Safety in mind: The UK is planning free English language courses for foreign workers.

Health issues: Everybody in the industry has a part to play in promoting good systems.

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Tackling the issue

There's a tendency to look towards how things have been done in traditional markets when it comes to comparing construction standards; whether that be the style or quality of a building, or, more importantly, health and safety.

But the steady rise in the number of construction-related accidents and deaths across all markets - whether emerging or mature - is an indicator that the UAE is not alone in facing health and safety issues.

Figures released in 2007 from the International Labour Office show that there are 60,000 fatal site accidents worldwide each year, equating to an economic loss of 4% of global GDP.

And the problems that have come hand-in-hand with the expedience of growth in this region are now being felt in Europe.

Construction deaths in the UK in particular, once thought to have reached a ‘reasonable level', have risen in the last few years.

Some have put this down to a growing foreign workforce. With the exodus of workers from Eastern Europe to the country, construction companies are grappling with getting a workforce of diverse languages, cultures and skills up to speed with health and safety standards which have undergone numerous stages of modification and refinement over the years.

So much so, the UK government recently announced plans to offer free English language courses to Polish workers.

Others say that UK law has become too ‘prescriptive', and while the industry generally does what the law stipulates, a large part of it is lacking in self-regulation, with many companies failing to set up good occupational management systems.

But the thing that singles the UAE out from the rest of the world is that in terms of the complexity and scale of projects underway and planned, it is probably the biggest and most interesting construction site in the world, and whatever happens to those projects - good or bad - will attract attention.

The introduction of an upgraded health and safety law along with an independent agency to govern site inspections is one thing, but a lot more will be needed from the industry itself if standards are to be improved.

"The argument in the UK is that legislation has become too prescriptive," said Ray Hurst, president of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).

"It has to move away from this and should be based on risk assessment and self-regulation. While it has its advantages in that at least employers know what they should or shouldn't be doing, there needs to be more focus on setting up good management systems.

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