Water Tight Canberra wins the 2021 WorkSafe ACT Award (and the story of how we got serious about safety)
In November 2021, Water Tight Canberra was named winner of the WorkSafe ACT Award at the Master Plumbers ACT Plumbing Industry Excellence Awards. The award was presented to Tom by Jacqueline Agius, the ACT Work Health and Safety Commissioner, at an invitation-only ceremony at the Reece showroom in Fyshwick. It was the middle of a COVID year, so there was no gala dinner, but there was a trophy, an elbow bump and a very happy team the following Monday.
Of all the awards on the office wall, this is the one we’re proudest of. Here’s why.
What the award is
Every year Master Plumbers ACT runs the Plumbing Industry Excellence Awards to recognise the best apprentices, tradespeople, projects and businesses in the Canberra plumbing industry. WorkSafe ACT sponsors one category: the WorkSafe ACT Award, given to the business that has done the most to build a safe and healthy workplace over the past year.
It isn’t a tick-the-box award. The judges look at what a business has actually put in place, whether the team uses it, and whether it has changed the way people work.
How we got serious about safety
Honest answer: by admitting the system we had wasn’t working.
A few years before the award, we’d bought a safety system, the kind a lot of small trade businesses buy. On paper it ticked every box. In practice it had no understanding of how a plumber actually spends a day, and it changed nothing about how our work was being carried out. Apprentices and tradesmen were signing ten-page job safety analyses before they picked up a tool, full of clauses and legal jargon that none of us, Tom included, could honestly say we understood. It was compliant. It wasn’t making anyone safer.
The turning point was a conversation with Jason Tait from Laser Plumbing Canberra Central. Laser had won the WorkSafe ACT Award in 2020, and Jason’s view was that safety is the one part of business everyone should be open-book about. Talking through Laser’s journey, Tom realised something that sounds obvious now: a safety system can be fully compliant without being a paperwork marathon. Jason’s summary of how Laser got there was refreshingly blunt: make a heap of mistakes, simplify it, implement in small steps.
Laser was a team of 70-odd plumbers at the time. Water Tight Canberra had about ten. So Tom, who was President of Master Plumbers ACT, and Jason, who was on the board, set out to adapt the practical system Laser had built for a big operation into something small and mid-sized plumbing businesses could actually run.
That became the Master Plumbers ACT Safety Management System. It has three parts:
- A plain-English guide to practical safety in the workplace, built around five steps: induct your people properly, give them the right PPE, do a Take 5 safety check on every job, complete a Safe Work Method Statement when the job actually calls for one (high-risk construction work), and review how it’s all going.
- A set of short, job-specific SWMS templates for the high-risk work plumbers really do: working at heights, trenches and excavation, confined spaces, gas, EWPs, concrete cutting and the rest. Written to be read and used on site, not filed.
- Training. We ran member sessions on the system, recorded walkthrough videos on how to use it, and Master Plumbers ACT released the whole package to members in 2022 as a free membership benefit.
The system kept it simple and practical, and it did the one thing our old system never did: it changed how the team worked. People understood what they were signing. The Take 5 happened on every job. The SWMS came out when it mattered, and nobody had to pretend they’d read ten pages of legalese in the van.
We still run that same system today. Simple, practical, compliant, and nothing in it that a first-year apprentice can’t understand.
What it looks like on a Water Tight Canberra job
- Every plumber is inducted into the system before their first job, and re-inducted when it changes.
- A Take 5 on every job, every time: stop, look at the site, think about what could go wrong, control it, then start.
- A proper SWMS for high-risk work (roofs, trenches, confined spaces, gas), signed by the people doing the work, on a form they’ve been trained to use.
- The right gear in every van, and the time in the job to use it. If the safe way takes longer, the safe way is what we quote.
- Short, regular toolbox talks about real things that happened on real jobs, because consultation that’s actually a conversation is what the Act asks for and what works.
- Near misses and hazards reported without blame. That one habit has taught us more than any audit.
Why it matters to you
If you’re a customer, a safe plumbing business is a better plumbing business. The same discipline that keeps our plumbers safe on your roof is what keeps your home protected while we’re in it: the drop sheets, the isolations, the gas tests, the clean-up. A crew that works to a system does the job properly, every time.
If you run a trade business, our advice is Jason’s advice: start small, keep it simple, and don’t be precious about sharing what you’ve learned. The Master Plumbers ACT Safety Management System is free to members, and Tom has since taken it to the Lifestyle Tradie network as well. The more tradies going home safe at night, the better.
Thank you
Thanks to Master Plumbers ACT and WorkSafe ACT for the recognition, to Jason and the Laser team for showing the way, and most of all to the Water Tight Canberra team, who do this every day whether anyone’s watching or not.
Water Tight Canberra, founded in 2010 by Tom Martin, provides plumbing, drainage, gas fitting, hot water and blocked drain services across Canberra, Queanbeyan and Jerrabomberra. ACT licensed plumber 2017441. Member of Master Plumbers ACT. Winner, 2021 WorkSafe ACT Award; national winner, 2019 Telstra Business Awards; Winner, Plumbing Services (Large), 2026 Australian Trades Small Business Champion Awards.
