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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