Ihab Saad – Introduction to Safety Management

Music.

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 insure 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 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.

See that dictates 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. 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 a.

Reduce workers injuries and raise the morale of the workforce, lower

insurance costs, a lower accident and injury rate, will reduce the

cost of insurance premium, insurance premiums. We're going to

have actually a lecture by the end of the semester to talk about

what's called the experience modification rate, or EMR, and how

that comes

into the calculation of the workers comp, which is part of the

insurance that you pay on your construction site.

And an enhanced reputation, owners are becoming more interested in

working with contractors who have good safety records. Owner's

exposure is reduced also because, again, the owner himself or

herself are going to have to pay less in insurance payments. And

workers also want to work with firms that are interested in their

safety. So the EMR, as we mentioned just a second ago, is

going to be a measure an owner looking at two contractors who

have everything equal, but one of them having an EMR of, let's say

1.1

versus one who has an EMR of point seven, six, the lower DMR, the

better, by the way, the higher DMR. It shows that you have more

accidents. So the owners are going to differentiate based on the EMR

and improved productivity accidents results in measured

decreases in job site productivity, which also weaken

the contract, contractors profits,

the third step and the last step, which is the safety administration

and records. So along with governmental laws and regulations

that apply to safe construction practice, there are often

requirements for record keeping and reporting.

Insurance companies also usually require periodic activity and

accident reports, and the contract may also require additional

records and reports over and above what OSHA and the insurance

company requires that shows the owner's interest in maintaining a

safe work environment.

Finally, it's a good business. It's a good business practice to

keep track of safety performance, for use in improving performance,

and for use in marketing future services. Again, if you put on

your brochure, for example, that for the past 100,000 hours of

work, we did not have any accidents. That definitely shows,

shows that you are a contractor who cares about safety and

encourages owners to award projects to this contractor,

looking again, that at the three ingredients here, the inputs are

going to be legal reporting requirements, which are given by

OSHA insurance reporting requirements as part of the part

of the insurance policy contract requirements and safety plan

requirements. So all of these are already established before we

start the construction.

The tools and techniques are going to include inspection logs and

reports, training and meeting records, injury and endless logs.

We're going to look at these and the different forms that have to

be filled accident investigations, photographs and video records, the

outputs are going to be the government logs and reports that

have to be filed and sent to OSHA, accident reports, achievement of

safety incentive goals. If we have established, for example, that we

want this project to have zero accidents or zero incidents, and

documented safety performance again, which can be used for

reducing your insurance premium and as a promotion tool to get

more jobs.

The legal reporting requirements, these are requirements for

recording and reporting accidents injuries and hours worked so that

governmental agencies may keep track of safety performance in

several workplace categories,

the insurance reporting requirements contractors, insurers

require reports of accidents and injuries that they may be

responsible to provide for under their policy with the contractor

the

the contract requirements, certain contract provisions may require

that the contractors maintain and report safety related activities

such as accidents and injuries. And the safety plan requirements,

the project safety plan may require additional record keeping

and reporting of general health data of employees, drug testing

results and other specialized data that may be related to

environmental hazards,

looking at the tools and techniques we have the inspection

logs and reports, this type of record is usually the result of

safety inspections by the project safety officer and his or her

staff, and need to contain comments on the activity observed

and any corrections made that's going to be day by day. So you

have to have a good track record of every day of your construction

activity, training and meeting records. Records should be

maintained, of training given and to whom meet.