One of the more recent surveys carried out by CONIAC (1999) highlighted a number of industry-recognised deficiencies:
- The principles of the CDM Regulations are right, but there are problems with implementation
- Most clients irrespective of size are unaware of or do not want to know about the Regulations
- The role of the Planning Supervisor is often not seen to ‘add value’ to health and safety
- Although there have been some improvements, designers’ knowledge of and commitment to health and safety is limited
- There was strong support for the principles of assessing competence and resources, but concern about the excessive paperwork that is generated
- Pre-Tender and construction phase health and safety plans are often generic with little or no relationship to particular construction projects. In addition plans are too large and not used on site
- There is insufficient training in project related health and safety and little consultation with the workforce
- The should be a high level of visible enforcement of the regulations with more publicised prosecutions
The key issues in relation to designers were listed as follows:
- Many designers are not complying with Regulation 13, which places a duty on the designer to ensure that any design he prepares avoids foreseeable risk.
- Designer’s knowledge of health and safety is limited and many are not interested
- Designers use off the shelf material, which causes problems. Designers should do more to question what cause problems
- HSE must encourage more effective communication between designers and contractors at an early stage
Whilst all of the aforementioned issues need to be addressed, of particular importance is the level of designer knowledge and commitment to health and safety, for one of the intrinsic factors of risk assessment is the elimination of risk at source. In order to do this designers must have the technical knowledge or access to it, to be able to identify the potential risks that their designs create for the workforce.
PENALTIES OR OWN GOALS?
If the risk of accidents and their associated costs in lost time and insurance premiums, are not a sufficient motivating factor, then a UK Court of Appeal ruling made in November 1998 recommended that in future, fines must be large enough to impact on those who manage a company (and their shareholders). Whilst fines should avoid the risk of causing bankruptcy there may be cases where an offence is so serious that the defendant ought not to be in business.
Table 1: Average fines imposed per industrial sector (HSE, 1998)
In the UK construction sector although the number of convictions has increased, the average fine imposed has decreased. The reverse of which is true for both the manufacturing and service sectors. The Ramsgate Walkway collapse and Heathrow tunnel collapse are high profile cases where stiffer penalties have been levied. Ironically the £1 Million fine against the two Swedish firms involved in the design and fabrication of the walkway and the Australian tunnelling consultant found partly responsible for the Express link collapse have ‘walked away without paying the fine’ as criminal fines cannot be pursued outside the country (Thompson, 2000). In addition a Court of Appeal ruling made in January 2000 uncovered a loophole in the regulations, which resulted in designers escaping responsibility for the work of their contractors.
More recently The Sunday Times exposed an internal HSE document entitled Public Expenditure Review 2000 that highlighted the financial crisis the Executive is in. Currently only 8.4% of the 35,000 major injury recorded in the country are scrutinised and as a result of government capping and >10% of its budget being spent on the Paddington rail crash (which resulted in no prosecutions), the HSE is faced with shelving more investigations (Editorial 2000). This turmoil created by the Treasury and the Judiciary is not helping designers or the industry. It is therefore crucial that the industry is more self-regulating.
THE NEED FOR COMMUNICATION DURING DESIGN
Numerous government and stakeholder-sponsored studies on the culture and operation of the UK construction industry have been conducted. These reports have acknowledged that communication and information flow during design have a major impact on the performance of construction projects. The most recent, the Egan Report (1998) identified a number of shortcomings, which included:
“too much time and effort is spent in construction on site, trying to make designs work in practice.... which is indicative of a fundamental malaise in the industry - the separation of design from the rest of the project process.”
“there has to be a significant re-balancing of the typical project so that all these issues are given much more prominence in the design and planning stage before anything happens on site”
“designers should work in close collaboration with the other participants in the project process. They must understand more clearly how components are manufactured and assembled.”
From a designer point of view the lack of knowledge of construction materials, processes and techniques used in the industry is of major concern. This is compounded by the inability to identify and eliminate risks. Associated with the introduction of the CDM Regulations is the necessity to keep abreast of new and revised health and safety legislation, for in designing safely and being able to carry out risk assessments, designers will now need to know the parameters which govern work tasks, operations and materials used. This is no small accomplishment for, since their introduction, numerous regulations, approved codes of practice and revised statutes have been implemented, not to mention new materials each of which have particular handling characteristics and COSHH requirements. It is hardly surprising therefore that some in the industry have been slow to adopt such practices. Thus, to a large extent the application of such regulations is intuitive and relies on the attitude and behaviour of the designers towards safety and their ability to communicate the identifiable risks effectively.
Atkinson (1999), who carried out an empirical study of 107 UK construction industry practitioners, found that communication was the highest rated factor to affect human error. He further suggested that a comprehensive examination of patterns of communication is required. Similarly, in a detailed survey of 38 construction companies in Hong Kong, K.W. Wong et al (1999) found that communication was the most important factor affecting safety performance on construction sites and second most important affecting the company as a whole.
BS 7000 (Design Management Systems) recommends that a communication policy should be enforced within the design process to ensure those involved are informed about everything relevant/pertinent to the task in hand. It also suggests that lines of communication should not be confused with lines of authority and that communication may legitimately occur in any direction through an organisational structure.
These two recommendations appear to contradict current UK practice. Various reports on the practical implementation of the CDM Regulations have suggested that the information generated tends to be generic and voluminous. The reasons for this are unclear, however it is thought that because designers are not confident on how to demonstrate compliance with the requirements, they include all the information pertinent to the project regardless of its relevance to health and safety.
In addition lines of communication are controlled by the procurement system adopted for the project and are not as flexible as suggested the British Standard. For example under the UK’s JCT 80 lump sum traditional form of contract, theoretically the design is complete before contractors and specialists have been appointed allowing little or no opportunity to communicate before the design is complete. Under JCT 87 the Management Contractor is the only party to have exclusive contact with specialists, not the designers. This clearly shows difficulties for the designers if they require information from specialists.
Thus communication during the design phase is a major factor governing the performance of construction projects. It also appears that designers are ill equipped to satisfy all the technical requirements within a project especially in relation to health and safety. In addition it seems that communication is hindered by inflexible procurement contracts and lack of relevant information.
INFORMATION AVAILABILITY FOR DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
Design entails the combination and balance of ideas generated by the design team, which should reflect the needs of the clients brief. Much design involves the use of basic components and materials in new and different ways within the constraints of the planning and standardised tolerances. There is no single underlying method or system used in the creation of a design, most design strategies are re-iterative and consist of the generation of several potential solutions or hypotheses, which are evaluated, refined and even combined until an acceptable solution is created (Gray et al 1993).
Within this environment of evolution and change, health and safety can often become of secondary importance to the more immediately demanding requirements, which are usually determined by the client. This is not merely an oversight, information is traditionally scarce during the early stages of design, and in some cases information is simply not available. As yet there is little information on designing safely in construction. While there is a surfeit of published material relating to the design of plant, process, offshore and nuclear industries, construction has been largely ignored. The introduction of the CDM Regulations brought new requirements for designers to consider safety. These regulations however are not prescriptive and as a result implementation has been inconstant.
It must be remembered however that safety issues are not the only new regulations or practices to be introduced. Construction is constantly developing, in as much as green issues embodied energy, and other environmental criteria have also come to the fore. At the same time existing controls are continuing to evolve, for example, Part L of the Building Regulations, Party Wall Agreements, etc. all of which have an impact on the designers. It appears that designers have been able to adapt and incorporate these new and evolved changes into design because ultimately they are based on existing knowledge of incorporation e.g. in a number if cases a change of material specification will address the issue.
Designers are apparently unaware that the same is true of some safety issues. For example between 1986 and 1992 the category that caused the largest number of fatalities in the UK was associated with roof work and within that criteria 56% (83 deaths) were associated with falling through fragile material including roof lights, asbestos panels, thin metal liner panels and wooden access staging. HSE statistics for 1999 still show that the roof-work trade contributes 20% of all construction fatalities. A simple change in specification at the design stage may have saved many of these unnecessary deaths.
Thus it appears that there is little information during the design stage in relation to the project, there is little information on designing safely in construction, certain procurement routes hinder communication flow and to a certain extent designers are unaware, unwilling or unable to seek technical solutions from elsewhere. One proposed solution is through education, certainly of those who are currently in training but also those in professional practice through continual professional development and their professional bodies. This however is of limited use as we have previously acknowledged that construction is constantly developing techniques and materials and availing ourselves with all that happens in construction through CPD is unrealistic.
Feedback or project dissection meetings would also be a valuable contributor. Before the end of the defects liability period the project stakeholders could discuss the pros and cons on the design, construction and initial maintenance aspects of the project. This would provide an invaluable source of information to the designer on the safety, buildability and maintenance of their designs. However in practice although feedback has for a long time been advocated (e.g. Part M of the UK’s RIBA Plan of Work) industry has seen fit to ignore the opportunity.
Seeking information from specialist contractors would appear on paper to be the most beneficial. Specialists are more than likely to be at the forefront of technology within their discipline, certainly more aware than most designers. They have knowledge on initial and life cycle costing, buildability, maintainability and possibly demolition / decommissioning. In fact numerous reports have found that early incorporation of specialist knowledge enhances overall project performance. However, just as fragmentation of the industry has helped evolve the diversity of specialist contactors it has also created barriers. Design liability would strictly lie with the specialist if they were to provide design information. Thus specialists would have to charge for the information, if not for their time, certainly for the liability insurance, which in turn would increase the design costs. Whether the additional design costs outweigh the benefits of safety, buildability and maintainability not to mention other factors would be open to debate.
CONCLUSIONS
Health and Safety need to be considered as a part of project risk along side programme, environment and budget etc. For only when all risks are considered and controlled as an integral part of the project will benefits be seen? Designing for safety at an early stage would lead to greater appreciation of project risk and its proper apportionment. It would also lead to increased buildability and thereby its associated benefits: quality, production rates, reduced delays etc. If safety cannot be sold on its own merits then selling it as a means of achieving other requirements may be the most convincing method for its incorporation and inclusion. Feedback, more flexible procurement contracts, Education and CPD, communication with specialists and longer design times would all aid the designer in communication and dissemination of project information.
This paper clearly indicates that insufficient knowledge is dedicated to the implementation of safety procedures during the design phase. This paper concludes that there is much need for improvement. Designers need more information about the projects’ potential hazards at a time when information is traditionally scarce. The ability to effectively communicate design intentions is critical for safe construction and maintenance operations. Research into the communication of safety during design is therefore crucial for future improvements.
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