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News Release from: Chartered Institute of Building [CIOB] | Subject: European Safety Summit
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 01 December 2004
European Policies To Reduce Construction
Accidents
Safety Summit spells out European policies for reduction in construction accidents.
A renewed call to construction professionals to remove safety hazards in the design, management and procurement of building and civil engineering projects has come from the European Union as the product of its recent Construction Safety Summit in Bilbao Jointly organised by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work and the Dutch Presidency of the EU, the meeting of Europes safety chiefs is demanding fuller compliance with European health and safety standards in an industry in which some 1,200 construction workers meet their death every year
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 12 Mar 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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The toll of reportable accidents which keep people off work for more than three days is also unacceptably high.
More than 800,000 people employed in Europes 12 million strong construction workforce as it stood prior to enlargement of the European Union were victims of this category of injury.
It will be some time before the new Member States can be brought into a repeat of the inspection campaign carried out last year due to the need for time to adapt their practices to the European regulations.
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The declaration which emerged from the Bilbao summit meeting stresses that safety and health issues are not confined to the construction phase of a project but occur throughout its entire lifetime: design, construction, maintenance and demolition.
"Many safety and health problems encountered during construction and operation could be avoided by ensuring that due consideration is given to these issues during the design and procurement process.
Projects that are well planned, well designed, carried out by competent, trained designers and contractors are not only inherently safer, but also enable the client to achieve good value for the money invested." The declaration places emphasis on five key areas in which standards need to be lifted: integration of health and safety standards into procurement policies; health and safety at the design and planning stages; encouraging more businesses to comply with European legislation; guidelines to help businesses meet safety standards, especially the SMEs; social dialogue and training agreements on higher standards.
Compliance confirmation now required.
The first topic arises from the latest European Commission Directive on procedures for the award of public works, supply and services contracts, which requires contracting authorities to seek confirmation that the tenderers are respecting their obligations relating to employment protection and to working conditions in force in the Member State concerned.
The purpose of this provision - Article 27 of Directive 2004/18/EC - is to ensure that the requirements of existing European health and safety legislation dealing with construction operations are being applied.
The intention is that next year the European Commissions Directorate General for Employment and Social Affairs will seek to integrate good standards of health and safety into European public procurement, on the grounds that provision for health and safety through systematic budgeting at all phases of projects makes good business sense.
When the Senior Labour Inspectors Committee carried out their inspection campaign in 15 European States last year, they found a high level of non-compliance in every one of these countries and wide variations in enforcement of the legislation.
The summit document is now calling upon all relevant parties in the construction sector to take resolute action to achieve the improvements sought by the European Unions health and safety strategy, "notably through a full and effective application of the national legislation transposing Directive 92/57/EEC".
This is the construction sites directive which sets out the issues to be taken into account at the project preparation stage, in the United Kingdom embodied in the Construction Design and Management regulations.
The European authorities are now determined to use site inspections and related techniques to encourage businesses to comply with safety and health legislation.
This follows from the inspection and publicity campaign run last year by the senior labour inspectors group which said that the level of protection of construction workers needed to cut the accident rate in a risky industry requires everyone involved to work for effective and correct application of basic safety measures.
Smaller enterprises difficult to reach.
The inspectors found that it proved difficult to reach all the target groups, in particular the small to medium-sized enterprises.
The lack of understanding that appears to exist at this level, they said, is explained by the nature of the provisions, which as they put it in their report establish an objective without providing at national level the information needed to help employers in addressing the risks.
A study in the United Kingdom concluded that 80 per cent of employers conceded that complying with the legislation was the most important reason for adopting measures to safeguard health and safety, legalistic behaviour aimed at keeping implementation costs as low as possible in a competitive industry.
The inspectors however deny that the regulations are calling for sophisticated management systems.
The rules are there, they argue, to encourage the application of basic management principles to occupational health and safety, since so many accidents on construction sites occur due to failure to observe simple safety precautions.
The development of guidelines to help businesses comply with the European legislation, especially in the small to medium-sized enterprises, is one of the aims of the policy for safety improvement agreed at Bilbao.
As the labour inspectors report showed, the European construction industry is a long way from full compliance with the requirements of the directives.
The organisations that signed the Bilbao Declaration include the European Construction Industry Federation; European Federation of Building and Wood Workers; European Builders Confederation, European Federation of Engineering Consultancy Associations; Architects Council of Europe and the European Council of Civil Engineers.
Hans-Horst Konkolewsky, Director of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, commented: "The Construction Safety Summit clarified the strategy and actions needed to improve safety and health standards within the construction industry; the Bilbao Declaration provides the commitment required to make this strategy a reality.
As a result of this declaration, we expect to see significant improvements in safety and health standards throughout Europes construction industry and commensurately lower costs, both human and financial.".
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