Safety first: Lessons from a saw accident in the workplace

Safety first: Lessons from a saw accident in the workplace

Thursday 24 Apr 2025

On 20 December 2021, Ashley Industrial Services Ltd – a family-owned sawmill/manufacturing plant in Oxford - experienced a tragic accident. While operating a trim saw to trim wane from the ends of timber, one of our employees accidentally had his hand strike the saw's blade. The result was devastating, the worker lost parts of two fingers and sustained a degloving injury to another.

Key Learnings

The crushing incident has led us to further evaluate what we considered were already robust health and safety procedures and to further invest in improved safety measures. Some of our key learnings include:

1) The value of investing in safer machinery.

In response to the incident, we have heavily invested in new safer machinery, machinery housing and guarding upgrades that total up to $1 million. Those upgrades included, re-fitting our jump saw, installing a new emergency rope system on the conveyor, installing a pack saw and new optimizer and specialised machine housing. These investments not only replace our outdated equipment but also enhanced our overall health and safety measures, ensuring our operations meet the highest standards.

2) Standards and Risk Assessment.

We learned that relying solely on international safety benchmarks for machinery and guarding isn’t enough. New Zealand’s requirements differ, and it is vital to conduct our own risk assessments against New Zealand's standard. We employed an ongoing external health and safety consultant to assist us in reviewing all our existing and new machinery risk matrixes. They also helped us to review and improve all written systems including our auditing systems and standard operating procedures (SOPs). They have been a valuable voice for us.

3) Training, Discipline, and Culture.

Our approach to safety now includes further training opportunities, a more thorough assessment regime, regular licence checks and stricter disciplinary around employee personal protective equipment (PPE) breaches. More than anything, this experience has reinforced that it may not be reasonable to eliminate all risks entirely, we can aim to and work together to minimise risk. As long as our systems are in place and our peers and management strive to catch us when we fall, then the risks lower for all our entire team.

The lessons we’ve learned extend beyond our own sawmill. For everyone involved in the sawmilling sector—or any business using heavy machinery—the following points are crucial:

Tailor your safety measures. Conduct your own thorough risk assessments and align your safeguarding measures with New Zealand's regulatory requirements.
Prioritise your people over productivity, a culture where your staff feel safe and valued is the foundation of long-term productivity and safety. Ensure your teams know their safety and wellbeing comes first. They are mothers, fathers, partners and children and their safety is paramount.
Continue investing in upgrades, training and external advice or audits, regular reviews of equipment, comprehensive training programs, and strict adherence to operational procedures. These can all prevent accidents before they occur. Consider every upgrade as an investment in your people.
Collaborate and share your best practices. We are in an industry where the challenges are shared and collaborating and supporting each other creates a safer environment across the board.
Be proactive about your health and safety; we can never predict when an accident may occur, but we can be prepared.

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Source: New Zealand Timber Industry Federation (NZTIF)

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