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Managing safety on construction and public works sites is an important issue, because simultaneous or successive interventions by various companies and teams increase the risk. This realisation led to the requirement, starting in 1995, to have a Workplace Safety and Health coordinator (WSHC) on work sites. Thanks to this role, the number of accidents has been greatly reduced.
Over the past 20 years, the number of workplace accidents in the building and civil engineering works industry has dropped by more than 3% (56.8 accidents per 1,000 employees in 2017, compared to 60 in 2016 and 64.8 in 2013*). These numbers reflect the improvement in working conditions on building and civil engineering works sites, the advances in accident prevention and the improvements to equipment provided to staff. Another factor is the presence of a Workplace Safety and Health Coordinator from the private sector on work sites. What is the Coordinator’s role? To ensure workers’
- health and safety while also working with the owner, the architect and companies to implement general prevention principles. A requirement for all “large” construction work sites. In fact, according to labour laws, safety coordination and health protection must be implemented on civil engineering and building work sites involving multiple companies (more than 20 workers over a period of more than 30 days or a workload requiring more than 500 workers/day).
Analysing the risks to anticipate illness and workplace accidents
In practice, the Workplace Safety and Health Coordinator operates on work sites, as requested by the owner, to manage simultaneous operations by companies with regard to safety. This works starts in the pre-project phase in order to integrate safety and hygiene criteria in the work’s design and implementation, as well as its future maintenance. The Coordinator analyses the risks related to simultaneous operations, defines measures to prevent accidents, and ensures these measures are implemented appropriately. Coordinating the workplace safety and health gives the owner the opportunity to understand and integrate occupational risk prevention right from the initial design of a
project. Keeping safety in the front of people’s minds yields not only a human benefit, but a financial benefit too: the organisation is optimised (planning and pooling of resources) and the owner eliminates criminal risks related to regulatory requirements.
Keep in mind that in the digital age and the expanding use of BIM digital modelling, the WSHC’s work is becoming more and more streamlined and optimised! Digital tools allow the Coordinator to ensure a better traceability of various documents on which he works, to manage their distribution, monitor the stages of a validation, etc.
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About Finalcad
Finalcad is a global leader in digital transformation for construction, infrastructure, energy and concessions. Finalcad helps make each person on the job site proud of their work. It does this by helping them communicate with the various teams, taking care of the administrative tasks that get in the way of creating value. Finalcad believes that by putting the focus back on the job site and by improving the work environment of millions of workers, leading organizations will be able to build better, faster, and cheaper. Since 2012, Finalcad has delivered more than 20,000 projects in 35 countries, and has raised over $63M in funding from Draper Esprit, Cathay Innovation, Salesforce Ventures, Serena, Aster, and CapHorn. For more information, visit www.finalcad.com.
