[committee] Fwd: UCC 'test-and-tag'

[Grace Rosario]

SOC is not very good at hitting reply-to-all.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Hinako Shiraishi 19* <soc-president at guild.uwa.edu.au>
Date: Monday, 27 May 2019
Subject: Re: [committee] UCC 'test-and-tag'
To: Grace Rosario <20483992 at student.uwa.edu.au>


Hi Grace,

 In final response to your queries about the testing and tagging.

Firstly, we are organizing this in bulk for all tenants because we can save
the tenants time and money – you are most welcome to organize this
yourselves but we believe there are significant savings through our
supplier.

If you are to organize this yourselves, we require a copy of the testing
report for our records. You can go ahead and arrange for this to be done,
and have it compliant to AS/NZS:3760, however it is stated *in the
standard* that
it must be completed by a *competent person*. As such, if the report is not
supplied by a reputable company or service provider, we will also require a
copy of the certification of the person(s) performing the testing.

As the landlord to the tenants, I have a duty of care to ensure that the
environment meets safety standards and that those who occupy and visit the
areas are safe to do so.

In terms of insurance, if anything were to happen as a result of faulty
equipment that was not tested and tagged correctly, there is no basis to
make a claim and so insurance would be void. As this is going to be a risk
for us, as a landlord, I cannot allow you to continue to occupy the space.

In short, the options at the moment are:

   1. Have us arrange testing and tagging;
   2. You can arrange your own testing and tagging with a person qualified
   to do such testing; or
   3. Look at vacating the space.

If there is any more dispute, you can take it up with Tony Goodman in a
face-to-face meeting.


Regards,

Taco Shiraishi

Tenancy Chair

SOC President


On 23 May 2019 09:33, Grace Rosario <20483992 at student.uwa.edu.au> wrote:

Hello SOC,

I'm not sure if this (picture attached) really constitutes a response to
our email, since it didn't get sent to the committee, just to one member,
and used a personal Facebook account to communicate. So I'm pretty sure, at
least, that this is not an official response.

I'm not sure that we were clear enough in our last email, but could
somebody please link us to the safety standards of the guild, which are
apparently separate from the UWA regulations. I have looked on the guild
website and this information is not available to me anywhere that I can see.

The UCC committee would like to view the policy that they are being asked
to comply with.

Best regards,
Grace Rosario
UCC Secretary


[image: image.png]

On Wed, 22 May 2019 at 23:47, Timothy Chapman <22483878 at student.uwa.edu.au>
wrote:

Dear SOC,

Speaking on behalf of the UCC committee, we have recently received your
request to 'test-and-tag' all of our plugs. We would appreciate it if you
could please outline why this is *necessary*.
UCC has (as you would expect) a very large number of electrical devices,
and so, such a requirement is exceptionally onerous for the club — to the
tune of several hundred dollars per year.

Examining the UWA Electrical Safety Guidelines
<http://www.safety.uwa.edu.au/topics/electrical-safety/testing-tagging-guidelines>,
we were able to identity the section of the requirements this seems to be a
result of.

*"UWA uses a risk management approach to determine where specific testing
of electrical equipment is necessary. This is achieved by defining
workplaces as hostile or non-hostile electrical environments and then
specifying the required frequency of either Visual Inspections or Testing
and Tagging"*

While it seems good for the clubs on UWA to follow the UWA safety rules, we
note that the regulations split environments into two categories: Hostile
and Non-hostile.
The requirement of "Testing and Tagging" *exclusively* refers to "hostile
environments". According to those regulations a *non-*hostile environment
is defined as follows:

*"This is a workplace that is dry, clean, well organised and free of
operating conditions that may result in damage to electrical equipment or
the flexible supply cord."*

We are strongly of the impression that UCC firmly fits into the category of
*non-hostile*, and as such this requirement seems to be unnecessary.
>From your request, we can only conclude that you have classified UCC as a
hostile environment.

Would it be possible to get a thorough and well justified explanation for
why UCC has been singled out and identified? *(see email from Taco
Shiraishi on May 15)* Since if we were to go ahead with the tagging, UCC
appears to be expected to pay a significant sum out of pocket for
superfluous electrical testing.

Looking forward to your reply,

Timothy Chapman
UCC Ordinary Committee Member
_______________________________________________
List Archives: http://lists.ucc.asn.au/pipermail/committee
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/pipermail/committee/attachments/20190527/ac30bb0c/attachment.htm>