Ihab Saad – Introduction to Safety Management
AI: Summary ©
The concept of "sard management" in construction is broadly defined and related to safety planning, identifying hazards, and managing safety plans. The speakers emphasize the importance of reporting safety activities and maintaining a safe work environment. The safety requirements and regulations surrounding construction projects, including job conditions and management commitments, are discussed, and tools and techniques are used to ensure compliance with OSHA 30 or 30 hour cards and training and education is required for personnel.
AI: Summary ©
Foreign
Welcome to Construction Management. 225, construction
safety. In this class, we're going to learn about how to maintain a
safe work environment in construction. As you know,
construct, the construction industry suffers from injuries and
fatalities, and this affects not only the time and cost of the
project, but it also affects the morale and the performance of the
personnel working on site. Therefore, in this class, we're
going to learn how to maintain a safe work environment, to improve
the project performance, and how to comply with the laws and the
rules and regulations established by the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration or OSHA. So in this introductory lecture,
we're going to talk about what is safety management in general, what
are the different steps involved in safety management, and how to
develop a safety management plan.
So starting with what is safety management? Safety Management is
basically a subset of risk management, but because it's
functionally so specialized or traditionally unique and important
on every construction project, it deserves separate emphasis. How
are we going to deal with that risk? Are we going to try to
mitigate it? Are we going to ensure it? Are we going to bear
it, or are we going to ignore it? These are different methods of
dealing with risk. When it comes to safety, definitely, we cannot
ignore it. So we're going to learn how to mitigate it and deal with
it if an accident or an incident occurs,
good safety practice on a construction project can reduce or
eliminate accidents and injury to personnel, improve effectiveness
of performance and reduce the total project cost, which is
basically what every construction person looks for, improving the
quality, delivering the project on time, in a safe fashion and within
the budget of the project,
because savings can approach 10 times the cost of a successful
safety program, contractors and owners have become, have come to
adopt effective safety planning and execution as a requirements
requirement on construction projects. So again, every
contractor, every subcontractor, every supplier, every owner,
everyone involved with the construction project, looks
forward to completing that project safely, and they know that there's
got to be some expenditure made to maintain that safe environment,
but the return on that investment is going to be high, quite high.
So what is safety management? Again, safety management includes
the processes required to assure that the construction project is
executed with appropriate care to prevent accidents that cause or
have the potential to cause personal injury or property
damage,
accidents and personal injuries and deaths that results and have
been and are still a major concern in the construction industry, both
in terms of humanitarian losses and the direct and indirect costs
to the industry, whether it's going to be in the form of cost
expenditure or penalties, whether it's going to be in the form of
delays and project suspension, whether it's going to be resulting
in a reduction in the reputation of that contractor if they are
known as unsafe to work with, and so on and so forth. All of these
are side effects of not having a safe work environment.
What's the cost of safety management
in the United States alone, construction accidents cost
approximately six and a half percent of constructed value, and
that by itself, is about $50 billion every year, a huge amount
resulting from these accidents and incidents, studies have shown that
every dollar spent on a good safety program can result in a
four to $8 reduction in losses from accidents. So we have a
return on investment of 400% up to 800% or even more than that as
well.
Looking at the elements of safety management, we're going to
recognize three primary steps involved in a Safety Management
Program. The first one is safety planning, how to plan for safety
because if we do not plan for it, it's not going to occur by itself.
And then once we have a good plan, the following step is how to
implement and execute that plan, to make sure that we are complying
with that plan. So safety plan execution is the second step. And
finally, the third step is going to be the Administration and
Reporting. We need to produce some reports if we have an accident, or
even if we do not have an accident, we.
Have to report on safety as it occurs on our our construction
sites. So looking at these three steps, we're going to look into
each one of them separately, analyze it into its details and
break it down into three main components. What are the inputs
that are needed to start that step? What are the tools and
techniques that we're going to use to establish that step and execute
it. And finally, what are going to be the deliverables or the outputs
of each one of these steps,
starting with the first one,
here we have the safety planning is a development of the approach
to manage the various hazards to safely, to safety inherent in the
project. The second step, as we mentioned, is the safety plan,
execution, carrying out the safety plan by performing the activities
included therein. And the third step is Administration and
Reporting, which is the maintenance of safety records and
reporting safety activities. So let's look at the first one, which
is safety planning. Safety planning for a construction
project involves a job site, analysis of the hazards inherent
in the work and making decisions as to the measures to be taken to
deal effectively with them. So first of all, we need to recognize
what are the hazards to that project? There's going to be,
there going to be some general or generic hazards that are
applicable to any construction project. And then there are going
to be some specific hazards to this particular type of
construction that we have to pay attention to.
This analysis includes a survey of the geographical and physical
hazards of the site so the unique aspects, as well as a review of
the normal hazards involved in the type of construction, anticipated
government, laws and regulations, contract and owner requirements
also must be considered in developing the project safety
plan, which will be the guiding document for a safe project. OSHA,
which is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, has
established the OSHA Act, or the occupation Safety and Health Act,
that shows us what are the different requirements to maintain
on a construction site, to have a safe work environment, and how to
maintain these and how to execute this safety, these safety
measures. And then some owners would require something that's
over and above the safety requirements of OSHA to maintain a
super safe site and make sure that we do not have any accidents or
incidents.
So looking at the first step, which is safety plan development,
we have the inputs, the tools and techniques and the outputs. Among
the inputs we have the laws, laws and regulations. Again, basically,
state laws, federal laws,
district laws, sometimes. So these are primarily the OSHA
regulations, contract requirements, which might be
something over and above the OSHA regulations, safety policy, how
are we going to maintain these site location, the analysis of the
job conditions itself, and the management commitment? Top
management of the organization has to be fully committed to having a
safe work environment, and there's got to be some expenditure
associated with that. So they have to show that they're willing to
spend that money. The tools and techniques are going to include
the hazard analysis, subcontractor selection, how to select
contractors who have a good safety track record to maintain a safe
site, and incentives. How are we going to compensate, or how are we
going to reward the ones who maintain a safe work environment.
How is that going to reflect on a an incentive plan? For example, if
we have 10,000 hours without an accident, how are we going to have
we may have a party, or we may give a bonus, or something like
that. The outputs are going to include the project safety plan.
This is the deliverable, the authority who is going to be
responsible for maintaining it and applying it and enforcing it, and
the budget, how much money is going to be allocated to execute
that safety plan.
So the laws and regulations are the ones regarding safety
requirements during construction that must be observed, and this is
primarily a very large part of what we're going to be studying
this semester. What are the laws and regulations, how to put them
in place and how to monitor them while the project is being built?
The contract requirements say specific owner requirements for
safe practice, as we said before, these may be over and above or
more stringent than the requirements of OSHA. If OSHA, for
example, says you have to maintain this, you have to have fall
protection at a certain height, some owners may say, Okay, we're
going to lower that height to have even more safe work environment
the safety policy, which is the company safety policy that the.
Takes much of the way in which construction activities are
carried out. So for example, the company policy is going to be,
every visitor to the site has to register their name. They have to
have the full proper protective gear, including hard hat, goggles,
boots, etc.
The site location. The location of the site can have an important
bearing on safety. For example, work on or over water often
imposes additional safety requirements, not necessarily on
dry land, especially if also if you're going to excavate below the
ground water table now you're working in a wet environment, if
you're going to have electrical equipment operating in that
location, then we have the added hazard of electrocution. If you're
gonna work in a deep trench, then we have the hazard of caving in.
So again, we're gonna look at all the job conditions to try to
analyze, what are the hazards associated with this type of work.
The management commitment is the degree to which construction
company's management is committed to
the tools and techniques include the hazard analysis, which is a
systematic review of the construction process for the
purpose of identifying all the hazards to personnel or equipment
or property involved in the construction, as well as suppliers
or general public. Again, you might not only affect people who
are working on site, but people who are living close to it or
working close to it, as well.
Subcontractor selection. We have to screen the subcontractors for
their safety programs and choose those who have a good record of
safety performance,
incentives effective ways of encouraging the workforce to
observe safe work practices is to offer incentives for a safe job.
Again, that's going to have a very positive impact on the morale of
the personnel when knowing that they are rewarded for observing
the safety measures,
the outputs are going to be first the project safety plan, which
will include recommendations for any specialized equipment that may
be required and provide for first aid supplies, the posting of all
required notices relating to Safety, such as the telephone
numbers and addresses of doctors at the nearest hospital,
information about reporting safety accidents or reporting hazardous
practices on the construction site, reporting these to OSHA, as
we're going to see, some of the standard posters that have to be
posted on site.
The authority should also be granted to an experienced
individual to act as a project safety officer who is going to be
responsible for maintaining the safety measures on site.
And finally, the budget, the estimated cost of the safety plan,
must be included in the information of the budget for
construction of the project, some owners require that you post that
as a percentage of the total project cost. Let's say 1% or one
and a half percent, and they're going to reimburse you for that so
that you don't cut corners when it comes to an important issue such
as safety.
The second step is going to be the safety plan execution. So the
execution of the project safety plan involves the application and
implementation of the safe construction practices on site in
accordance with the requirements of the plan. If you have the best
plan ever, but you don't maintain it and you don't execute it
properly, then it's totally useless. On
the large construction project, there may be a separate safety
staff of several persons, headed by the safety officer.
Now, again, looking at the three modules to safety plan, execution,
inputs, tools and techniques and outputs for the inputs. The first
input is going to be the project safety plan, which is the output
from the previous step safety planning, and in addition to that,
we're going to have the contract requirements as well to make sure
that we are complying with the contract as we are executing the
project. Tools and techniques are going to be are going to include
PPE or personnel protective equipment that's going to be
issued to everyone that works on site, safety equipment,
construction equipment review, just to make sure that our our
equipment that we're using on site, whether it's a crane, a
loader, a tractor, whatever are safe to operate and properly
maintained. Safety Communication, in case we have any accidents or
incidents, or incidents. How are we going to report these and
document them? Training and Education, we need to train our
personnel. Hopefully, after you complete this course successfully,
you're going to obtain the OSHA 30 or the 30 hour card, which is
something that's very highly appreciated by owners and acquired
almost by.