Health and safety is a perennial problem in the construction industry, but one that the industry’s leading players have been giving serious attention to. As a result, sites managed by the industry leaders tend to be the safest and are appreciably better places to work than they would have been only ten years ago.
The never-ending scrutiny of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has played a large part in that success, despite the Executive never having quite the resources at its command as it would like. The Fee for Intervention Scheme has meant at least some of the cost of the HSE’s efforts can be clawed back from companies that fail to ensure that their sites are up to standard when the inspectors visit.
There was an outcry about the unfairness of these charges when the Scheme was introduced, but few would argue that the visits themselves are unfair. The Fee for Intervention is just another incentive for those who need it to do what the law insists be done to ensure worker safety and health at work.
Part of the reason for increased safety has no doubt been the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 which are currently under review, with consultation closing on 6 June. The biggest change is scrapping the need for a stand-alone CDM coordinator responsible for ensuring that the requirements of the Regulations are met, with those responsibilities being transferred to the ‘principal designer’ of the construction team. The principal designer will have duties relating to information, instruction, training and supervision as opposed to the previous duty to assess competence. The existing Approved Code of Practice is being replaced with tailored guidance.
HSE says the changes, which include simplifying and shortening the Regulations themselves, will deliver cost and administration savings to companies. Prescriptive measures about what comprises safety are being replaced with a requirement to ensure that those carrying out construction work are provided with the appropriate information, instruction, training and supervision to allow them to work safely.
It will be the client’s duty to appoint a principal designer whenever there will be more than one contractor on a project or whenever it looks like there could be more than one at any time during the project. The client can take on the role itself, but in the case of a domestic client the role will be deemed to be held by the first designer and contractor appointed during pre-construction or construction phases.
This represents a shift in focus at the HSE, onto clients as well as designers and contractors. Progress on safety has been good, but there is still an unacceptably high rate of death and serious injury on construction sites that stubbornly won’t go away. It has been said before that it is construction’s clients who shape the industry – that they get the industry they deserve. Construction’s workforce deserves a safer industry than it gets; can clients help? From April next year we will begin to see.
Nick Barrett
Editor