Fred Sherratt

UK construction site safety: discourses of enforcement and engagement

Developments in safety management on large UK construction sites have seen a paradigm shift from enforcement-based systems to safety-culture programmes, which seek to engage with the workforce to create fully cooperative and safety-conscious sites. Founded in social constructionism, recent research sought out the master discourses of safety on large UK construction sites through the examination of safety signage, talk around safety and safety documentation. Two of the most prominent discourses of safety on sites were found to be safety as enforcement and safety as engagement, reflecting the change in safety management strategies. These discourses were found to be interrelated in their constructions of safety, yet also varied in their associations with practice, responsibility, social interactions and the management hierarchy of the sites. These findings develop the current understanding of safety found on sites, with relation to the hierarchical structures of safety management and the discourses of enforcement and engagement in practice. The findings have significance for the safety practices of large UK contractors in developing and improving their safety-culture programmes, as well as suggesting potential new directions in the academic research of safety in construction.

Exploring ‘Zero Target’ safety programmes in the UK construction industry

Zero Target safety management programmes have become prominent on the UK sites of large construction contractors, who promote ‘Zero Harm’, ‘Mission Zero’ or ‘Target Zero’ on their hoardings and corporate websites. However, while Zero Target programmes may inspire increased commitment to safety from some, they may also cause detachment in others who feel it an unattainable goal for a high-risk industry. Examination of the practical realities of such Zero Target safety programmes has been undertaken, to illuminate and understand their position and potential impact on UK construction site health and safety management. A social constructionist methodology was employed, with discourse analysis of corporate websites, reports and promotional materials from five large contractors currently operating Zero Target safety programmes on their UK sites, supplemented by conversations with site management and operatives working on such sites. Zero was constructed as both a philosophy and a target, the corporate and site voices developing alternative visions of zero in practice. There is incoherence and inconsistency within the understandings of zero, which may affect the practical successes of Zero Target safety programmes, but zero was also found to have a very necessary place within industry safety management, in order to support future improvements in practice.

Legitimizing public health control on sites? A critical discourse analysis of the Responsibility Deal Construction Pledge

As part of a wider programme, the UK Department of Health produced a Responsibility Deal Construction Pledge, seeking organizational commitment in improving the health of its workforce. Yet commercial involvement with the health of the worker beyond the workplace is a contentious issue, a fundamental challenge to personal freedoms. The exercise of this paternalistic or pastoral power should be questioned, and consequently the agendas and interests behind it have been explored through a critical discourse analysis of the press release of the Pledge. Workers’ inability to make the ‘right’ decisions about their health was used as justification for corporate intervention to guide workers to their ‘true’ interests and the ‘right’ choices. The occupational health of individual construction workers on sites was negated for their wider contributions as a workforce to industry and the UK economy. Whilst the real interests of construction workers are likely to be served by a balance of good health and work, this should not be dictated by government, much less commercial organizations with vested interests in worker output. Concerns are raised for workers’ health and well-being in terms of their fundamental autonomy, and an increasingly controlled relationship between productive activities and power relations.

Exploring Safety Management Challenges for Multi-National Construction Workforces: A UK Case Study

Abstract Large construction projects frequently operate with multi-national workforces, utilizing migrant workers to provide both skilled and unskilled labour. Multi-national workforces are also brought together through joint ventures, as companies from different countries collaborate and share their expertise to construct large and complex construction projects. A multi-national joint venture in the UK provides the case study for an examination of the safety management challenges found on such projects. Whilst language and communication issues amongst workers are typically primary concerns, here they have not been prioritized. Instead, findings are presented that illuminate more nuanced and unquantifiable problems that faced the safety management team. An ethnographically informed approach was mobilized, with the lead researcher spending three years on the site with the safety team gathering data. Analysis revealed several challenges: problems with non-UK company compliance with UK legislation and standards; differences in working practices amongst both non-UK workers and their managers; differences associated with national cultures; and problems of poor worker welfare. It is suggested that awareness of these challenges should inform both the way in which such projects are initially contracted, as well as the development of more sophisticated safety management systems that better support multi-national construction projects in practice.

UK construction safety: a zero paradox?

Abstract The zero accident mantra has become embedded within the safety discourse of large UK construction organisations, but the extent to which zero-focused approaches yield reductions in accident frequency is yet to be empirically investigated. By way of an evidence-based critique, we examine the relationship between major accidents and zero approaches by drawing on Health and Safety Executive accident data over a 4 year period, together with an analysis of major contractors’ safety approaches. This reveals that working on a project subject to a zero safety policy or programme actually appears to slightly increase the likelihood of having a serious life-changing accident or fatality; a possible ‘zero paradox’. Although these findings should be treated with caution, they suggest that the apparent trend towards abandoning zero amongst some large organisations is well-founded. As such, if zero policies stymie learning whilst failing to reduce accidents, the need for a countervailing discourse is clear.

Shaping the discourse of worker health in the UK construction industry

Abstract The UK construction industry is in poor health, statistics show rates of occupational illness significantly higher than for workers in any other industry. Recently, the scope of occupational health management on large sites has increased as public health has become included within the organizational remit. Concerns have been raised around the consequences of this development, its close relationships to Corporate Social Responsibility, and how this is now shaping the wider discourse. To explore this phenomenon, a critical discourse analysis of UK “construction worker health” has been carried out, using the public-facing data of ten large UK contractors. Findings show that “public” has now overtaken “occupational”, the latter restricted to legal compliance presented as corporate citizenship, the former championed as evidence of benevolent organizational values. Yet public health concerns are limited to those of lifestyle and individual responsibility, whilst more complex issues around the social determinants of health as associated with work are missing from the discourse, separating organizations from the impacts of their work on their workers. A contemporary mapping of “construction worker health” is developed for consideration by industry and academics to support future health initiatives and research.

Safety and volunteer construction workers

The construction industry is dangerous, with 39 fatalities at work in the UK in 2012/13 and comparable and even larger figures reported worldwide. People also take part in construction on a voluntary basis; most volunteers have limited training and no technical qualification, whilst safety regulation frameworks range from being comparable to professional sectors to zero regulation in some international contexts. Unstructured interviews were undertaken with volunteer construction workers from two areas: those returning from international development projects and those regularly volunteering on UK heritage railways. Taking a social constructionist perspective, data was explored using discourse analysis to illuminate ‘safety’ within this unique construction ‘industry’. Those with engineering or technical backgrounds developed more tangible constructions of safety, around risks and hazards, within their activities, yet volunteers without this experience also acknowledged a wider context of danger. Volunteers on overseas projects developed discourses of ‘difference’ between safety at home and safety outside the UK, associated with negative practices overseas yet with acceptance of their inevitability as part of the voluntary experience. Further work is proposed to determine whether these insights can contribute to improved safety management within the voluntary construction context.

Impact of integrated collaborative technologies to form a collaborative culture in construction projects

Purpose Research has shown that the lack of forming team collaboration works as a barrier in the use of collaborative technologies such as Building Information Modelling. So, there is a need to investigate whether and how integrated collaborative technologies have an impact on team collaboration between stakeholders, including clients, in the planning, design and construction stages. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach In order to investigate this interrelationship, researchers used a survey methodology involving gathering both quantitative and qualitative data, and used regression analysis to assess the strength of impact of integrated collaborative technologies on team collaboration. For the qualitative data researchers used content analysis. Findings Findings show that integrated collaborative technologies impact on team collaboration by assisting the development of a collaborative culture throughout a project. This collaborative culture is deployed due to access to information by stakeholders from anywhere at any time. In this culture environment, stakeholders can share and access knowledge and awareness about the project and thus gain common ground and understanding about the project brief. In addition, integrated collaborative technologies give stakeholders the capacity to control the project process, to enhance the interaction and networking project processes as well as to pre-identify and promptly respond to project errors and uncertainties. Originality/value The value of this paper is to contribute in the identification and impact of collaboration culture in the architecture, engineering and construction sector.

Healthcare designers’ use of prescriptive and performance-based approaches

ABSTRACT In the UK, healthcare built environment design is guided by a series of long-established design standards and guidance issued by the Department of Health. More recently, healthcare design focus has broadened to encompass new approaches, supported by large bodies of credible research evidence. It is therefore timely to rethink how healthcare design standards and guidance should be best expressed to suit ‘designerly ways’ of using evidence, to improve their use and effectiveness in practice. This research explored how designers use performance and prescriptive approaches during the healthcare design process. Three in-depth healthcare built environment case studies were used to explore how designers employed such approaches during the design of selected exemplar design elements. Results show that design elements in the pre and conceptual design phases significantly employed performance-based approaches, and due to project-unique circumstances, prescriptive solutions were often significantly modified based on performance criteria. For design elements in the detailed and technical design phases, there was a significant use of solutions based on prescriptive approaches, whilst performance-based criteria were used to evaluate design solutions. This research proposes a performance-based, specification-driven healthcare design with supplementary prescriptive specifications provided for optimum healthcare environment design.

Responses to the Vision Zero Articles

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Policy and Practice in Health and Safety on 14 August 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14773996.2017.1361110.