Safety in Construction

There have been significant reductions in the numbers and rates of injury over the last 20 years or more. Nevertheless, construction remains a high risk industry. 

People get hurt and die on construction sites in the UK, and indeed all over the world. I have worked on sites where people haven t gone home that day - they have ended up in a hospital bed instead, and we ve had a collection to help tide the family over whilst recovery takes place, as no wages will be coming in for the next few months. Safety matters. And it really matters to individuals and their families. 

However, such approaches have to fit in with existing shared ideas of safety on sites, drawing on what safety already is to help 

Unpacking Construction Site Safety, First Edition. Dr Fred Sherratt. 

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HS(G)168 Fire safety in construction work guidance for clients, designers and those managing and carrying... 

Health and Safety Executive (2014) Health and Safety in Construction in Great Britain, 2014 [Online]. Available http //www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/ industry/construction/construction.pdf [1 October 2015]. 

Lingard, H. and Rowlinson, S. (eds) (2005) Occupational Health and Safety in Construction Project Management. Spon Press, London. 

The ways in which safety in construction is measured and managed are able to reveal insights into the nature of safety itself within this context. Although approaches to safety management seek to improve and enhance understandings of safety within the workforce on sites, in many cases they simply do not help create a receptive context for such change, and in some cases actually provide a direct challenge. 

Health and Safety Executive (2007) Managing Health and Safety in Construction - Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 (CDM) Approved Code of Practice. HSE Books, Suffolk. 

Hughes, P. and Ferrett, E. (2007) Introduction to Health and Safety in Construction. 2nd Edn. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford. 

Despite the dominance of safe/unsafe within corporate literature and management systems, some documentation does seek to reposition safety away from this polarised construct within the realm of management. For example, the Health and Safety Executive HSG150 guidance document Health and Safety in Construction, HSG150 (2006 21) acknowledges the complex and ever-changing fluidity of safety, by the need for ... 

Of course the way we will know if we have ever been truly successful about safety in construction is when we stop talking about it at all. We won t even mention it. When it is no longer a segregated entity, something we need to prioritise and prominently label - but instead is simply what we do and how we do it when we carry out our work in the construction industry. 

A guide to managing health and safety in construction (ISBN 0 7176 0755 0)... 

HSG 144 Safe use of vehicles on construction sites HSG 150 Health and safety in construction GS28 Safe erection of structures pt 3 Working places and access PM28 Working platforms on fork lift trucks BS 5973 Code of Practice for access and working scaffolds and special scaffold structures in steel... 

N. M. Samuelson, The Effect of Foremen on Safety in Construction, Technical Report 219, Department of Civil Engineering, Stanford University, 1977. 

ISEA s support for voluntary standards comes from its membership and participation in the ANSI Z359 committee, which is developing component standards for what it calls the Fall Protection Code, and the ANSI AlO committee for safety in construction and demolition operations, which develops the A10.32 standard for fall protection in construction. The association is officially represented on these connnittees, and some member companies are individual manbers as well. 

Best practice guidance is normally published in the HSG series of publications by the HSE. Examples of best practice guidance books include Health and Safety in Construction HSG 150 and Lighting at Work HSG 38. 

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