WorkSafe hopes you enjoyed the festive season and your new year is off to a safe start.

There is currently a safety blitz underway and WorkSafe urges everyone in the housing construction industry to ensure sites and practices are up to scratch.

WorkSafe Regional Director – West, Adam Rogers, says builders and sub-contractors need to take time and check the effectiveness of their safety planning, worker supervision, fall prevention, electrical safety, site housekeeping and onsite worker facilities.

`We’re still seeing too many serious incidents on housing sites around the state with around 25 occurring each week’, he says.

Operation SafeSite began last year in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs where WorkSafe inspectors visited more than 100 sites and issued 58 improvement notices over a one-week period, with a further 44 health and safety breaches identified and rectified on the spot.

This month teams of inspectors are saturating areas around Ballarat, Bendigo, Warnambool, Geelong and Mildura.

WorkSafe Health and Safety General Manager, Lisa Sturzenegger, says many builders take a proactive approach to improving site safety but there’s still plenty of housing sites that don’t get basic safety issues right, let alone manage high risk construction work.

Make sure yours is not one of them.

Click here for the WorkSafe handbook Working safely in the housing construction industry.

For further information on how to make construction sites safe, please visit worksafe.vic.gov.au or contact the Housing Industry Association or the Master Builders Association.