A voluntary approach to designing for safer construction Helen Lingard and Ron Wakefield Abstract Preventing occupational health and safety (OHS) hazards through design is consistent with the principle that OHS is best managed by eliminating hazards at their 'source' rather than reducing risks that eventuate in the workplace. In 2007, an industry-initiated research and development project was undertaken in Australia to identify and document best practices used in the management of OHS in the construction industry, resulting in the publication of a 'Guide to Best Practice for Safer Construction.' The project was a whole industry effort to identify OHS 'best practices' through the project lifecycle. The guide provides an industry-agreed framework for clients, designers and constructors, with an emphasis on cooperation, communication and reaching consensus about a reasonable allocation of responsibility for OHS in a given project situation. Two years since the publication of the guide, the implementation of the design stage best practices is examined. Three case study projects (a large road construction project, a desalination plant and a high rise building project) are used to illustrate the practical impact of considering the OHS of construction workers in design decision-making in accordance with the 'Safer Construction' principles contained in the guide. Key words Occupational Health and Safety, Construction Hazard Prevention through Design, Project Management, Australia. Introduction Safety in Australia‟s construction industry Relative to other industries, the occupational health and safety (OHS) performance of the Australian construction industry is poor. Australian construction workers are approximately twice as likely to be killed at work than workers in other industries. The most recent data published by SafeWork Australia (2010) show the construction industry fatality rate is 5.6 per 100,000 workers, compared with an industry average of 2.4. Since 2003/04, 233 compensated fatalities have been recorded in the construction industry, representing an average of 46.6 per year. Preliminary data for 2007-08 financial year also show that there were 14,410 serious workers’ compensation claims during this period, representing 10.7% of claims across all industries. This places the construction industry as the fourth most represented industry in Australia in terms of incidence of compensated work-related injury or disease. The incidence rate 1 for construction is 21.6 per 1,000 employees, behind manufacturing (24.1 per 1,000 employees), transport and storage (24.4 per 1,000 employees), and agriculture, forestry and fishing (24.3 per 1,000 employees). These compensation-based statistics are also considerably lower than those published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Using data collected in the Multi-Purpose Household Survey (MPHS) conducted in 2005 – 2006, the construction industry had an incidence rate of 86 per 1,000 employed people. 2 Prevention through Design There is considerable evidence that the design of buildings/structures can contribute to ‘downstream’ OHS incidents in the construction stage (Behm, 2005, Gibb et al. 2004; Gambatese et al. 2008). In Australia, Driscoll et al. (2008) suggest 44% of construction fatalities are related to design. The twenty first century has seen the notion of ‘prevention through design’ (PtD) gain international prominence. The PtD initiative is based on the belief that the best way to prevent and control OHS risks is to eliminate hazardous features of a product or process at the design stage (Manuele, 2008). PtD is consistent with the ‘hierarchy of control’ by which technological risk controls (i.e., those involving the elimination of a hazard; the substitution of a hazardous process or product with one that is less hazardous; or the provision of an engineering solution to OHS risk) are preferable to controls that rely upon human behaviour for their effectiveness. Underpinning the case for PtD is the argument that the greatest opportunity to reduce 1 The incidence rate of occupational injuries and diseases is the number of claims expressed as a rate per thousand employees. 2 This difference is largely due to the fact that the ASCC relies solely on workers’ compensation claims data and excludes self - employed persons. The ABS dataset includes non-fatal injuries or illnesses sustained by all categories of workers, irrespective of whether these have been claimed under workers' compensation.