Ihab Saad – Introduction to Safety Management

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.