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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Unpacking Construction Site Safety provides a different perspective of safety in practice. examines how useful the concept of safety actually is to the development of effective management interventions providing new insights and information to the audience, and assist in a more informed development of new approaches in practice aimed at safety and construction management practitioners as well as academics
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter One: Introduction
References
Chapter Two: Construction Site Contexts
Winning Work
Subs of Subs of Subs
The Workforce
Working Conditions
Never work a day in your life …
Construction Site Life
References
Chapter Three: Safety and Society
The Media and its Myths
(Mis-)Interpreting the Legislation
Where there’s blame …
Safety and Society and Construction Sites
Understanding People
References
Chapter Four: Safety in Construction
Measuring Safety: Accidents and Statistics
Cause and Effect
Safety Management Systems
Competence
Training
Personal Protective Equipment
References
Chapter Five: Just a Bit Unsafe?
The Legislative Lexicon
Safe/Unsafe
Safety and Unsafety
Safety and Risk
Acknowledgements
References
Chapter Six: Safety versus Work and Work versus Safety
The Non-Productive
Segregation and Integration
Problems of Production
Production in Practice
References
Chapter Seven: Engagement and Enforcement
Engaging with Safety
Safety Propaganda
Enforcing Safety
Rules Made to be Broken?
A Hierarchy of Safety: Responsibility and Ownership
Acknowledgements
References
Chapter Eight: Counting Down to Zero
Target Zero: Theories and Thinking
Brand Zero
Zero in Practice
Measuring Zero: Non-Accident Statistics
Achieving Zero
Acknowledgements
References
Chapter Nine: Constructing Safety on Sites
What is Safety on Site?
Site Safety Culture
Putting it into Practice
References
Chapter Ten: Reflections
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 04
Figure 4.1 Our Safety Performance
Figure 4.2 Ear Protectors Must be Worn in this Area
Chapter 05
Figure 5.1 Danger – Construction Site
Figure 5.2 Danger – Deep Excavation
Figure 5.3 Danger – Men Working Overhead
Figure 5.4 Deep Excavation?
Chapter 07
Figure 7.1 Think Safety Act Safely
Figure 7.2 Make Safety Personal
Chapter 08
Figure 8.1 Safety is No Accident
Figure 8.2 Zero Harm
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Unpacking Construction Site Safety
Dr Fred Sherratt
MCIOB C.BuildE MCABE FHEA
This edition first published 2016© 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
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ISBN: 9781118817285
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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For Pru
Preface
I have worked in the construction industry for over 13 years. I began as a site secretary and worked my way up through the ranks via the planning function to site management. It is an industry full of interesting, entertaining and wonderful people who all make something happen. It is an industry that creates things, that makes places and spaces for people and changes the world we live in. Whilst sometimes fraught with conflict, aggravation and traumas, it is also an industry full of life and laughter and usually someone singing very loudly, a little bit off key. It is an industry that I love.
But it also has a big problem. I have seen the consequences of accidents that have stopped men working for weeks and months. I have had to collect the witness statements and take the photographs of the locations when accidents have occurred. I have had to gather the evidence that they had been inducted and read their method statements for the task they were performing at the time. I have donated to collections to try to keep a family going as no income will be forthcoming for the next few months whilst an injury heals and bills still have to be paid.
My position within this environment enabled me to approach health and safety in a different way from many of my peers. As a woman on site I was different, although I never felt that I did not fit in; I found that construction accepts you if you can do the job you are there to do, no matter what gender, race or age you are. I am able to swear with the best of them, shout when shouting is needed, and coax and persuade when required. And because of this perhaps, I was able to argue from the point of view of the wife or daughter, I was able to show concern where my colleagues resorted to anger, I was able to suggest that the consequences might outweigh the benefits, I was able to say that I was stopping work because I cared. And when this approach was articulated it did make a difference, and people did listen.
However, this did not manage to stop people acting unsafely. Every day I saw that people did not follow the rules, despite inductions and training they still acted unsafely, they still took risks and they still did not always behave with care and concern for everyone else on the site. I sat in training rooms with them on safety culture training programmes, which took a different approach to safety, and I heard the comments afterwards, not to mention the comments before, that they were to lose half a day’s pay for this ‘shite’.
And that is what initiated my research, once I’d finished my degree in construction management I carried on. I wanted to ask the question why, despite best efforts all round, and the agreement that things could still improve in terms of safety (although some of the training left a lot to be desired), did accidents and incidents still occur? Why were we still having collections? Why did you still hear stories and tales of accidents on other sites, of the deaths of people that we had been working alongside only a few months ago? Why in the twenty-first century had this not yet been sorted out?
Alongside my working life spent living the construction dream, I am also a geek. I like to study and explore and think about things, to learn about new ideas and approaches. I could see that most of the ways we tried to measure safety weren’t working; safety climate questionnaires were completed with what the management wanted to hear, not a reflection of reality. This was also the case in academia, where research often measured people as if they were constant, that they could be predicted, that they behaved according to rules and logical thought. Reality tended to argue quite strongly with this. I wanted to know why this didn’t work, or rather, didn’t seem to me to work? What alternatives for exploration existed? Could they help? Could they provide a different perspective on people and help us understand how to make it safer on sites?
Consequently, I started at Plato and carried on. I discovered cognitive theories and became very excited, I applied this thinking to risk taking on sites, and it kind of worked, but didn’t really tell me anything that had not been found out before. And as I kept investigating, I found that maybe this approach couldn’t answer all the questions in terms of my experience. It couldn’t predict or explain everything that was common in terms of the uncommon found on sites, and when it tried it tied itself in paradoxical knots. I kept going, and found social constructionism which through its approach didn’t even try to explain. It enabled acceptance and understanding rather than any ‘scientific’ explanations. It unquestionably embraced variation, irrationality, and crazy stupid people doing crazy stupid things, without trying to explain them. It let you explore and understand, without the need for assumptions or generalisations. As far as I could establish it hadn’t ever been used on construction sites; this approach hadn’t been tried before. Maybe it could throw out some new ideas, some new suggestions that could help?
I could see that it might not provide the answers that people who write training programmes might want to hear. It didn’t produce firm explanations which could be located in the crosshairs and eliminated from sites. Rather it offered insight, illumination and understanding. More thinking would be required once this was achieved, but I wanted to see where this path led. So off I went.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr Peter Farrell and Dr Rod Noble for their support and guidance throughout this project – and to Roger Seeds for providing the very first encouragement. Also, thanks must go to Paddy O’Rourke and Julia Stevens for the opportunity to make it happen. And to Barry Rawlinson for his time, efforts and honesty – as always – and yes Egg, this really, really is it!
Chapter OneIntroduction
This book aims to explore and unpack construction site safety. From the very start it must be made clear that this does not include its long-time associate health, or the more recent addition of wellbeing. The reasons for this will quickly become apparent, but are broadly due to differences in the way they emerge on sites, how they are managed in practice, and in part their very essence. As will be examined later, there are fundamental differences between them that should arguably be better acknowledged and considered within construction management, yet for this text they have been set to one side in order to ensure full attention can be paid to the specific concept of construction site safety. However, health in particular does still appear in general contextual discussions, placed alongside safety as part of a seemingly unbreakable, although at times impractical and often not very helpful, amalgam.
This book takes a different approach to safety on construction sites.
Rather than discussing the implementation of various regulations or seeking to evaluate the effectiveness of safety management systems against templates of ‘best practice’, it considers how people think about safety, what it means to them and how they go on to collectively use those ideas in their everyday work. This could also be deemed an evaluation of construction site ‘safety culture’, a notoriously problematic term and one that is discussed in more detail in later chapters.Although to some extent, that is precisely what this book is.
This book takes the approach of asking some very fundamental questions.
What is safety on site?
Do we agree on our definition?
How do we talk about it?
How is safety associated with practice?
Does it ‘work’?
Although the last question has already been partly answered for us by the fact that we keep appearing in the list of the UK’s most dangerous industries, it, and these other questions, will be explored as construction site safety is unpacked within this book.
The term ‘unpacking’ may seem a little odd. It comes from the way this book has been researched and prepared. It means to pull apart, to challenge, to question and to consider from as wide a variety of perspectives as possible, both academic and practice-based. It therefore lets us take safety apart within the specific construction site context to see what we can find – an ideal approach to help us answer the questions above, allowing us to explore and address them from outside the traditional frameworks of legislation, management systems and best practice. Instead, we can see how these approaches actually work in practice, how they are received by those who have to use them on a daily basis, and how they ultimately contribute to what safety actually is on sites. The way this process has been carried out is discussed in much more detail in Chapter 3.
The context for this book is large UK construction sites (over £15 million in value) operated by large main contractors (found within the top 30 contractors in terms of annual work won by value in the UK), rather than those operated by small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) or micro operations and sole traders. However, smaller industry organisations inevitably participate in work on large sites as they operate as subcontractors within industry supply chains. Research has shown that subcontractors take their ideas of safety with them when they move from project to project (Aboagye-Nimo et al. 2012), and therefore SMEs and even micro-SMEs play a considerable part in helping to create and perpetuate what safety is on large construction sites.
Within the contemporary UK construction industry, main contractors can be seen to be actively trying to improve their safety management through the use of structured Safety Management Systems, a focus on accident targets and various safety management programmes. In this environment, such well-implemented safety management should ideally mean zero accidents, but it doesn’t. Sadly there are still incidents on large projects; the death of a worker in March 2014 on Crossrail in London occurred despite a certified safety management system and Target Zero safety programme being in place (Crossrail 2015). These environments are where ‘traditional’ safety management has been suggested to have plateaued in terms of what it can achieve, and so where new thinking is needed for future improvements.
Reading this book will hopefully support the development of a deeper understanding of safety on sites, which goes beyond practical frameworks of legislation and management systems, and starts to consider the answers to the questions asked earlier in detail. With a better knowledge of how safety actually ‘works’ within the site context, the development and implementation of management systems, interventions and initiatives can be subsequently enhanced and tailored to improve ‘fit’ within this environment. There is also the potential to improve existing safety management practices, by enabling a better understanding of why people might sometimes act as they do when they carry out safety violations, enabling the best course of action to be determined, both with the individual (to engage and educate or to discipline and punish) but also within the wider work context (to change the work method or revise payment practices, for example).
This book is intended for practitioners, academics and students of construction management. It hopes to cross the divide between practice and academia, both of which need each other to gain a complete picture of any aspect of construction management. Where some elements of this book will necessarily explore how we think about things and what this means for our social interactions from academic perspectives, there is also the need to illustrate and explain these academic considerations in relevant and representational contexts of practice.
Although the author is now works as an academic, she has over 10 years’ experience of working on large construction sites in the UK, including several years as a construction section manager. During this time she was directly involved in safety, and has therefore worked through the challenges of its implementation, as well as unfortunately been witness to the repercussions when it has sadly failed.
This book seeks to draw on both academia and practice, and it is hoped that from either perspective, the other viewpoint proves illuminating and that both can be brought together here to give a different, informative and most importantly useful understanding of safety on construction sites.
References
Aboagye-Nimo, E., Raiden, A., Tietze, S. and King, A. (2012) The use of experience and situated knowledge in ensuring safety among workers of small construction firms. In S.D. Smith (ed.),
Proceedings 28th Annual ARCOM Conference
, pp. 413–22. Association of Researchers in Construction Management, Edinburgh.
Crossrail (2015)
Health and Safety
[Online]. Available:
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/sustainability/health-and-safety/
[30 March 2015].
Chapter TwoConstruction Site Contexts
Our job, they say, is to get stuck in and get the job done, not to fill in forms. In time this macho approach becomes the local custom and practice.
Kletz 2012: 765
Although Kletz was not specifically talking about the UK construction industry when he made this statement, he might as well have been. Getting stuck in and getting the job done can be seen as one of our industry’s most positive characteristics – nothing can’t be done! – but it has also arguably contributed to one of the worst safety records in UK occupational safety.
The Health and Safety Executive (2014) report that the UK construction industry only employs approximately 5% of the UK workforce, but disproportionately accounts for 31% of fatal injuries, 10% of reported major/specified injuries and 6% of over-7-day injuries to employees. In the period 2013/14 there were 42 fatal injuries to workers in the construction industry and 592 000 working days were lost due to workplace injury, a total of 1.1 days lost per worker. All these statistics make for unpleasant reading, and also make construction one of the most dangerous industries to work in within the UK.
Often accidents happen because of changes to planned work, something pretty much inevitable in the construction industry. We build our own work environments around us and so bring change to our workplaces on a daily basis – if we didn’t we wouldn’t be doing our job – but this is something no other industry really has to contend with. For example, the management of access routes around a construction site can be a very complex and time-consuming task – if the stairs used to access the third floor yesterday are being screeded today and so everyone needs to go round outside to the door at the bottom of the next staircore, but not round the east as the curtain walling is going up and there’s no access through, but that will change next week when they drop onto the west … and so on. And change is not limited to the physical workspace; change to programme, to sequence, to design, to work practices and methods can also occur on a fairly regular basis as labour and plant become available or unavailable, or our clients simply change their minds. As a result the construction industry is highly accepting of change, and sees it as an inherent part of work.
But changes in work environments can also make significant changes to the hazards and risks of a task, and in such cases change means safety should be reconsidered and re-planned and reprogrammed. But these safety aspects can go unnoticed or even ignored, because getting the job done is our top priority. And that is when accidents can occur.
This flexible and fluid work context is also influenced by other aspects of the industry: the motivations behind getting the job done, the people who carry out the work, the way work is allocated and paid for and even the working conditions. Understanding of this wider context provides the groundwork for understandings of how safety itself works on sites, and the contextual influences that have shaped it within this construction site environment.
Winning Work
Winning work in construction can be a complex process, not least because of significant variations in work availability. Demand for construction work is directly derived from the needs of other industries or the public sector (Morton and Ross 2008). Given the nature of the product and the need for capital expenditure or investment for its production, this demand is closely linked to the overall health of the UK economy, and the industry goes through boom and bust periods as the economy fluctuates between growth and recession (Dainty et al. 2007). As the economic downturn of 2010 has demonstrated, the construction industry can be hit hard in terms of workload reduction and job losses during recession, only to be short of materials, labour and skills to carry out projects once the workload picks up. Lengthy project timescales can also mean that work priced and won in a time of recession can also hit problems when the start on site coincides with a recovering market – labour and material prices rise and so place a squeeze on profit margins that may well have been tight to begin with.
Construction work is traditionally won through competitive tendering processes with the award of work usually going to the lowest bidder. This makes organisational workloads highly uncertain, and means companies are under pressure to keep their bids low to increase their chance of winning. This can inevitably lead to a focus on cost rather than other project considerations, such as quality, sustainability and of course safety (Lingard and Rowlinson 2005). This can even be the case in more ‘balanced’ tenders such as those found in partnering agreements or frameworks; although quality or sustainability or safety are more likely to be acknowledged here, price often remains the factor with most influence when work is awarded.
In addition to cost, time is also critical – not least to ensure construction companies do not overrun the agreed contract duration and incur additional costs themselves (Loosemore et al. 2003). Clients will also consider project duration when awarding their work, and so companies also frequently bid for work with promises of delivery within very short timescales.
As a result, productivity is king and the two driving forces of time and money filter down from clients, through the project and site management teams, to the operatives carrying out work on site. Speed is of the essence; there is a constant pressure to meet daily or weekly targets on sites, be it real or perceived, which forms an ingrained aspect of construction site life (Health and Safety Executive 2009a). The tight profit margins necessitated by competitive tendering can lead to complex value engineering and a reliance on inexpensive working methods. In essence, work must be carried out as quickly and cheaply as possible. Although change has been forthcoming with the advent of partnering and other collaborative working practices, it is the two factors of time and money that still form the bottom line of the vast majority of construction projects. It is therefore unsurprising that these two elements have arguably become ingrained as dominant ‘truths’ within the site community.
These pressures have also contributed to the perception of construction sites as places of antagonism, with conflict described as ‘institutionalised’ within the industry (Loosemore et al. 2003). Many reports have berated the adversarial and antagonistic aspects of the industry which have led to an aggressive, conflict-ridden environment (Watts 2007). Several reasons have been presented for this. The project-based nature of the work has been blamed, as organisations come together on a project-by-project basis, with differing and occasionally competing objectives and demands (Fryer et al. 2004). The payment processes of the industry have also been cited as problematic – that our payment practices have even required a law (The Construction Act) to ensure fairness is more than a little embarrassing – and that the competitive tendering process simply leads to a ‘claims culture’ seeking variations and additional payments from the client, once the work has been won on a low tender price (Rooke et al. 2004). At the site level, the use of differing trades within the supply chain also results in competing objectives; each trade wants to complete its work efficiently, but a reliance on the success of the previous trade, competition with others to complete their work first in an area, and disagreements in the proposed planning of the work can all result in conflict on sites.
Subs of Subs of Subs
As a result of the inherent uncertainties in work winning and subsequent variations in workload, construction companies require a high degree of flexibility to be able to cope with fluctuations. Consequently, subcontracting of work is prolific and has become the dominant organisational structure for large construction projects (Dainty et al. 2007). Main contractors win the work through the tendering process, and then assign packages of work dependent on trade or skill to many different subcontractors in their supply chain, again through a competitive tendering process. These subcontractors can also subcontract work, resulting in elongated supply chains and highly fragmented delivery systems, often with the pressures and risks of time and cost being cascaded down to the levels below. Main contractors are unlikely to have any direct authority over the subcontractors’ operatives (Fryer et al. 2004), which often results in hierarchical systems of management; from the main contractors’ management to their supervisors to the subcontractors’ supervisors to the subcontractors’ operatives, with levels of responsibility and accountability all clearly defined (Watts 2007). Yet this potentially beneficial flexibility has also been criticised as it creates conflicting interests on site by subdividing the project (Ankrah et al. 2007), as well as increased health and safety concerns due to poor housekeeping and a lack of effective safety training, which can increase accidents on sites (Lingard and Rowlinson 2005).
The need for flexibility also translates to the workforce, with a significant amount of construction operatives being self-employed (Dainty et al. 2007), in the real or bogus sense of the term. However, such casual labour practices also have negative consequences for the industry and the pressures of time and money are of course very immediate concerns of self-employed operatives who have to work to earn, as their contractual arrangements disoblige employers from statutory responsibilities such as holiday and sick pay. This arrangement also releases employing companies from any responsibilities for training such operatives, including training and qualifications for safety (Morton and Ross 2008).
For the self-employed, and even those working directly for contractors, the common practice of paying on ‘price’ or ‘measure’ – the amount of work carried out in the day – adds yet another pressure. Payment on price is frequently used as an incentive payment scheme to increase productivity, facilitated by the ease with which outputs can be measured and rewarded (Harris et al. 2006). However, this practice inevitably encourages operatives to work as fast as possible to make the most money in a day or shift, or even worse creates a situation in which operatives have to work as fast as possible to make any profit on a job that has had it all squeezed out of it all the way along the supply chain. As speed often means cutting corners and taking risks, safety is often sacrificed (Spanswick 2007). The ever looming deadline for completion of projects means there is constant pressure to meet daily and weekly targets. This pressure is often most keenly felt by site foremen, supervisors and site managers, who often turn a blind eye to unsafe practices with fingers crossed, to achieve the necessary production (Health and Safety Executive 2003).
The Workforce
The very nature of construction work has inevitably created a project-based industry, where temporary project teams are formed on the construction sites. The workforce comes together for the duration, only to disband at project completion to start again elsewhere (Sang et al. 2007). Many large construction companies are structured so their projects, or sites, are self-contained, autonomous entities, able to manage their own costs and profits as the project managers or leaders see fit, allowing individual sites to develop their own ‘site culture’. This structure has inevitably led to the creation of a transient workforce (Health and Safety Executive 2009a), with high levels of casual recruitment and short-term work contracts (Haro and Kleiner 2008) as the operatives move from project to project. It has been argued that this itinerant workforce has repercussions for the work itself, that the very nature of the employment promotes a casual attitude to the work, and a workforce that does not accept conventions on punctuality, attendance and safety that apply to more regular work (Seymour and Fellows 2002).
In terms of skills, the construction industry has historically had a very low competence threshold for site-based operatives, in part encouraged by the short-term and itinerant nature of the work which can make long-term training a problem (Health and Safety Executive 2009a). The industry instead often looks to knowledge and experience as benchmarks for competence over formal qualifications (Rooke and Seymour 2002), with qualifications considered an irrelevant measure of people’s actual skills and ability. Employment within the construction workforce is usually based on word-of-mouth referrals and informal recruitment networks, with associated operatives often travelling from project to project together, supporting each other in finding future work. However, this recruitment process excludes as many people as it includes, and has ultimately resulted in the perpetuation of the white male domination of the workforce (Ness 2009).
Less than 1% of the construction industry operative and site-based workforce are women (UCATT 2015), and it has been estimated that less than 4% within the workforce as a whole are from a black or ethnic minority background (Chaudhry 2014). Whilst the industry has been a traditional employer of foreign and migrant workers on sites, they have been estimated to only form around 12% of the site-based workforce (McMeeken 2015). The vast majority of the site-based workforce is white and male. The lack of women within the workforce has led to what is frequently described as a ‘macho culture’ on sites, and on UK construction sites at least, this last bastion of the traditional male working class is characterised by the use of sexual language and humour, macho behaviour and almost constant swearing (Jordan et al. 2004). There are two theories as to why sites have developed in this way. One argues that the ‘spirited conversation kept the wheels of productivity turning’ (Gregory 2006) and such shared social behaviours allow for strong bonds to be formed quickly as workers are shifted round the site or from project to project, creating a sense of support and belonging within the workforce (Bird 2003). The second theory argues that the boisterous masculine culture of the male workplace can also be seen as a display of the workers’ culture of resistance against capitalism which threatens to emasculate them (Cockburn 1983; Gregory 2006). The need to be tough and physically superior to their managers is one way the workers can compensate for the masculine ‘mutation’ of subordination to other men (Cockburn 1991).
This workforce composition and somewhat inevitably labelled ‘macho culture’ has also been suggested to have led to an acceptance of risk-taking behaviours on sites. Risk -taking can form part of the individual’s construction of the masculine self (Lupton 2003), and in an industry whose sites are 99% male (UCATT 2015) this will inevitably have some influence. Indeed, the World Health Organisation (2002) concluded that ‘masculinity may be hazardous to health’, when it established a clear correlation between masculinity and risk taking. It has been suggested that men define themselves largely through their work (Cockburn 1991), which indicates that risk-taking behaviours are more likely to be carried out in this environment, and a construction site certainly provides the opportunity for this. Risk taking also helps to confirm an individual’s independent choice and the control of their own lives, and so risk taking will also appeal to construction operatives who have been found to enjoy the high degree of autonomy that is part of the standard working arrangement (Applebaum 1981).
And construction operatives do take risks, as evidenced in industry-specific accident models. For example, two of the three root causes of accidents under the construction industry-specific Accident Root Cause Tracing Model (ARCTM) developed by Abdelhamid and Everett (2000) are assigned to deliberate risk taking on the part of operatives. Whether they decided to proceed with work activities once an existing unsafe condition had been identified, or decided to act unsafely regardless of the initial conditions of the work environment, either approach requires the identification of the risk – and its subsequent acceptance on behalf of the workforce.
This workforce composition has also been suggested to have contributed to the existence and perpetuation of other prominent characteristics of life on UK construction sites. Working hours on UK construction sites are often described as excessively long – operatives work some of the longest hours in Europe (Clarke et al. 2004). The male workforce, excused family responsibilities, bears the brunt of the pressures created by the work-winning process, with ‘face-time’ – a measure of commitment and productivity (Watts 2007) in what has also been described as a ‘martyr culture’ (Knutt 2009). The argument that such hours are necessary due to the ‘nature’ of the work is easily challenged; research in Holland, where shorter hours are the norm, found its productivity to be far higher than the UK (Clarke et al. 2004). The UK is, in fact, the only member of the EU to retain the right for an employee agreed exemption from the 1993 European Working Time Directive that set a weekly limit for 48 hours paid work to protect employees. This would suggest that even at a UK government level, long hours are seen as desirable commitment, despite the potential for safety problems to increase within an increasingly exhausted workforce.
There is also a continued reliance on manual labour found within the industry, stereotyped by the big, muscle-bound construction worker. Arguably necessary many years ago, the perpetuation of manual labour within a macho culture, where any indication of not being tough enough for the job is seen as a sign of weakness, has led to the construction industry having some of the highest levels of illness amongst its workers. The industry has around twice as many workers diagnosed with musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) within the UK than in other industries (Health and Safety Executive 2014), the majority of which are back injuries from poor manual handling.
It can be suggested that work develops to suit its workforce, which in turn perpetuates these requirements in those it seeks to employ in the future. So it is perhaps unsurprising that the dominance of white men on construction sites has continued, despite many attempts to improve equality and diversity within the workforce. As a result, aspects such as risk tolerance and accepted ways of working, such as long hours and heavy manual labour, all of which can be readily associated with a ‘macho culture’, will have influence on how we manage our construction sites, as well as workers’ expectations of their environments.
Working Conditions
Our workforce is also asked to carry out its tasks within some unique working conditions, which are highly influenced by the weather (Watts 2007). Depending on the stage of the work, it is the weather which determines if the operatives will be wet and cold all day, trudging through mud to get to the workface, or sweltering in the heat and dust, with the risk of sunburn. This gives support to the common perception that construction sites are dirty places with generally poor working conditions (Watts 2007). Indeed, Egan (1998) in his review of the industry described the site environment as ‘challenging’ in terms of the conditions found there. Due to the intensive use of heavy equipment and portable power tools, site operatives are frequently exposed to high levels of noise, which are often above allowable legal limits. The atmosphere on sites can also be unpleasant, with a wide range of construction processes, such as chasing, scabbling, drilling, crushing, cutting or breaking, raising silica dust and other particulates (Health and Safety Executive 2006a) making the very air of the site both dusty and hazardous.
The workplace itself can also be of concern, over and above the constant change that is an inevitable consequence of the work itself. That we are essentially an assembly business means materials, tools and people have to come together, often in relatively small spaces, in various ways to produce the finished product – and this can be messy. The Health and Safety Executive’s ‘Good Order Initiative’ (2006b) was established to pass on the message that ‘it is not acceptable for corridors and stairwells to be obstructed with materials, footpaths to be uneven, cables to be strewn across walkways or for steps into site cabins to be poorly constructed’. There are a variety of aspects inherent in the work that can contribute to poor working conditions, although it has been recognised that significant improvements have been made over recent years where practical or indeed possible (Health and Safety Executive 2003).
Never work a day in your life …
However, whilst the above paints a predominately negative picture of the construction industry, it is certainly not all bad. Very high levels of job satisfaction can be found on construction sites (see for example the research carried out by Jordan et al. 2004; Coffey and Fowler 2010; Polesie 2010). Job satisfaction can be drawn from many sources: pride in the participation and creation of something tangible (Watts 2007; Rawlinson and Farrell 2010; the empowerment and autonomy of the workforce (Applebaum 1981; Polesie 2010); team working (Jordan et al. 2004); the practical use of craft skills (Eisenberg 1998) and the satisfaction inherent in overcoming the many problems that can arise (Court and Moralee 1995; Chan and Kaka 2007). When I worked on construction sites I loved it. I loved it because I got to be part of a team, I got to work alongside some really interesting people as we planned and put things together, as we overcame challenges, and eventually delivered something that actually made a physical difference to the city I lived in.
So whilst the work environment of construction sites can be seen as hard and challenging, it is also a place of enjoyment, satisfaction, pride, laughter, and usually someone somewhere singing loudly and, unfortunately, quite badly off key.
Construction Site Life
Cipolla et al. (2006) argue that the very nature of the construction industry is the cause of its poor safety record. Some of the industry’s key characteristics have been cited again and again as the root cause of many accidents and incidents: competitive tendering for work winning (Health and Safety Executive 2001; Sang et al. 2007; Morton and Ross 2008); the use of subcontracting and long supply chains (Donaghy 2009; Manu et al. 2010); the transient and fragmented workforce (Health and Safety Executive 2001; Biggs et al. 2005; Donaghy 2009); bonus and payment schemes that encourage speed and risk-taking behaviours (Sawacha et al. 1999; Gadd and Collins 2002; Fellows et al. 2002) and the constant demand for progress (Lingard and Rowlinson 2005; Health and Safety Executive 2009b). Indeed one-quarter of experts consulted for the Donaghy Report (2009) to the UK government – One Death is Too Many – felt that the way the industry is set up and work is procured has created an ethos that actively encourages safety accidents and incidents.
To fully understand the construction site context, an appreciation of what it can be like to work within this challenging environment will also be helpful. Consider the following …
