Construction Injury Prevention through Safety
July 2009
The creation of a safe work environment
on a construction site requires a team effort in identifying, evaluating,
and managing the risks that flow to the worksite. All the participants—owners,
designers, contractors, and safety professionals—must cooperate
and contribute to achieve this lofty goal. "Construction
Injury Prevention through Design" discussed the role of the
owners and designers. Now we turn to contractors and safety professionals.
by
Peter G. Furst
Lecturer
When it comes to construction field operation, there are two
major elements to address: the means and methods selected by the
contractor to execute the construction operational plan and the
safety procedures employed to create a "safe" work environment at
the project site. So, to assist the designer in addressing construction
risk, the contractor will have to provide the proposed project operational
plan prepared for pricing purposes. This plan reflects some of the
key decisions made on how best to meet the contract terms, expectations,
and design intent. The designer and contractor may review this plan
and its associated risk to see how best to eliminate or diminish
their impact.
The contractor's selected means and methods, usually reflects
past operational experience equipment available or perceived efficient
methods. To create an injury-free work environment, the contractor
must use innovative construction management processes in order to
minimize risk. Such tools as the last planner for scheduling and
a lean project delivery process go a long way toward minimizing
worksite risks. The contractor's use of such tools, as well as Building
Information Modeling (BIM), will create fewer challenges for the
designer in the elimination of risk during the design process.
For many contractors, safety is not a critical element of the
preconstruction operational plan, except for major exposures. Things
like fall protection systems, scaffolding needs, excavation protective
systems, etc., are usually addressed by subcontractors. The general
contractor will need their input and provide this information to
the designer. All this effort may be for naught if the contractor
does not have safety as a core value and does not address it with
its subcontractors at inception. Because in many cases, when production
is at risk and contact completion penalties loom, safety tends to
"take the backseat." The worker, if faced with a perceived choice
between working safely and being more productive given the work
climate, will invariable choose taking risks to achieve the productivity
goals. We also have to appreciate that taking risk does not always
result in incidents and more rarely in injuries, so risk taking
becomes more or less routine, and the thought of injuries take on
less importance.
Another issue revolves around industry practice. In the case
of fall from heights in steel erection (see
Figure 1), the usual method used for protecting the worker from
falls when disconnecting the sling (chocker) from the middle of
the beam after it has been placed and connected, is to provide a
cable in the flange area of the beam to which the worker is directed
to attach his lanyard. Should a worker fall, the total fall distance
(from where his feet are before the fall to where his feet end up
after can be in the neighborhood of 14-18 feet depending on some
variables (Ellis 2001). Since many commercial buildings have a floor-to-floor
height of around 12 feet or so, the falling worker will impact the
lower level and suffer an injury. So from this perspective the fall
protection system selected in the "example" is ineffective in keeping
workers from getting injured. So, there also is a "design" element
in the contractor's area of control that also needs to be addressed
when selecting ways to protect the workforce from harm on construction
sites.
Click here for
Figure 1.
There are a multitude of conditions that lend themselves to other
solutions depending on the height of the structure. In buildings
that are only a few stories high, the worker may be able to perform
the task mentioned above from an aerial lift, thereby eliminating
the need for fall protection. Another option is available in case
the steel member weight is within the capacity range of clamps,
then the sling configuration is replaced with a safer option. There's
also the possibility of using a different sling configuration that
will eliminate the choker, and the "disconnection" may be accomplished
from the beam ends.
All of these options must be explored during the contractor's
planning stage so that the cost of these possibilities can be rolled
into the bid price. This suggestion may potentially impact competitiveness
in a bid situation. If the owner does not consider the safety aspects
of the operational plan, then the contractor must make a business
decision, which in all likelihood will mean matching industry standards,
which the contractor's competitors will use. To remain competitive,
the contractor will be faced with an economic challenge.
Another area to explore is the safety procedures employed by
the contractor in providing a safe workplace for its employees.
The usual techniques utilized are orientation, meetings, program
rules, training, engineered controls, and inspections. If any sort
of planning is done during construction, it may consist of completing
a Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) for "high" hazard tasks, and the use
of a 2-3 week look-ahead schedule for coordination and resolution
of any safety issues. The predominant means of addressing safety
is usually a small part of the production/coordination meetings.
This is an ineffective application of the planning process, which
is one of the most powerful tools available to the contactor to
create an injury-free worksite. (See "Managing
Construction Risk through Pre-Operational Planning" as well
as other articles penned by the
author.)
Contractor's selected means and methods are another source of
risk that may be affected by the owner's requirements, although
the contractor has greater discretionary control in this area. See
numerous articles on this topic on
www.irmi.com as well
as other articles penned by the author.
Safety Management and the Safety Professional
It is generally the worker who is considered to be in control
of the safe performance results. Over the years, there have been
numerous studies of accident data which indicated that virtually
all accidents are caused by workers making choices which lead to
incidents, injuries, and ultimately losses (Heinrich, Byrd, et al.).
As a result, safety programs, policies, and procedures have generally
focused their efforts on interventions that deal with controlling
the physical environment and the behavior of the workforce. The
underlying premise governing safety performance improvement is that
somehow by "fixing" the worker, safety problems will be resolved.
There is no question that the workers do have control over their
own behavior, and that they do make choices that sometimes lead
to incidents, but in the workplace there is much, much more at play
than individual worker decisions and choices. An overlooked area
is the jobsite management's ability to exercise considerable control
over virtually everything that transpires at the workplace, including
affecting the worker's decision-making, as well as safe behavior.
Safety performance improvement strategies typically start with
a review of past losses. From this analysis flow the interventions
for the upcoming time period. These interventions typically include
more training, emphasis on certain program elements, writing of
new procedures, or more rigorous inspections. More than likely,
in the short-term, some of these interventions do garner improved
result in the safety outcome metrics. But in the long run, the results
never live up to expectations. And so more training, retaining,
incentives, and priority programs are instituted with similar resulting
outcomes.
Some of this is because the improvement strategy is based on
historic data and the future is never exactly the same as the past.
The data analyzed may not give a true picture of all the contributing
causes. The focus generally is on the worker and not on the systems,
processes, and culture. Since the worker is a part of the "system"
that takes the design information and builds the physical structure,
trying to "change" the worker's behavior does not remove the underlying
cause of the behavior. That remains to manifest itself in the actions
of the next injured worker. In the construction industry, this happens
all the time—somewhat like a self-fulfilling prophesy. Interventions
focusing on workers have been used by organizations for decades,
generating some success, but the positive result generally tends
to plateau and is short-lived.
In organizations, there are a great number of areas where the
management of the safety process is out of alignment with innovative
thinking. For example, safety is generally end-of-the-line focused
and vertically managed. It should have a cross-departmental focus
and have a functional horizontal value flow. Safety objectives are
usually out of alignment with business goals. Safety management
is not integrated into operational processes, and safety metrics
have little relationship to measures used to manage the organization.
There should be an organizational integrated strategy with defined
objectives, aligned metrics, and achievable goals. Safety should
report to senior management and have a part in the organization's
overall strategy. Safety should be an organizational core value—it
should be instinctual!
Conclusion
Integrating safety processes into contractor operations and utilizing
innovative approaches to managing the safety process are crucial
to ensuring a safe construction environment. The safety professional
must be cognizant of innovative approaches to understanding human
error (Dekker 2006) and the need to make the work environment and
free of hazards and risk as possible. While the owner manages the
process, ensuring cooperation between the design team and the contractor
team, a well-conducted construction process and knowledgeable safety
professionals are critical to achieving the goal of an injury-free
workplace.
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