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.
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.
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 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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