this occurs in actual workplace conditions. Okay so what did we find in our research? When you use an injury lens instead of an illness lens you get a certain picture of the problem. Lots of different industries appear to have higher rates of injury in hot conditions even moderately hot conditions and indoor environments. Young workers seem to be at greater risk and the most common types of injuries are to the limbs including the hands. How big is this effect? There's lots of variability but the injury claims data show an increase of between 10 and 800% in hot conditions compared with mild conditions and the biggest increase we found was for electricity, gas and water sectors. What do we learn about what could be done? Well the surveys of health and safety professionals point to a need for more awareness of the injury issue and some specific additional heat stress training. However that's a shared responsibility by all parties in the workplace. That's a key point. Hydration, appropriate information and work practice are key aspects of that shared responsibility. Moderately hot conditions rather than extreme temperatures correlate with the biggest injury burden. Heat wave severity maybe is just as important or even more important than maximum temperature as then fatigue may have a greater role. Heatwaves can occur outside of the traditional summer months for example in November and March and that's a key point. Finally yes we're predicting more and longer heatwaves and climate change but the problem of injury is with us now. Thanks very much Dina. I think that sets the scene very well for us. So Sandra and Chris so clearly if somebody's actually acutely suffering heat stroke we hope they won't be working but what are the safety outcomes that you might see associated with just working in hot temperatures? Okay I speak from lived experience I think is the term now. When I was growing up in New Zealand my first job was picking raspberries and I think I was probably 11 or 12 and I went with my older brother he found the work. Was there any training provided about working in hot conditions? You might think New Zealand is that hot but in places it can be. No no training the employer was like many employers and wanted production so they wanted that bucket filled with raspberries as quickly as possible and they wanted them as least squished as possible so that was the extent of the training. So I picked like mad because I was trying to save some money to buy Christmas presents. I think I made it to lunchtime was there any water on site? We didn't drink water in those days. Was there any sunscreen? We didn't use sunscreen in those days. Did I wear a hat? No didn't didn't like wearing hats. So by lunchtime I was quite ill. I had sunstroke. I decided against operating machinery and riding my bike home so I pushed it home and I think I spent the next two days flat out on my bed recovering. So I guess the early stages you would want to see what is the workplace what is the workplace climate like? Is it safe for people to speak up? Is there a heat policy and and who knows about it? Is the culture conducive to positively prevent people getting to the point where they start to feel ill and at potential risk of injury? In our line of work we we don't see the positive stories we get calls from people every day women and very vulnerable predominantly migrant workers who have reached a point where they're in crisis at their workplace. So and many of them report that they feel punished. They feel targeted if they do speak up if they're feeling affected or they think themselves and the rest of the workplace are at risk. So we need to get beyond that in terms of how we address this issue how we approach the issue in the first place. So workers typically will say to us that all of the responsibility for getting to this point of illness and or injury is placed back on them. You didn't drink enough you didn't do the right thing you came to work tired so we need systems in place. We need awareness we need training. Yeah I'd agree with that Sandra. Certainly in civil construction and marine construction as well there are good systems in place. People educated about those things before they actually go out into the workplace. We keep an eye on the weather and plans are made to to address those issues. So in terms of good practice that's that's what's happening in civil construction but certainly the the high risk area would be domestic construction areas and the young workers has been born out by a couple of recent incidents with young workers first day on the job it's a heat wave and they end up going away from the workplace in the ambulance. So Chris you're in the construction sector so what are the some of the safety implications that might go apart from obviously heat stress and heat illness but in terms of traumatic injury. As as Dino alluded to you know people are working with high risk plant and as the statistics are borne out you know 48% of all workplace fatalities are fools of less than four metres working at heights in construction high risk. It can be a lethal mix. It would be. Martin the regulators I know across Australia have historically been quite well aware particularly in South Australian Queensland and the Northern Territory in Western Australia about heat illness but how focused are you on have you been and are you on the future on heat related injuries caused from working in heat? That's correct but we have been very focused on it and it's still pretty high on the priority. The 12 months I've been at Safe Work SA we've undergone a lot of change and part of that is some capability development for our inspectorate. I think it's critical that the inspectorate maintain their competency knowledge and experience in the new and emerging issues because work is very different to what it was five years ago or ten years ago and the environment in which we do that work is very different. So before I came here I was I was working on mining construction companies around Australia Papua New Guinea Brunei Indonesia. Yes some hot places and they're all very different so some were 3,000 meters up a mountain and when it was beautiful it was it was beautiful but when it wasn't it was in cloud and it was wet and cold and miserable and then Simpson Desert Northern WA South Australia the challenge I had was how do I as a safety head of safety for that organization interpret research interpret what the regulator is focusing on and what's reasonable and what's enough how much is enough for you to do the right thing. So I'm hearing that the regulators are focused on it how much you think the inspectors are thinking about the risks like falls from height when your when perhaps your fatigue and your concentrations last. It's really relevant because as an inspector and certainly as a regulator when you when you go on on sites and you're looking at the consequence of an event and that may well be fall from heights and generally the the easiest option or the conventional way of looking that is that the practical aspect of it was it barriers who's had training what's the procedure say has that person been trained in the procedure is there a bit of paper that's going to protect that person. Inspectors across Australia have never really looked at the behaviors or the design of the task so is the procedure really does that really consider the risks hazards and risks in the design of that work of the really dug down because we've all had procedures where we've looked at it and thought that's a great 55 page document but that's not going to save anybody from falling off an edge. It's is the design of that procedure are the way it's written forcing a type of behavior which encourages people to take shortcuts and by taking that shortcut you expose yourself to a risk and then you're injured. I don't think what we've always looked at in the past is the other issues such as the effects of heat stress and illness as to how does that affect people's cognitive ability and is there some other relevant information that's impacting on their decision-making which caused them to do that. So I think from an inspectorate point of view we've got a bit of work to do to work with our work environment unit to make sure that we're across the latest research that we understand it that we're considering it in our site visits and we're talking to employers and workers about it. I guess it all links back to fatigue as well doesn't it and I know that the jurisdictions are working with industry and unions in fact to develop fatigue codes but Sam I can yeah I just wanted to add like we certainly hear of people who have sustained injury in very hot conditions at work so people who work in kitchens using friars and so on that they haven't necessarily been trained on often young workers and often over the busy Christmas period where they've been hired short term but the thing we hear about most I think and it was touched on in in Dino's research was the psychosocial issues that arise in workplaces where people are hot they're aggravated they haven't perhaps slept enough. Is there a temperature at which people are allowed to stop work perhaps I might start with you Martin. Yeah from my perspective nor there isn't so I think you've got to look at individuals look at the environment you're working in looking at the task that you're doing in the way that you're doing that task and then taking on board the individuals who are doing it in the physiology so I think it's probably a bit dangerous to put a temperature limit on work unless you are considering the other factors in part of that risk assessment so I think once you start having workers who are suffering the effects of heat stress then that's too late it really needs to be brought a lot further forward and considered in the planning stage and certainly the design of the work. So I guess also what we know it's not just a temperature it's also about humidity and some other factors that Chris and Sandra you might like to tell us about. Yeah well absolutely humidity is a big factor as well and air flows and general radiant heat from surfaces steel etc you don't want to be on the roof in 40 degrees that's for sure but again you have to take all the factors into account. So I guess you picked up on something quite important there is that is that radiant heat the ambient temperature might be one level or maybe even the humidity but it's those environmental factors that also need to be built into the risk assessment. Correct yeah so air movement as well a very very important factor because if there's no air movement and you've got high radiant heat as well as high temperatures then you've got some serious problems. So do any industries have a temperature that they have in their industrial relations agreements? There are some temperatures linked to EBAs so with our stop work at around 36 degrees and then move out of direct sunlight. It's pretty hot. It is hot but as we said before there are many factors and then where is that temperature being measured because it'll be 36 degrees in Kentown at Bureau of Meteorology but it'll be 32 on the case that no longer so people in no longer aren't stopping work. And Sandra I guess this comes to your point about whether people feel allowed to stop whether they can speak up. Yeah we over the years have represented a number of workers who work in hot house conditions environments so picking tomatoes is the usual occupation. So they're working in very hot and very humid conditions because that's what's needed for the tomatoes to ripen and a number of issues that have come up with our clients have been around incredibly awful ear infections which seem to have been exacerbated by humidity, dust and chemicals. Often the employer will say yeah but you've always had ear problems you came to this job with those ear problems so don't come to me trying to log a workers comp claim it's actually your fault maybe you're not suited to this work. The other interesting case we had with the tomato picker is a long while ago now but part of their duties was to push these trolleys along with trays and they had to fill the trays up and stack the trolley so by the time it got to the end of the end of the row or the trolley was full that was incredibly heavy and because of the humidity in these tomato hot houses the ground was basically mud so trying to push those heavy trolleys through mud often resulted in quite serious shoulder injuries. In those situations we've all got a duty to look after our own health and safety as well as that of each other so in that situation where you've got vulnerable well any worker but particularly vulnerable workers that they have a legislative right to stop work to raise these issues to address it with their employer and I think there's probably a reasonable proportion of the working public who don't really understand that there is a law behind it that gives them that support. Another aspect of it is organisational culture so if you do have a culture that's beating workers down in that respect then quite often they don't know they've got a legal right for that duty but they also don't understand that they've got a voice that they can raise so I suppose it's given them the understanding of what the law says and supports them but also what the regulator can do or the educator half of our business can do as well as the industry groups and other support groups that are available to them. What are some of the work environment factors that might be going on while people working and we heard Sandra tell us about sort of in their humidity area the ground conditions but what are some of the other factors that we should be thinking of when we're doing our risk assessment around the work and the work environment. So I think for me it really starts with the design. So as an employer my expectation would be that the more knowledge you have and the more resources available within your organisation the higher the standard that I would expect and the more that you should be doing. That said I appreciate that sometimes it's difficult to interpret best practice but I would expect certainly tier one, two builders and large companies and multinationals that they should be engaging people with the right skills to help them interpret that. So it's not a level playing field for everyone from my perspective. I certainly expect more from the larger organisations. When you get organisations like that that do voluntarily comply it allows us as a regulator to help and focus our resources on the people that really need support which is the smaller organisations and vulnerable groups. So I think when it comes to managing those risks it's understanding the design of the task in the work that would then help to support to write the procedure. I'm a firm believer that procedures don't save people's lives but it's important that you have a process documented which understands how that work is done in the environment with the people that you have. Then you can apply the adequate controls to those tasks and again it's not a one-size-fits-all and it's something that organisations should look at for every place and every time that they do that because depending on the environment the same task might require different controls. What might some of those environment challenges be and what might some of the controls be? Depends on your work environment. I mean if you're in the marine environment you've got to consider the swell as well as the ambient temperatures and radiant heat and what's the task at hand and is there a storm front on the way. If you're working in the foundry you've got a more fixed environment and perhaps there are methods of isolating workers from the heat sources and creating artificial airflow as well whereas if you're on a barge doing some dredging then it's unlikely that you'd be able to create artificial airflow. So yes it's horses for courses and we have to apply what's reasonably practicable. You're right there Chris because even things like fairly innocuous tasks in an environment that's not too hot or humid but you add things like welding hoods to the equation and suddenly what can be a fairly medium heat low risk low humidity tasks suddenly becomes a higher risk task because of the equipment you're wearing. Exactly so some of the power to air respirators that you're required to wear when you're removing asbestos for instance yeah you can you've got to have a negative air pressure units inside the asbestos removal room and all the PPE you'd be pretty hard to manage the airflow in some respects so. So what's some practical controls that will be operating then? Well that's that's the that's the million dollar question. Some of the PPE is very advanced in that it has its own airflow but I personally wouldn't like to be doing that job on a 40 degree day. So is that things like job rotation though that would then go and see your monitoring your workers? Yeah absolutely you're gonna have to employ those other control measures like job rotation etc. And even things like like heat vests and cool packs applied to the body and external ventilation. There was an employer a few years ago on a mine site had a number of slushy machines which were just stocked in 24-7 so that people could have iced slushies at the drop of a hat and that helped to bring down core temperature and help keep them cool. So not advocating that you go out and buy a selection of slushies for the workplace but it's that it was a control that they viewed was worthwhile investing in and and it had a benefit. I've spoken a little about some of the environmental factors and some issues to do with the tasks that on what about the individual and their own risk factors and perhaps I could briefly ask you Sandra to talk about the agenda, their age issues, what are some of the individual personal factors and then if I could turn to you Chris and Martin to talk about what that means for in terms of practical controls and workplaces. Yeah just picking up on the job rotation issue fantastic idea when you talk to anyone in the community sector who is relying on government funding perhaps they're an NDIS supplier the flat answer will be we can't afford that yes it would be great to have backup workers particularly where maybe care workers are travelling around often in their own vehicles so the air conditioning may or may not work on a hot day those community workers whose job it is to go and monitor people whose health is at particular risk during a heatwave how much thought do we pay to their working conditions on a day like that enormous responsibility if if you combine a heatwave with a power outage and people in their homes are relying on equipment to keep them alive basically so job rotation to can be used in some industries but in in the community sector there just isn't the funding for that sort of what an employer would see as a luxury so we see workers going to people's homes without even any the poorest of risk assessments around where whose home are they going to what is going on in that home what risk you at in that home so things around domestic violence so walking into a house where there may be a violent partner now that doesn't have to do with heat I get that but we rely on these workers to work through a heatwave to provide services to very vulnerable people in our communities and thank goodness they do so is there a gendered aspect to this I think there is you would expect me to say that so around things like a heatwave and perhaps inability to get quality sleep let's talk about women who are pregnant there are periods through pregnancies where many women say oh you know I can only sleep a couple of hours perhaps a parent is a sole parent with the care of a number of children who also aren't sleeping well so if you can get a few hours sleep good for you during that few hours when you expect to sleep you may have the care of a baby who needs to be fed during the night or another member of the household perhaps who has a disability who needs to be turned rotated during the night so those people are not going to be flash when they go to work the next day we know that heatwaves in Adelaide will often last for what eight days by the end of that period people are probably not fit for work not fit to be driving around in their car there's some other individual factors that we need to be thinking about in terms of risk of injury so everybody's got different tolerance to heat and this applies to athletes as well some some people can go out and play football in the early part of the season and not suffer but others are suddenly being cut off the field and needing ice vests and hospitalisation so yes everybody's got different levels and of course as we know from public health warnings the very young and the very old are the big risk factors. I guess this comes to a bit of a tricky question Martin about reasonable adjustments and the extent to which an employer needs to be understand know they work force and the issues and build risks in for people's variability perhaps they've got a they're unwell or they fit as we're hearing their fatigue so it's pretty tall order for employers how are they going to manage that look it is and and there isn't there isn't a silver bullet answer but I think what I said before about larger organisations more mature organisations are those of the mature safety culture the larger multi-nationals and tier one and two building companies the expectations is that that their standards should be higher because they have the resources and the people available to to breathe life into that mum and dad businesses there's not an expectation that they'll have that level of maturity and and I understand that as a regulator I'm sympathetic to their position and we will do everything that we can in our power to help them but that said depending on the severity of the breach and the injury and the other factors will determine whether or not we we prosecute them and look the prosecution aspect is just one compliance outcome there are a range of others that will consider before we get to that as a regulator I don't want to be in court prosecuting everybody for every breach is completely impractical to do that that should be the most serious cases but certainly from a regulator's perspective there's not a will for me to come down with a heavy stick on everybody for every single breach it will be proportionate and certainly everyone will be considered on their own merits but if the risk is nine you expect it to be controlled yes most certainly and and in many respects the fact that our temperature and our environment and our climate is getting hotter is is no shock to anybody unless they've been living in a hole for the last 10 years I think the shock is is how quickly it's changing and that we need to keep up with so Chris you're representing the construction sector here's a sector that routinely works in hot environments you've alluded to working on roofs and places where there's lots of radiant heat going on so what are some of the practices that you're seeing out there good practices that we should be paying attention to yes so certainly there's a lot of education in terms of the requirement to keep hydrated have processes in place for risk breaks shade obviously is a big one as well because you can work longer if you're in the shade so portable shade equipment supplied during the weather job rotation crib rooms that are air conditioned to rotate through those are the best practice sort of principles that are applied certainly the this more simpler control measures are used by some sectors like the housing sector start early and finish early we just simply knock off by one o'clock what about fatigue and what you Martin taught reminded us that as a health and safety is everybody's responsibility and workers have a duty look after their own health and safety so what is it that we can do when in those periods when the temperatures are rising to actually look after ourselves and particularly around fatigue and those issues one of the important things for me in relation to fatigue is it's not just lack of sleep that brings out on there are a lot of other factors in there as well so so diet and stress and anxiety and those are the things can affect it the other thing I would say is we're quite fortunate Adelaide is to have a really advanced research and an academic footprint here in the sleep research center and Dr. Savon Banks I spoke to her a few years ago and took her and some of her colleagues to PNG to do some research on for us in there in relation to fatigue completely different same sort of risk but in a completely different environment different food different work patterns different altitude different temperatures different culture different people the issue there wasn't necessarily the fatigue on site at work it was back in the village on their week feel break and that they were actually turning up to work fatigued so I think in relation to that it's not necessary looking at fatigue and isolation it's gone back to that planning stage and design and considering the other factors that are relevant on it and actually looking at it holistically you got some suggestion practical suggestions but management when the temperatures rising we we talk about compassion fatigue in the caring sector it's a different type of fatigue but we know that good workers often very low-paid workers slog their hearts out because someone has to do this work and they find it rewarding but there's nothing like a crisis period like a heatwave or like a bushfire that will bring all of that discomfort discord resentment to the surface so we talk about that as you know managing worker burnout is really important as well because I hate the word resilience but if workers feel strong and feel that their contribution is valued they're going to be less likely to fall over at a time when we're all challenged by environmental really interesting point that comes to a conversation we were having before we about the interrelationship of all of the hazards in fact that working in heat is not something to consider in isolation perhaps Chris you know with your practical insights have you got any comments on that about heat just being one of the hazards that needs to be considered I think you've hit the nail on the head there's there's many attendant issues in the workplace we need to be cognizant of all of those factors and have to obviously incorporate them into a holistic approach to risk assessment for the task at hand and obviously the great one is to look out for your work mates so if somebody's not looking like they're fair and too well understand what the signs are and then apply appropriate first aid I think that's a really great point look I want to go to one of the elephants in the room here which is what about for those workers who can't stop work perhaps their emergency services their Ambo's their fire fighters Martin what happens there yeah so from my perspective and certainly I've been on sites and projects another good example is people like shot fire as drill and blasts engineers in the mines working in 300 meters at the bottom of pit when I was a prominent hill it would get to 58 degrees at the bottom of that pit so it's about the controls that you apply because there are quite a few jobs that really you can't not do that doesn't mean you can't control them in some other way so job rotation the use of air condition buildings portable buildings that you would put on site the PPE access to water electrolytes the training that sort of thing another big one for me is you can have all of those controls on site but if you've got an organization that's got a bad culture that's going to smash down the individual that puts their hand up and say I'm really tired then that's a waste of time and money because if somebody's frightened to put the hand up and say I need to stop work then all of the other stuff becomes a bit of a moot point so a culture for me is is another big one so that goes to people feeling that they actually have the power to stop look we've just started to touch on one of the really important ones about PPE you mentioned when we started Chris the conversation around you know masks and those sorts of things but I understand in many sites it's a narrow requirement that people wear long longs as you put it so you know what what do you do when the PPE itself is actually creating some of the issue yeah I suppose that again you have to look at the design of the clothing and there are many new items of light clothing that's long sleeved long pants and ventilation under the armpits and the like so it's fit for purpose so again it's about as with any piece of plant or kit you have to do a risk assessment and one of the complaints we get from a lot of women working in construction or other male dominated industries is when the employer provides the clothing that is required to be worn it's men's clothing so it doesn't fit they're often issued with you know a shirt that's way too big and is increasing the likelihood of injury but they have to wear it because that's that's what's issued I think things are improving around clothing that is tailored for women's bodies but also around safety boots and so on wearing equipment that is going to increase your risk of injury is not a great idea but there's no room for individualism we're very lucky today because in the audience we've got some extra experts so I'm going to throw to them and Ross I was wondering if you if you'd like to make some comments around what we've heard today any are there some points around designing and managing working in heat that you think we haven't actually picked up so far I think we've touched on most of the points one that comes to mind in particular is the pre-planning of work and this comes from a number of different directions with the Bureau meteorology information that we can now get we can pre-plan months ahead you know when there's going to be a pretty good knowledge of the types of temperatures so we need to educate our work planners to start to design work particularly outages and the like to occur in better climate wherever we can control that and the concept of sometimes doing a job at night rather than doing in the middle of the day and I think the planning aspect of things we're not doing as well as we could be doing and so that's one of the areas that comes to mind the other thing Martin picked up on and I think he's probably very very important is that the cultural aspect for the individual to be able to say look I'm feeling the heat I really need to take a couple of minutes just have a drink just to rest and to understand that that impacts that the insight that the impacts from that that couple minute break is going to actually have benefits down the line in productivity the only other one I think is a classic example of a well-planned job a number of years ago in central Queensland the company was doing some work in a very hot environment in a smelter they pre-planned the work they built a specifically designed platform with air cooling vents and ergonomically designed it costs them considerable amount of money but when they did the business case it turned out to that saved them double what they paid so you can pre-plan better than what we're doing I think there's some really interesting insights and I think you've touched on a point that we hadn't mentioned is that there's the human but there's also a financial cost of actually getting it wrong and some productivity benefits in in getting it right do you either of you want to comment on that yeah I would mind sharing an example before I started this job three and a half years ago I was asked to go and fix up some issues at a gold mine in Papua New Guinea they kill two people relatively close together and they were closed down for nine weeks so that that was two point four million dollars per day lost production and overheads so the cost of getting safety wrong is enormous in lost productivity the human element and the delays in the jobs as well as the contractual delays and the consequences of that I'm a firm believer that if you get the safety right the quality in the production will follow investing upfront in some in some engineering controls might look expensive but in the grand scheme of things overall it'll be a drop in the ocean and I've said to people a number of times and repeated the adage that if you think safety is expensive try having an accident one of the issues that we heard about this morning was the use of technology to better provide potential for pre-planning but in a number of workplaces that I'm aware of because I've represented clients from there there is an absolute black ban on using mobile phones during working hours so if people are relying on technology to get a business case to go to their employer and say look this is what my app is telling me about the hot conditions that we're working in there are some employers I know who will immediately put them on performance management for accessing their mobile phones during working hours so we've got we've got a bit of dissonance between policies so I also know in the audience we've got Dr. Richard Garm so that's wasn't planned but it's a great segue I was wondering if you can provide any insight in we've heard about some of the problems with not being able to use phone but are there any apps or technologies you think that are coming into play here that we should be looking at? We can't advocate physiological monitoring for everybody but I think in the we've asked a question about where people are you know where you're in a real emergency situation may be or maybe essential maintenance has got to be conducted I think in those circumstances you know if you can't solve it by problems like ideal solutions like job rotation then I think you do have to consider a physiological monitoring it's relatively easy these days it's not you don't necessarily have to have radio pills by the way because nowadays we get a pretty good fix on people's body core temperature by measuring their temperature in their eardrum like it happens when you go to see a GP that gives you not absolutely accurate but it's a pretty good fix on your core temperature what we've done is actually measure it in both the eardrums and go by what is the maximum reading that you can get. So your message for us there is that in some limited circumstances biological monitoring and high-risk work may have some benefits. I think it should be considered in some of these cases yes where people can't particularly where they can't self-pace if I could just add that I think there does need to be more emphasis first of all before we are looking at environmental parameters the capacity for self-pacing this is really perhaps the most important thing you need to be looked at I learned this a few years ago I was doing a study on some people exposed to a lot of solar radiation working all day out on an intense sunlight the average dry bulb temperature during the day was about 39 degrees and we didn't get any casualties but because people were able to and and their body core temperature was under control because what happens is when you when it gets hotter your productivity drops and that's a good thing but I also looked at a group of shearers and they it's different for them because when they when it gets hot for them they override the natural tendency to slow down because that's it'll affect their pay and we actually monitored their output by because they keep a record of their tally of how many sheep this year because that determines how much they're going to get paid we found when the temperature went up 3940 the number of sheep they would share per hour would still stay the same and so what happened in their case unlike the the the other outdoor workers I mentioned their body temperature started started to go up so I think that the first thing you got to look at what is the capacity for self-pacing I think that's a really interesting insight and I guess it goes to your point Martin about culture and trust. I'd like to make a comment Australia's put a lot of effort into filling job shortages that Australians work that Australians apparently don't want to do and that is around perhaps at harvest time in agricultural areas so we're looking more and more at drafting our workforce from overseas countries so bringing in perhaps seasonal workers or four five seven workers and I don't know I honestly don't know what proof those employers have to provide about their work health safety practices and policies so I would suggest that one way of making people a little bit more accountable would be to produce their well researched well written well implemented heat policy if that work is going to be carried out in high-risk areas so I know that in the audience we're very pleased to have John in from the Bureau of Meteorology your organisation provides invaluable information to Australia and this we've heard about the importance of from Ross about pre-planning so what can the bomb offer us in terms of information help us plan ahead for not just heat ways but as we've heard just high night-time temperatures that might increase our fatigue yeah well certainly our observational data set is pretty good and will improve over time particularly as the internet of things starts to take off will become a very very large big data organisation as we start to aggregate all those data sources so think about virtually any place that wants to put a something on the internet in terms of monitoring will have it that's the intention in terms of the outside environment will be assimilating that into a supercomputer and our numerical modelling will be ensemble base so you have probabilistic forecast in terms of certainty of forecasts as well as very high resolution data to look at so there's prospects of actually a lot more data coming out and when we get that flood of data it really should probably be objectively taken up best by machine to machine responses in terms of actually getting the real productivity from it in terms of what we're doing right now we do have capabilities in giving seasonal outlooks and indeed extremes outlooks will be provided on a 12 month out looking forward basis probably in about three years time for agriculture so who else wants it is the question who else wants to partner up with us to find out how they can use it is really the answer really real question the Bureau has taken on a customer centric approach to its strategic plan only in the last two years so we're looking to how we can partner up effectively to get people using our data better for impact and value and we have a zero lives lost philosophy so we're looking for that outcome wherever we can partner up we're having incredible cut through with emergency services and high levels of government in terms of the pickup of our data we're not having the same impact across business so and we are endeavoring to make those inroads so I just like to ask our panels to just give us some take-home messages and perhaps I might start with you Chris first and what are some you know some succinct messages for us to take back to our workplaces to think about working in heat well I think the the key messages are that you take notice of your your own capability to withstand heat and keep aware of upcoming weather patterns hydration and watch out for your work mate and I think supporting people to speak up in their workplace and not be victimised for that is really important so having engagement of all parties in a workplace to design a good heat policy based on invaluable research we need the evidence to know what we need to be doing and not doing I think that's really important for me it's about creating the right culture I'm not sure if Scott knows but I did a walk and talk at the ASCR few months ago and I did it yeah yeah and and that was that was a really good example of an organisation that has that culture so because when you walk over and talk to people they were quite happy to stop and it was just it was a pleasure to go into that sort of environment to get there if you're not certain how to get there come and ask us so I'm trying to engage industry and I'm trying to work with our partner agencies to be more open and receptive SafeWorks got some very talented specialists a couple of which are here and I'm looking at them now who are more than willing to provide some guidance and advice so I appreciate that none of us know everything but we'll know somebody who can help it's just a case of reaching out. I'd like to thank our panelists and to take the insights that we've heard today and as we head into the hot time of the year to start applying them pre-planning as Ross's reminders to do to actually anticipate the risk to our risk assessments and bring in real risk controls.