Answer to Question 2:

Hi John-Paul,

You can design your own signs as long as they comply with the regulations.  The Safety Health and Welfare at Work (General Application) Regulations 2007 states that safety signs must be used whenever a hazard or danger cannot be avoided adequately or reduced in another way.  Before installing safety signs an employer should examine whether the hazard can be avoided or reduced by collective precautions (precautions that protect everybody) or safer ways of doing the work. 

A safety sign provides information about safety or health and can be a signboard, colour, acoustic signal, verbal communication, or hand signal. 

A signboard is a sign that provides information or instruction using a combination of shape, colour and symbols but excludes information in writing. 

Safety signboards put in place after 1 November 2007 should not contain text.  Text may be included on a supplementary signboard provided that it does not adversely affect the effectiveness of the safety signboard.  This is because the symbols or pictograms on a signboard are intended to be understood, independently of the language ability of the worker viewing it.  

Where a signboard is already in place before 1 November 2007 and it meets all the requirements of Part 7 and Schedule 9 to the General Application Regulations 2007, except that it contains text, an employer may leave that signboard in place until 1 January 2011. 

• Red for prohibition
• Yellow for caution
• Green for positive action
• Blue for mandatory actions
• O Discs for prohibitions and instructions
• Δ Triangles for warnings
• □ Squares and rectangles for emergency and information signs

Examples of Prohibition Signs

Examples of Mandatory Signs

Examples of Warning Signs

Regards,
Paul