The HSE’s man in charge for London and the 2012 Olympics tells Tina Weadick why the Games, and other big public projects in the capital, are a great opportunity for the UK construction industry to improve its health and safety performance.
“Training. Legislation to require anyone who works in construction to go through mandatory health and safety training before they can work in the industry.”
This is the one new law that Stephen Williams, previously the HSE’s chief inspector of construction and now head of field operations for London and the 2012 Olympics, would bring in if he were God for a day. Despite the undeniable fact that the construction industry in the UK is in recession, Williams maintains that the human-resources and skills requirements of the sector are predicted to decline only a little over the next couple of years, so competence is going to continue to be a key issue and is, he says, a “main theme” of much of the HSE’s work at the moment.
There are, he feels, three particular elements that need to be focused on, the first of them being corporate competence. He explains: “I have been asked in the past, what do I think is the cause of the continuing high level of fatal accidents in construction, and what caused that peak last year. One of the issues is that the industry has had so much work, and has been so “hot”, that companies who previously might have undertaken only small projects are now undertaking bigger projects, and they don’t have the competence to do so.
Increasingly, we are finding that small jobbing builders are entering into other areas because they are winning that work. They buy up a plot of land and put up a housing development and they simply may not have the corporate competence to do the work.”
He is keen to point out that he is not damning the whole industry, but says the evidence is there that more and more people are moving into areas that are unfamiliar to them. This brings him on to the second element — individual competence — which he describes as an innate thing: knowledge of health and safety issues in the construction industry, and knowledge of how to do the work you are employed to do. “Site-specific competence is also crucial,” he adds.
“Site-specific training seems to me to be the key to setting the job and the workforce off on the right foot.”
The third crucial area is supervisor competence. Says Williams: “The amount of work that has been available and this issue are linked. Speaking to people in the industry, they would agree that some people have been promoted to levels of management in the construction industry before they have the experience and competence to properly fulfil that role. You can imagine that, when you are on site, it is absolutely crucial that the person who is in charge of the work really knows what they’re doing and is skilled and competent in their work, and has an absolute knowledge of health and safety issues: what can go wrong, and how to prevent it going wrong.”
Scheme fatigue
Williams welcomes the various training schemes available to test the competence of those in the industry, citing the CSCS test and the range of options provided by the CITB as good examples, and feels that their availability means there “really isn’t an excuse for the industry to get it wrong”.
In terms of pre-qualification and accreditation schemes, however, he agrees with Paul Reeve, who, elsewhere in this issue, argues for consolidation and mutual recognition of the many competing schemes currently available. As highlighted in Paul’s article, the Safety Schemes in Procurement forum (SSIP) — whose aim is to make the core criteria in CDM 2007 the basis for mutual recognition of each others’ schemes by providers — is supported by the HSE. Says Williams: “This is a really exciting development. We have a HSE representative on the forum but it is chaired by industry, which is a good example of it showing leadership and ownership of the problem. It will be particularly beneficial for the smaller contractors, who currently have to go through a number of competence schemes.
“Both sides of the industry will benefit when mutual recognition is achieved. Clients will be able to turn to a wide range of contractors, knowing that if they have been through any one of these schemes the stage-one core criteria will have been met. Contractors will also have the benefit of only having to put themselves through one of these schemes in order to present themselves to clients. This can only be good for the industry, in that it will inevitably mean that more contractors will be prepared to put themselves through the schemes, and that for clients, selection of a competent contractor is easier.”
CDM rules OK
Back to the subject of competence, he uses its importance to justify the weighty Approved Code of Practice to CDM 2007, which has been criticised for being far too long, at 64 pages. He says: “With this ACoP we went further than any other HSE document has gone, in terms of trying to provide information and guidance on how to properly address the competence of those who are appointed.”
CDM is, he points out, core legislation and a key element of the HSE’s intervention strategy. He is a big fan of the Regulations, whose fundamental innovation, he feels, lies in the way in which they apportion responsibility to all the players involved, recognising that everybody in the construction process can contribute to improving health and safety. It is hugely important that the HSE, as the regulator, engages early with designers and clients to make sure projects get off on the right foot. “It is also crucial,” he says, “to make sure that contractors, and particularly the CDM coordinator, are appointed right at the outset so that everybody can contribute at the stage when the key decisions are being made about design, the footprint of the building, access for materials and people, and in terms of construction methods. Everyone must think about how we’re going to build this safely; is it going to be safe for use once it has been built; etc.”
There will be no hesitation to take enforcement action under CDM 2007 either, he emphasises, adding that, since they came into force, more than a thousand Prohibition and Improvement Notices issued have contained a reference to the Regulations, while three prosecutions have been brought, with more in the pipeline. “This shows me that my inspectors are using the newly-refreshed regulations as a lever for influencing the industry. With 50 per cent of accidents in construction related to falls, the Work at Height Regulations, too, will be cited in more and more breaches.”
Enforcement action related to competence is also likely to increase, as Williams expects his inspectors to look at the competence of the parties involved in any investigation. A specific issue they are focusing on is whether or not duty-holders have competent advice available to them, as required under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
Mix and match
Of course, the whole subject of enforcement — or perceived lack of it — is Williams’, and the HSE’s, bête noire. As on, no doubt, many previous occasions, he bristles at the suggestion that enforcement is being phased out in favour of an information-led approach — the whole carrot-versus-stick argument — emphasising that enforcement will always be a part of the regulator’s arsenal, particularly in relation to construction.
He explains: “We will always have a mixed approach to how we influence the construction industry. It is not homogenous, so one approach would be wrong, for that reason alone. I regard the work that I do in going and talking directly to the boards of large construction companies just as useful in influencing them to improve their health and safety performance as prosecuting on the front line.”
For smaller firms, making better and simpler information available is an extremely valuable way of influencing them, adds Williams. He cites the HSE’s �€�High 5′ leaflet1 as a good example, and points out that “if every single person in the construction industry had one of those in their back pocket, that would greatly influence improved health and safety performance.”
However, many others would argue that if every single site in the construction industry could be sure of regular visits from an inspector, the influence on health and safety would be far greater. Currently, the HSE’s Construction Division, nationally, is “aiming to maintain” 145 full time-equivalent front-line inspectors, 125 FTE operational inspectors, and 20 front-line managers. In addition, says Williams, there are 20 construction specialist inspectors, who support construction inspectors on technical issues. Assisting the inspectors in the division are 22 health and safety awareness officers.
Williams argues that those who maintain the only way to improve things is to have an inspector on every site are offering a “pretty damning indictment of the industry, and I am more optimistic than that”. He acknowledges that there are rogues in the industry — and stresses that the HSE will come down on them very heavily — but a lot of excellent work is also being done, with the top of the industry working very hard to take leadership and ownership.
With the country now firmly in the grip of recession, temptation to cut health and safety budgets will surely increase, but Williams is adamant that now is exactly not the time to cut corners, for a number of reasons. “First of all, the law is very flexible in terms of the standards it sets. Because we work in a goal-setting framework there is a number of ways of achieving health and safety; you don’t have to go out and buy the latest piece of expensive kit. Secondly, now is the time for people to be really managing all of the aspects of their work, and to be really efficient. Health and safety is just one element of good management.
“Thirdly, particularly for contractors, if you are bidding for work now, the last thing you want hanging over you is a prosecution, or enforcement notice, when you are competing with other contractors for work from clients, because clients increasingly have the opportunity to choose, and they will be looking for those who are managing their affairs the best. If I were a contractor the last thing I would want is my name in lights in SHP, or Contract Journal, for having been prosecuted by the HSE.”
The HSE will certainly not accept the �€�credit crunch’ as a reason for putting people’s lives or health at risk and, in this respect, Williams welcomes the new Health and Safety (Offences) Act, which is due to come into force in January. Asked whether increasing the fines available in the lower courts to £20,000 will really make all that much difference, Williams is adamant that it will: “For smaller companies, a £20,000 fine is not a drop in the ocean, and it is probably more important in terms of what is says about society’s attitude to health and safety, and the importance that society places on making sure it is properly managed. The fact that Parliament has said we agree we should increase fines in this area means it is an important matter. That, coupled with the reputational damage to firms who do get prosecuted, clearly acts as a lever.”
Game on
Even the Olympics project is feeling the squeeze, with recent press reports suggesting that not all of the planned new structures for the 2012 games will now be built, but there will still be plenty of work for Williams to preside over in his new role as director of field operations for London and the Olympics. Currently, regulation of the £9.3bn Olympics construction project is being managed by the HSE with existing resources in London and the South East, as is the stakeholder involvement element. Says Williams: “I will keep that under review to see if we need to allocate more staff to this work, particularly as other major projects, like Crossrail, get underway.”
The HSE is not just involved in the building stage but is also looking at how certain aspects are regulated in the fit-out and test-events stages, throughout the running of the Games themselves, and on to the legacy stage. Consequently, it is working very closely with the other regulators involved — local authorities, the Environment Agency, etc. — to get everything planned and built as efficiently and safely as possible.
Says Williams: “We are also very keen to use the Olympics as a way of showcasing what the UK can do — if you like, to promote UK plc — and particularly the building sector. The opportunities are there for really making a step-change in health and safety performance in the construction industry, and capitalising on the lessons learned and good practice throughout the project, so we can disseminate them throughout the rest of the industry and use them as a lever to improve performance.”
Williams has already appointed someone to his team who has been working for some months on London 2012 matters, particularly on the stakeholder engagement element of the job. Meanwhile, the head of operations, construction in London has compiled an intervention plan, which will draw on the resources of not just the London construction team but construction teams around the captial. As part of that plan, a targeted proposal for intervention has been drawn up with key duty-holders and contractors. Williams says the HSE wants to be seen as an exemplary regulator in this most challenging of projects, but it is also encouraging the Olympic Delivery Authority to be an exemplary client, in terms of its responsibilities under CDM.
What next?
Apart from the Olympics and other potential large public projects, the HSE construction and London divisions have myriad interesting workstreams that will be coming to fruition in the coming months. Williams is particularly excited about the efforts to help vulnerable workers, such as those new to the industry, older workers who may be staying on longer than was traditionally the case, and some migrant workers — “not all migrant workers are vulnerable”, he stresses.
The HSE is also working closely with local authorities under the LACE (local authority construction engagement) programme to see how both sides can cooperate to influence improvement in the construction industry. And, as ever, a lot of effort continues to be put into engaging small firms — “the holy grail, in terms of making a step-change”. The new-build and refurbishment sectors will remain focus areas, with another targeted inspection campaign planned for March next year.
As for Williams himself, he is relishing the prospect of getting his teeth into his new role in what will undoubtedly be an exciting, but challenging period for the HSE and the capital in the bid to put on a safe and spectacular Olympic Games. And when all is said and done, which event is London’s construction guru most looking forward to going to see in 2012? “The sailing — in Weymouth!”
References
1 HSE (2003): High 5: Five ways to reduce risk on site (IND 384) — www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg384.pdf
Tina Weadick is SHP’s editor.
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