SIMPLE solutions for health and safety

Based in Nelson, we drive safety culture change across New Zealand workplaces.

Workplace Health & Safety Specialists

Effective, simple, compliant

All services can be delivered in your workplace whether on land or at sea. We can help you:

Create a safety culture in your workplace

Guard Safety offer health and safety services for all New Zealand workplaces, both land and sea based. Effective, simple, compliant workplace health and safety.

What people say about us

We could not have achieved the successful outcome of our MTOP without all the many hours/years of input by you – particularly ensuring that not only did we successfully implement our MTOP but also improved our Health and Safety policies and training and got the “buy-in” from our Skippers and crew which is key to ongoing success. You always responded promptly to any requests we made for assistance and guided us through any areas of which we were unsure of. You were happy to travel South to our business to give presentations and do inspections on our vessels. We have had a working relationship with you for more than 10 years and appreciate all the guidance you have given us. This will be ongoing, as continuous improvement is required to ensure our Skippers and crew operate in a safe and healthy environment.

Guard Safety has provided innovative and down to earth health and safety solutions for Sealord. They are our “go to people” if we need external help and given Darren has a huge knowledge of the maritime industry, he is fast and effective at implementation of all improvements. A practical understanding of how vessels work is essential, we get that with Guard Safety.

After initially navigating our way through the new Moss system our company Urwin & Co engaged the services of Guard Safety. Darren assisted us by doing an audit on our MTOP and liaised with our skippers on their requirements in preparation for the MNZ Audit. Darren has vast knowledge and experience in the fishing industry and Maritime New Zealand. His input on the audit process was invaluable to the company and the skippers. As a result of Darren’s assistance, the MNZ Audit was positive and our risk level profile improved from 35% to 15%. Maintenance of the MTOP system is important and he is our first point of contact for advice on health and safety on the vessels and MNZ compliance. His workshops held with us on health and safety and MNZ have also been well received by our skippers and crew. Because of his down to earth approach and his own experience as a fisherman, he is able to relate to our skippers and crew.

It was such an informative session! Everyone got involved and the training material was great. The tutor [Darren Guard] was awesome, knowledgeable and interesting; and the whole group could relate to him. Even though it was confronting, raw and a lot to take in, I believe we came away with a better understanding about mental health & wellbeing. I don’t think we normally spend enough time on this subject and that prompted more discussion, also outside of the room. It made me aware of the importance of respecting others because everyone is different.

Guard safety gets Proven Results

Nelson based company, Guard Safety believe that everyone has the right to go home safely at the end of the working day! It is this belief that drives Guard Safety to provide simple health and safety solutions in order to create safer working cultures within organisations – to ensure buy in to safety processes.

A champion of maritime safety, Darren Guard, has proven success in working with businesses to achieve strong safety outcomes. While employed as a Fleet Health and Safety Manager for a large fishing company, the vessel Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR- lost time injuries per million hours worked) went from 3.5 to 0.54 in three years.

Darren’s remained involved in safety because he has seen so many people in the industry he knows injured or killed at sea, and feels “It just doesn’t have to be that way”. He believes everyone has a right to come home to their family and friends at the end of the day.

The Guard Safety team have a unique skill set because of our industry and regulator experience.

Safety can be useable, understandable and desirable

Create a safety culture

A strong safety culture is key to a safe workplace. If people have simple and practical ways to comply with requirements and are motivated to stay safe through understanding more – safety is more likely to improve.

Guard Safety can provide the tools and mentoring support at all levels to assist your business develop a workplace safety programme.