Construction Health & Safety - Next Evolution

Dr Ross Trethewy, Head of Health Safety Environment at ADCO Constructions

International research studies implicate design and planning as key factors in up to two-thirds of construction fatalities and serious injuries. That is, decisions made upstream from the construction project.

Recently in Australia, an average of 30 traumatic injury fatalities have occurred each year across the construction industry, and it currently records the second highest number of serious injury claims at 12,500 yearly. These outcomes identify the need for a disruptive shift in thinking to exert a renewed focus on improved upstream design and planning to reduce downstream health and safety (H&S) risks in construction delivery.

This would require a move away from traditional injury measures in H&S, e.g., the lost-time injury frequency rate. The construction industry in Australia and some clients remain preoccupied with such rates as a sole and convenient measure of performance. However, they do not provide a valid performance measure of health and safety management system integrity and at best remain an indicator of how injuries are triaged and managed.

Such a shift in thinking may be problematic for those faced with typical delivery methods constrained within a traditional tender approach, e.g., single-stage construction only contracts based on designs by others. This approach omits the main contractor and its subcontractors from early design and project delivery planning; therefore, any design and planning buildability innovation is relegated to the delivery phase and is generally constrained by strict time, cost, design, and completion parameters. Whilst designers are required to legally identify and eliminate H&S risks inherent in their design, it is often the case that the focus remains on the end product and its users, not construction and temporary works design, which can often be overlooked.

On the flip side, early contractor involvement (ECI) enables the main contractor to incorporate construction knowledge in the development of the preconstruction phases of a project, enabling risks to design and buildability to be eliminated through improved design. The benefits to H&S from ECI were analysed across an Australian construction contractor dominant in the defence sector over the past five years. 

The design, buildability, scheduling, and innovation benefits derived from ECI, the typical delivery model for this sector, resulted in a decrease in H&S risks, including high-potential impact notifiable incidents and injuries, by a factor of four when compared with the contractor’s performance across all sectors in which it undertook work across different project delivery models.

The above identifies the alignment of improved H&S outcomes with improved design, buildability, scheduling, and innovation outcomes derived from the ECI model. In other words, improved H&S and other risk reduction outcomes are simply the by-product of good upstream design and planning coupled with good downstream project planning and site establishment design, including logistics and materials handling.

More recent innovation using building information modeling (BIM) has further enabled the use of 4D modeling to inform improved upstream design and planning, particularly for key high-risk construction work activities to reduce delivery risks, e.g., facade installation, tower crane design and logistics, and multistorey formwork erection, from which reduced H&S risks are a key outcome.

“More and more H&S and other risk managers need to be technically savvy and seek out predictive data that better informs an organisation of its risks.”

Digital Twin technology (BIM with access to continuous data) further extends beyond the building and construction delivery phase to as-built, end use, and facility management with information layers that include:

• the physical layer (the as-built design data);

• building system layer (a Building Management System that delivers real-time data from systems and components which are integrated); and

• the people layer (behavioural data on how people use and operate the building).

The implications of the above innovations for those with a more traditional H&S mindset who still measure performance using injury rates alone are profound. More and more H&S and other risk managers need to be technically savvy and seek out predictive data that better informs an organisation of its risks.

Increasingly, risks are being informed by intelligent design and system data within a construction environment using BIM or other technology innovations. A simple example is the use of cameras and sensor overlays to identify mobile plant and person clash points on a construction site. The ability to identify such locations in real time enables a predictive design intervention, e.g., an overhead pedestrian bridge, to be implemented before an incident occurs.

A variety of organisations are exploring predictive data to better inform H&S performance outcomes. 

For example, a large Australian construction contractor has determined that adverse changes to the construction schedule, coupled with unapproved scope changes on a construction project, mean that the project is four times more likely to experience a high-potential notifiable incident within the next two months.

In summary, data to assess H&S performance outcomes across industries like construction requires careful consideration in the context of a thorough understanding of the business and its undertakings, its work processes, working environments and associated H&S risks, together with published research or other information specific to the industry. A suite of lead and lag indicators is the desired approach and could include:

Lead:

• high-level review of H&S risks in the pre-tender to ensure that key risks are identified and design changes, including temporary works, are planned and priced in the tender, e.g., perimeter screens on a high-rise construction project to prevent the fall of people or fall of materials.

• Concept design and detailed design reviews, including permanent and temporary works buildings or structures, and their construction, end use, maintenance, and operation phases, aimed at eliminating H&S risks where reasonably practicable.

• high-risk construction work methodology reviews with key trade partners pre- and post-tender to capture key trade innovation and buildability knowledge aimed at eliminating H&S risks.

• critical incident analysis, trending and preventative actions, and the extent to which design is implicated in incidents.

• engineering or better control measures consistent with the Hierarchy of Control for key H&S risks.

• assurance monitoring across multiple levels of a construction project, including front-line personnel that supervise high-risk work activities.

• use of BIM and other technology that achieves multiple benefits to design, planning, quality, or other disciplines from which H&S improvements are a flow on effect; and

• senior leadership engagement to drive a positive, transformational, and open learning culture that is blame-free.

Lag:

• workers’ compensation premiums as a percentage of total payroll compared with all industry data; and

• incident trending including injury mechanisms, incident circumstances, and severity.

Overall, the above indicators, attached to metrics or other replicable scorecards, enable a more detailed composite picture of health and safety performance than injury data alone. As such, the approach should be considered by all forward-thinking organisations seeking the next evolution of health and safety management.