A PCBU means a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking. Most New Zealand businesses, whether large corporates, sole traders, or self-employed, are classed as PCBUs.
A PCBU must, so far as is reasonably practicable, provide and maintain a work environment that is without health and safety risks. The work environment includes:
- the physical work environment, including lighting, ventilation, dust, heat and noise
- the psychological work environment, including overcrowding, deadlines, work arrangements (eg the effects of shift-work and overtime arrangements) and impairments that affect a person’s behaviour, such as work-related stress and fatigue, and drugs and alcohol.
PCBUs are responsible for providing and maintaining safe plant and structures. This includes machinery, vehicles, vessels, aircraft, equipment (including personal protective equipment), appliances, containers, implements, tools, buildings, masts, towers, frameworks, pipelines, quarries, bridges, underground works (including shafts and tunnels) and any component of one of these items or anything fitted or connected to one of these items. PCBUs must also ensure the safe use, handling and storage of plant, structures and substances.
Providing safe systems of work is also a PCBU’s responsibility, as is providing any information, training, instruction or supervision that is necessary to protect all persons from risks to their health and safety which may arise from the work of the business.
It is also a PCBU’s job to monitor the health of workers and the conditions of the workplace.
Another responsibility of a PCBU is to provide adequate facilities for the welfare of workers when doing work for the business, including ensuring access to those facilities. This also applies to providing healthy and safe worker accommodation when appropriate.
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See Examples of relevant workplace incidents:
Forestry worker dead after being put at risk by ‘uncommon’ method
AI tech deployed after chemical burn incident
Companies sentenced for working unsafely near powerlines
Thanks to Content Partner WorkSafe NZ
