Rules Made to be Broken

With safety violations such a common occurrence, it is not surprising that the punishment and discipline that goes along 

It s more to do with whoever s running the site. if they re giving out red and yellow cards, people see them doing that, it makes them more aware that people are coming down hard on health and safety. 

This creates and perpetuates an understanding of safety as the safety rules, which are in turn inevitably broken and therefore closely linked to punishment. This naturally embeds safety within the site hierarchy, through the allocation of safety roles for managers, supervisors and foremen. As the previous quote quite rightly notes, it is whoever is running the site that seemingly takes responsibility for enforcing the safety rules to the bitter end. In contrast, as this subcontractor s foreman said  

This foreman was talking about his own site operatives and his own management of safety, however, the way he talks about site safety rules gives them a very minor status - just an odd rule. Reference to violations as odd reduces their impact in both frequency and severity, and positions them within a reality where safety violations (which in practice could be very serious in terms of consequences) are frequently minimised through relatively casual talk and linguistic associations. Furthermore, this foreman s enforcement process does not fit within any wider management practice or process framework and no punishment is included within this level of interaction. This subcontractor s foreman is happy to simply enforce safety without further recourse or punitive action to his own site 

Indeed, safety violations are more often than not seen as bending rather than breaking the rules, with little association with danger or the potential for incident or injury. In fact, when people talk about violations and breaking safety rules, it isn t the potential of an incident or injury that becomes the consequence, rather it is the potential of being caught and punished that is of the greatest concern. 

---