Safety on construction sites

This book takes a different approach to safety on construction sites. 

This book seeks to draw on both academia and practice, and it is hoped that from either perspective, the other viewpoint proves illuminating and that both can be brought together here to give a different, informative and most importantly useful understanding of safety on construction sites. 

This brief overview has been considered here in order to illustrate the importance of how we talk about safety. Our contemporary understandings of safety have developed and crystallised through these dominant channels - the way we perceive safety to work is highly influential, and often more so than the mundane realities of how it actually works - as well as other more specific and individual influences, and has consequently permeated through society and into its workplaces. The context of safety on construction sites is therefore made up of much more than the industry structure, ways of working and the site rules as implemented by the... 

Another characteristic of accidents is the way they are often explored through ideas of cause and effect - put most simply unsafety is the cause, and the accident is the effect. Looking back over historical safety statistics, it is not surprising that recent improvements in safety on construction sites have been recognised ... 

Safety on construction sites operates within two distinct contexts. Firstly, the wider processes of the construction industry arguably create an environment in which safety struggles to survive. The constant pressures for production, as time and money are prioritised through the practices of lowest cost tendering and ever-squeezed margins along protracted and convoluted supply chains, are highly influential and can be readily identified as fundamental truths of construction site life. On sites, the presence and inevitability of... 

CDM are the initial letters of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994, which place responsibilities for safety on construction sites on everyone involved, from the designer and the client to principal and sub-contractors. 

Chapter 24 Engineering science (J.R. Ridley) 479 Chapter 25 Fire precautions (Dr P. Waterhouse) 500 Chapter 26 Machinery hazards (Professor R. T. Booth) 555 Chapter 27 Mechanical handling (K. G. Pearson) 577 Chapter 28 Electricity (E. G. Hooper) 603 Chapter 29 Statutory engineering inspections (E. S. Long) 622 Chapter 30 Safety on construction sites (A. Pinder) 650 Chapter 31 Safe use of chemicals (S. Bradley) 679... 

A detailed account of this topic is given in the HSE publication Electrical Safety on Construction Sites (HSG 141) and only a summary will be given here. 

Health and Safety Executive, Contract Reasearch Report no. CRR 299/1999, Improving Safety on Construction Sites by Changing Personal Behaviour, HSE Books, Sudbury (1999)... 

From an historical perspective, the problem with electrical safety on construction sites largely began after World War II when portable electric tools, electrically powered plant and electric lighting came into general site use. Up until the 1960s, there was no purpose-designed electrical distribution system available, so the main contractor would usually ask the electrical subcontractor to provide a minimum installation at minimal cost. 

BS 4363 Distribution units for electricity supplies for construction and building sites, was issued in 1968, and was amended in 1992 for compatibility with BS EN 60439-4 1994. This standard specifies the equipment. In 1969 BS CP 1017 appeared. This was the code of practice which describes how the BS 4363 apparatus was to be installed and used. This code was subsequently amended and renumbered as BS 7375 1996. See also HSE guidance booklet HS(G)141 - Electric Safety on Construction Sites. 

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