Trend puts construction workers in danger

23rd May 2014

  

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Buying generalised, nonspecific health and safety files from consultants to expedite the start of building projects has become a “menacing monster” threatening the wellbeing of building site workers, warns building industry representative association Master Builders Association (MBA) North.

Association construction health and safety manager Doug Michell says increasing reports are being received of contractors having to wait several weeks to start construction projects as a result of delays in obtaining client approval of the health and safety plans submitted by the contractor.

“There are disturbing allegations of contractors being warned that the health and safety plans they have labouriously compiled will achieve no more than about 20% of the required standards and that it would be better for the contractors to purchase a so-called ‘health and safety file’ from the consultant, usually at an exorbitant fee,” he says.

Michell explains that the contractor may be a specialist contractor who has taken the time and effort to develop specific risk assessments and other relevant documents drawn up with the help of experts in their fields, which the consultants now recommend be replaced by a generalised health and safety file to accelerate processes.

“This expensive, prepackaged health and safety file would normally have been compiled by a generalist, often with limited insight into a particular project’s associated risks, and whose priority and expertise lie mainly in satisfying the client’s health and safety agent,” he says.

This alarming tendency totally negates the construction regulations’ quest for project-specific health and safety specifications, taking the relevant project’s specific factors into account when the health and safety specifications are drafted, says Michell.

Such factors may include the scope of work and what is being built; location of the site and elements specific to the location, such as municipal by-laws, weather factors or geographical factors; geotechnical reports containing findings regarding soil conditions and other issues that may hinder project progress; baseline risk assessments based on the scope of work; and controls specific to the client’s requirements.

Michell explains that, when a client appoints a prin-cipal contractor with the necessary resources and skills, the requirements should include the premise that the contractor complies with South African law as a minimum requirement. Further, the health and safety specifications that are to be followed should not just be a regurgitation of the Basic Occupational Health and Safety Act and Construction Regulation requirements, prepackaged and sold as an all-purpose safety file.

“A specific health and safety plan should be a far more comprehensive document than just a standard health and safety file with copies of monthly inspection reports and minutes of meetings,” he says.

Discussions and negotiations regarding the safety plan’s content should take place between the parties concerned before final approval of the plan for implementation of construction and for the duration of construction work.

“However, recent experi-ences suggest that the off- the-shelf health and safety file is becoming so preferred and acceptable that some observers believe the con-tractors’ specially compiled health and safety plan is not even read by the client’s health and safety agents,” says Michell.

He adds that this was not the intention of the legislator who first initiated the principles in the Con-struction Regulations, in July 2003, and which had now redefined the requirements in the recently promulgated amended Construction Regulations 2014.

“Eleven years on, we now have health and safety files that threaten the lives and health of site workers. “The generalised file has become an instru-ment of frustration for many with a bureau- cratic approach and prescribe in advance rules and instructions which are often impos- sible to implement, let alone enforce,” says Michell.

“The time has come for practising health and safety practitioners to reflect on this ominously fast-growing health and safety file syndrome and question whether, in its current form, these files are helping to protect life and limb, or endanger it,” he concludes.

Edited by Megan van Wyngaardt
Creamer Media Contributing Editor Online

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