www.asse.org APRIL 2016 ProfessionalSafety 53 IN BRIEF •Design professionals can be held liable for construc- tion safety even though they do not show authority, demonstrate control or are not contractually obligated to address safety. •Implementing prevention through design (PTD) on construction projects could help eliminate hazards as- sociated with construction activities. •Implementing PTD not only reduces construction incidents, but also yields great benefits for project parties relative to schedule, morale, constructability, cost and quality. Safety Management Peer-Reviewed Designer’s Liability Why Applying PTD Principles Is Necessary By Ali A. Karakhan P revention through design (PTD), also known as design for construction safety, is the concept of protecting construction workers who build the designs by addressing their safety through the design process. Toole and Car- penter (2011) deine PTD as “safety constructa- bility.” PTD is not related to managing safety of construction sites during construction, rather, its steps should only be conducted during the design phase of constructing a facility, whether by ad- dressing safety in the design explicitly or by com- municating hazards to contractors that cannot be reduced or eliminated. PTD can have a signiicant inluence on con- struction projects by reducing the number of inju- ries and fatalities. PTD is the most effective way to eliminate hazards associated with construction ac- tivities as shown in the hierarchy of controls (Fig- ure 1, p. 54). The hierarchy of controls is deined by Tymvios (2013) as “a means to understand the importance of considering safety early in the life- cycle of a project.” Figure 1 clariies the ive levels of control: 1) elimination; 2) substitution; 3) engineering control; 4) administrative control; 5) PPE. Consider a typical example of a guardrail on a multistory construction building. Guardrails not only take a long time to install, but they also are not reliable. On a particular project, two fatalities occurred due to a broken guardrail on the seventh loor of the building during construction (CBC News, 2012). Conversely, guardrails can be in- stalled using PTD concepts, for example, specify- ing holes in steel frames at 21 and 42 in. above the loor slab so that temporary guardrails can be attached using cables. In this case, a guardrail is not needed; the cables can act as a guardrail. The design delivers several economic and safety advantages. It is: •inexpensive; •easy to design (minimal design effort); •quick to install; •safe to build; •highly eficient. Why PTD Targeting Design Process The construction industry is one of the most dangerous industries in the U.S. Many studies have attributed the industry’s high incident rate to the lack of safety input during the design stage. Design professionals focus primar- ily on end-user safety, and disregard the inluence that their design has on worker safety during the construc- tion process. Behm (2005) points out that 42% of the 224 fatal injuries in U.S. between 1990 and 2003 were associated with design errors. Similarly, more than 60% of construction injuries and fatalities between 1986 and 1989 in the U.K. were attributed to design decisions or lack of Ali A. Karakhan was a faculty member at University of Baghdad in 2012-13. He holds a B.S. in Building and Construction Engineering from University of Technol- ogy, and an M.S. in Civil Engineering from University of Baghdad. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. ©ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/COSMIN4000