Deborah Singerman examines a new guide designed to improve construction site safety in Australia.
WITH fatality rates twice as high as the national average, the building and construction industry is an occupational health and safety hazard in itself.
Couple this with 2007 Worksafe SA findings that show workplace safety generally is a ‘reasonable priority’ for employers and employees but rarely uppermost in their minds and publication of a new guide to improve site and industry safety seems like a good idea to say the least.
The Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Construction Innovation, with support of the Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner, has produced A Practical Guide to Safety Leadership, which provides a consistent national approach to implementing safety leadership in large and small organisations.
According to Dr Keith Hampson, CEO at the CRC, management is integral in building a safety culture.
“Changing an organisation’s safety beliefs, values and attitudes must occur from the top down to really make a difference on site.”
This is particularly important given the itinerant nature of the construction industry with workers moving from project to project, often lacking a consistent understanding of the meaning of safety competence.
The guide outlines information on safety critical positions and the safety management tasks required to achieve a positive safety culture. Its step-by-step approach translates the Construction Safety Competency Framework into action.
This 2006 document on key safety leadership positions and the competencies required to complete safety tasks was the result of CRC research into site safety culture.
Led by CRC for Construction Innovation project team leader Dean Cipolla, who is group safety manager at the John Holland Group, the project focused on knowledge, skills, attitude, behaviour and commitment – what happens on site – rather than regulations, legislation and technology.
“You can have similar projects, with similar trades, similar structures, similar safety management systems accredited to various standards or local legislation.
“Yet one project will have a really good safety record and approach and the other project isn’t the best,” Cipolla said at the time. “What makes the difference – the people and how they lead, apply, commit and own occupational health and safety.”
The critical positions range from CEOs, managing directors, senior managers, project managers and engineers to site managers, superintendents, and OH&S advisors and managers.
A flowchart shows eight practical steps to implement a safety culture within a company. First is understanding the safety culture; the Competency Framework identified actions such as communicating company values, personalising safety outcomes, increasing risk awareness and monitoring personal effectiveness, as essential to the development of a positive safety culture.
You then have to identify specific critical positions, customising the matrix of tasks and positions for your own organisation and adapting each competency accordingly.
Planning how to use the material in training, education and development is next, breaking things down into manageable steps to implement the strategy, and then you need to evaluate, review, reflect and continuously improve the strategy.
The guide has implementation checklists. It also recommends that companies wishing to introduce or enhance a safety culture program should, at a minimum, implement competency requirements for 13 safety management tasks (out of the Framework’s total of 39) identified as the most important activities for reducing injury and incidents in the workplace.
These include: Carry out project risk assessments; Consult on and resolve OH&S issues; Challenge unsafe behaviour/attitude at any level when encountered; Recognise and reward people who have positively impacted on OH&S; Monitor subcontractor activities and; Work with staff to solve safety problems.
A number of case studies in the guide show how different companies have customised the Framework. Bovis Lend Lease, for instance, added cost planners and contract or finance managers, which the company considered critical to its safety performance.
Its customisation also provided consistent environmental health and safety training and generated a review of these areas within management roles and responsibilities.
Laing O’Rourke used the Framework as the basis of a training program for foremen/supervisors, junior engineers and site safety supervisors.
Baulderstone Hornibrook used it as a point of reference to analyse gaps in national training and staff development.
Martin Reid, construction manager at the Joss Group, said the guide will help medium-sized businesses like his “by reducing the level of resources spent on development and policy, and enable us to better focus on implementation and monitoring”.
“This groundwork is important for companies caught between the large majors that can spread overhead costs and “builders working out of the back of their utes,” Reid explained.
“For all sizes of organisation, however, commitment from the people in charge is essential if safety culture is to change.”
