Statistics give us different views of construction safety culture. Bill Coetzee asks whether safety is in the eye of the loss data beholder.
Some indicators of the state of safety in industry could be lopsided. For example, last year minister Ngoako Ramathlodi noted that mining fatalities were the lowest ever at 84 per year, down from 615 in 1994. However a dip in production and employment is difficult to factor into data of low frequency events.
In July last year,the Department of Labour announced that construction health and safety compliance was less than 50%, not surprising to the public who read in the news about collapsing malls, houses, bridges, and a restaurant roof on a bridge on the N1 highway.
Something must be seriously wrong when one sector performs apparently better, and another apparently worse. Much has been said about the need for a culture change in construction (Construction Charter, Safebuild, Buildsafe, NMMU studies, CIDB studies, SACPCMP skills policies), but the likes of the DMR mining pilot projects are few and far between.
When will construction health and safety culture, and statistics, and public opinion, take a turn for the better?
Construction statistics apples and pears
Perhaps one of the answers lie in the system of reporting and processing of incidents and accidents in the construction sector.
According to a report by the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), the Department of Labour (DOL) collects construction health and safety statistics from the provinces.
The DOL collates the information and publish it according to a set of parameters. However The CIDB had found it significantly difficult to access and compare some of these construction health and safety statistics, due to differences in collection and interpretation. For example:
[] The most recent publicly available H&S statistics from the Compensation Commissioner are for 1999.
[] The statutory construction insurer FEMA, and the Compensation Commissioner, include construction-related vehicle accidents in their statistics (which can be extracted).
[] DoL statistics are not included by the statutory insurers, since they are reported to the Police Service (SAPS).
[] DoL H&S statistics are collated from provinces, but instances of gross under-reporting are suspected.
Calibrating construction health and safety tools
With the lack of historical information, and different formats, and some under-reporting, how should the state, and industry, identify and fix the problems?
Perhaps by simply focusing on the present, and the quality of the management of the ream of legal and corporate requirements, and on what leading indicators may reveal about the future.
Perhaps we should regularly revisit the basics, and fine-tune our management systems to ensure the quality of incident reporting, targeted interventions, and a true, contemporary picture of the state of health and safety.
Perhaps become dissatisfied with the general current culture, and set examples of a new construction health and safety culture.
Business need not do all of this alone, The DoL and organised labour were instrumental in better performance in the mining sector, even with limited resources.
Construction business (including clients), the state, and labour, will have to find more effective measures to safeguard the lives of construction workers, and the public, and to reduce the impact of major incidents on investment and jobs.
All the relevant professions, skills, legislation, research, best practice, and quality management, should take a close look at the leading and lagging indicators of injuries and loss, including the overall construction health and safety culture.
Any industry could get caught in the trap of rising risk tolerance, when incidents become accepted as inevitable, and part of the budget.
Loss statistics always indicate additional, hidden, and ‘collateral damage’ costs, that could spiral out of management control.
Without invoking the available formulas for calculating that cost, we should simply accept that they are higher than the health, safety, environment, and quality budget cuts that are part of the multiple causes of loss incidents.
- Bill Coetzee is the Principal Consultant for Cygma Sheq Gauteng. Contact him on 011 083 8366, 073 475 4763, or b.coetzee@cygmasheq.co.za
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