Enhancing Safety & Sustainability: How Forestry Corporation of NSW Transformed Incident Management

The Challenge

Native forest management and its environmental regulations are of significant public interest. Both State and Commonwealth Governments have developed a strong regulatory framework to ensure ecologically sustainable forest management across the landscape. Within this framework, the Forestry Corporation operates under a comprehensive set of regulations designed to balance timber production with environmental considerations, ensuring the sustainability of both the forests and the timber they produce.

Operations in forest environments—such as firefighting and extensive travel—can be hazardous for staff. Consequently, the Forestry Corporation places a strong emphasis on maintaining and improving safety performance.

The Forestry Corporation faced challenges in managing safety and environmental incidents due to limitations with their existing reporting systems. These challenges included:

• Underreporting or delayed reporting of incidents, near misses, and hazards.
• Difficulty monitoring incident numbers and corrective action implementation.
• A lack of understanding of the broader implications of incidents beyond safety and environmental concerns.

Before adopting Riskware for incident, near-miss, and hazard reporting in 2015, the Forestry Corporation used two separate systems. Incidents, near misses, and hazards were sometimes unrecorded or reporting delayed, making it challenging to monitor incident numbers or the implementation of corrective actions. Moreover, it was not well understood that incidents could extend beyond safety and environmental issues to include business, reputational, and legal compliance aspects.

The Solution

In 2015, the Forestry Corporation adopted Riskware as a comprehensive solution for incident, near-miss, and hazard reporting. The user-friendly platform and mobile app enabled staff to capture and report incidents in real-time, even in remote locations.