Safe from harm

Stakeholders can make great advances when they come together in the name of health and safety.

The picture in the first frame of the storyboard shows workers putting up formwork on a building rooftop at night. In the third frame, a plank of wood falls, landing on the ground below.

During the course of this graphic narrative, the workers report the incident to their supervisor, who installs edge protection and a safety net.

So goes an animated story distributed by Buildsafe UAE, a construction stakeholder group dedicated to improving health and safety practices. The storyboards are designed to raise workers' confidence in recognising and reporting risks, one of the biggest challenges facing the industry's health and safety experts.

"There are a lot of messages in them," says Elias McGrath, Buildsafe UAE's administrator. "If you read them once they seem straightforward, but after a few times  you get absorbed. Then, when the workers come across the situation, they think ‘OK, I've got to report this.' "

Storyboards are one strategy industry experts are using to communicate the message of health and safety to their workforce. By involving its operatives and supervisors in the risk assessment process, Dutco Balfour Beatty encourages them to think critically about the situations in which they work.

"If we're doing a blockwork wall, for example," explains general manager Grahame McCaig, "we'll get some of the foremen and skilled labourers in and ask them ‘what do you think is dangerous about doing this work?' We try and prompt them to give us an answer, and when they do we'll say ‘that's a good point, now how would you deal with that issue?'"

Developing a culture of health and safety, especially for workers to whom the idea is alien, takes time and persistence. The results of such initiatives, says McCaig, cannot be seen immediately.

"We'll continue to work with them to develop their skills and encourage that culture, and possibly in five or six years' time we will get to the stage where they will say ‘I'm sorry I'm not going in there because it's too dangerous.'"

In its own bid to empower workers, Wade Adams has issued a management directive obliging all those on site to stop work if they feel it is unsafe. Put into action one year ago, the initiative has resulted in more than 30 reports of unsafe conditions.

"I'm sure there were many more cases," admits health and safety manager Colonel Musharraf Khan, "but the workers' perception of risk is different. The eyes only see what the mind knows."

Until a proactive safety culture among workers takes full effect, however, direction for improving health and safety must come from contractors and developers, says McCaig.

"Of course we want it to start bubbling from the bottom to the top. But in the meantime, we have to drive it from the top down," he explains.  "If the client is committed to health and safety, if he is promoting it as a major point on the agenda on his site, it's going to be positive for the whole industry. And you can't get any higher than a client." 

As the first developer to become a full signatory member of Buildsafe UAE, Aldar Properties' participation is signalling a change in how the traditional responsibilities for health and safety are viewed. Andrew Broderick, Aldar's health and safety manager, says it's time for developers to step up their involvement.

"A lot of developers employ project management to handle the site for them and they leave health and safety to them. For me, that's not quite good enough," he explains.

"I see it as our responsibility to enforce it - it starts at the top, as they say."

Part of Aldar's commitment to improving health and safety is through inspections, managed by a team of four who visit construction sites and report back to the company.

"We monitor, we audit and we attend weekly health and safety meetings," says Broderick. "We're not there to manage health and safety," he adds, "but to make sure that it's actually done."

To win contracts, Broderick continues, contractors needs to prove they have a measurable commitment to health and safety. As a member of Aldar's pre-qualification team, he looks carefully at a contractor's history, accident rates and management systems.

Preference is usually given to contractors who show they have dealt effectively with health and safety issues, rather than those who claim to not have such issues at all.

"If companies come in with a perfect record, you know straight away that something's not right. We'd rather people be honest and admit they've had some issues," he says.

"If they can prove to us that they've been responsible and looked at reasons why they've had accidents on site, then that's great.  We'd rather that than companies who come in with an excellent safety record that we know is based on lies."

READERS' COMMENTS

MORE FROM ARABIANBUSINESS.COM