Health and Safety in Construction Design

Statistics suggest that in the majority of major accidents across a range of industries, the root causes can be traced back before anybody actually started work. These include effective research, development, specification and planning.

In construction, much of the time at the beginning of any project is usually involved with design, which makes the designer's role one of the most influential health and safety roles in the whole process. Health and Safety in Construction Design is a highly practical guide to help any designer understand the implications of health and safety legislation for their role in a project. Brian Thorpe also offers a realistic plan to help adopt a health and safety culture in the design process. This means using the people, experience and information to assess and eliminate risk and, where this is not possible, to reduce and communicate risk in such a way that contractors, sub-contractors, site visitors - even the people using the finished building - are able to avoid accidents.

Designers may only be actively present for a very small percentage of any given project. However, their influence on site safety needs to extend to cover people they do not manage or communicate with personally and who may be resistant to regulations and often willing to take personal risk (either consciously or unconsciously).

Health and Safety in Construction Design shows how, if the designers get it right, they will create a safety culture and how this achievement will be visible in the way all partners in the project work together. If they get it wrong, they expose themselves and their practice to prosecution and civil action, everyone on site to physical and/or mental harm, and the project to time and cost overruns and failure.

This book is part of the Leading Construction Series (co-published by Gower and CITB-ConstructionSkills, and supports the IOSH Health and Safety in Construction Design course developed by the National Construction College.