Designers’ Role in Construction Safety Management in Design Stage

Jianliang Zhou 1, a Danqi Liang 1, b Li Dong 2, c 1 School Of Mechanics and Civil Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, CUMT

Xuzhou, China

a Zhou-jl@tsinghua.edu.cn b danqi1987@163.com c dongli09@163.com

Keywords: Designer Role; Construction Safety Management System; Approach; Challenge

Abstract. It is necessary for the whole project stakeholders to improve the level of construction

safety management, which includes the owner, designer, contractor, construction supervisor,

government regulators and other parties. With respect to the research about construction project

safety, existing literatures mainly consider about contractor, construction supervisor and other

parties. However, Design stage is the key point of affecting the construction safety management and

more attention should be paid. Design stage provides the basis to control the project safety risks in

construction stage. Aiming to give better play for designers in construction safety management, this

paper probed project safety management system, suggested the approach of designer roles in

construction project safety management, analyzed the challenges if designer took part in

construction safety management, and gave some countermeasures on how to take advantage of the

designer in improving the level of construction safety.

Introduction

With the rapid growth of our country economy, the construction industry has developed rapidly.

However, frequent occupational casually accidents in the industry, which cause heavy loss of people

lives and property, are not up to the requirements of socialist harmonious society. In china,

construction industry becomes the most dangerous profession which is second only to coal industry.

For promoting the sustainable development of construction industry, it is necessary to enhance

construction safety management level significantly by taking advantage of the designer[1]

. Because

the designers plays the critical decision role in choosing the building structure, material, equipment

and the construction methods, the design rationality also decides the building structure safety and the

construction safety[2]

. By giving full play to the designer on safety management, the construction

safety risk control could extend forward to design phase, build a pre-actively control mechanism of

safety management, and provide the base of site safety management for construction company.

Safety management system of Building projects

2.1 The new division of the causes of construction safety accidents

According to the construction safety management practice, the building market-related parties’

controllability in all aspects of constructors and construction supervisors’ on-site management ability,

the causes of construction safety accidents can be divided into four categories: (1) Accidents caused

by the quality risks because of unreasonable design or constructing not according to the drawings; (2)

Accidents caused by irrational construction organization or construction technology programs[3]

; (3)

Accidents caused by site workers breaking rules or regulations; (4) Accidents caused by the quality

hazards of construction machinery and equipment.

2.2 The redesign of project safety management organization

On the basis of unifying on the classification of safety accidents causes, the allocation and

specific safety management way of relevant stakeholders’ responsibilities can be embodied in the

next step for regulations. Referring to the practice of health and safety files of the UK CDM

Applied Mechanics and Materials Vols. 174-177 (2012) pp 2867-2870 Online: 2012-05-14© (2012) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerlanddoi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.174-177.2867

All rights reserved. No part of contents of this paper may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of TransTech Publications, www.ttp.net. (ID: 161.139.39.211, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia UTM, Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia-17/09/15,17:40:44)

regulations, we can consider requiring owners to organize making project health and safety files,

construction supervisors on behalf of owners to focus on the first and second category safe risks, the

contractor and subcontractors to focus on the third and fourth category safe risks. This will not only

avoid the abnormal practice that current supervisors do all kinds of work and complain the stand

method in construction safety management, but also can help contractors improve the level of safety

management, and also establish total stakeholders involvement of the good safety management

system.

Owner

Project health and

safety files

Construction

supervisor

Designer

Constractor

Subcontractors

organazation

Co-ordinate

The second category

Supervise

(the first、second

category)

manage

checkImplement

Insurance

company

assessreport

Plan

Plan

Figure1 Safety management system of building project Fig 2 Process of design for construction

safety[2]

2.3 The work breakdown of project safety management

According to the traditional ways of construction, it could be divided into five stages in project

life-cycle, which include pre-design, design, tender, construction and handover. The main works can

be breakdown of project safety management, as shown in table 1.

Table 1 Work breakdown of project management

Phase Work breakdown of safety management

Pre-design 1.collecting stakeholders safety requirements; 2. project site investigation

Design 1. hazard and impact identification; 2. risk assessment of structure and

constructionability; 3. prepare health and safety file

Tender 1. contractor competence review for safety management; 2. making the outline

health and safety plan

Construction 1. carrying out the health and safety plan; 2. update the health and safety plan

for changes; 3. update and share the health and safety file

Handover Hand over the health and safety file

Approach of designer role in construction safety management

3.1 The basic process that designer involves in safety management

A process was drawn by Gambatese[2]

for design for construction safety, as shown in fig 1. The

key feature of this process is the input of site safety knowledge into design decisions. A number of

progress reviews would ensure that safety is considered throughout the design process. The end

product, the design documents, would reflect a design that is safer to build. In this process, the key

component is the incorporation of site safety knowledge into design decisions. Ideally, site safety

would be considered throughout the design process. It is recognized, however, that a limited

number of progress reviews for safety may be more practical. The required site safety knowledge

can be provided by one or more possible sources of such safety constructability expertise, including

trade contractors, an in-house employee, or an outside consultant.

2868 Advanced Building Materials and Sustainable Architecture

This process starts with identifying the hazards for the construction of permanent building.

Designers should apply countermeasures to eliminate the hazards or reduce the risk. If the risk of

injury cannot be eliminated or reduced by design, then warnings, instruction, and training are the last

resort. Temporary works in construction, such as temporary propping and bracing, scaffolding,

access, crane layout and the like, is usually the responsibility of, and is carried out by constructor or

subcontractors. Designer using the process does not address methods to make construction safer, but

how to make a project safer to build.

3.2 The designers main responsibilities in safety management

Designers shall make sure that: (1) having sufficient competence and resources, and paying

attention to safety produce problems since design stage; (2) eliminating hazards that the foreseeable

risk may give rise to; and reducing risk from any remaining hazards; providing any significant risk

information that associates with design; (3) under the professional safety adviser (or safety

supervisor) guidance , coordinating and cooperating with other parties to provide information for

the project safety management files; (4) trying to consider the safety and constructability of the

project ,and indicating the important site temporary works should be designed by a qualified

professional staff in the technical specifications.

3.3 The interactions of design stage and construction stage in safety management

To make the safety assessment outputs of the design stage provide effectively guide for

contractors and supervisors, designers should prepare the safety planning and some other related

documents as one part of tender documents and project health and safety files in construction stage,

and as the basis of safety management for the construction phase. The information that designers

delivers to contractors and supervisors is shown in Table 2.

Table 2 List of design products delivering documents

Main Phases Output to the tender documents and the project health and safety

files

Project environmental survey Designing requiring Functional safety analysis and project

environmental survey

Review of survey results The potential safety hazards of project environment

Review of safety solutions Treatment measures to project environmental potential safety

hazards

Safety review of Pre-design Safety risk assessment of Pre-design

Detailed design Design statements

Safety assessment for design Safety risk of project design and measures to these changes

Safety assessment for design

changes Potential Safety hazards caused by design changes

Challenges and solutions of designer role in construction safety management

Like many good ideas, although designer could make huge contribution to improve

construction safety, there are a number of barriers that will likely slow its adoption.

Firstly, most design professionals lack construction safety knowledge and unfamiliar with

construction process[4]

. In practice, design professionals usually lack expertise of construction

safety so that they seldom consider the buildings constructability in the condition of safe

environment. Besides, designers’ contribution to construction safety through the approach proposed

earlier would require more than knowledge of safety standards and the elements of a safety

program. Designers would also require knowledge of how individual construction tasks are

performed, the sequencing between the tasks, and how different trades and companies coordinate

their work. The suggested solution is that both engineering and architectural curricula must include

construction safety and construction practice experience in college, and require at least 10 hours

safety course in continuing education for the design professionals.

Applied Mechanics and Materials Vols. 174-177 2869

Secondly, owners pay much more attention to the three traditional goals including quality, time

and cost, than construction safety. In china, owners usually arrange the site works safety to

contractors by contract, and request the supervisors take the superintendent duties. The designers

just take the responsibilities of the function of buildings and the safety of the end users. Besides,

although the owners are the core stakeholders in the project management organizations, they usually

are not project management professionals and have no enough safety consciousness. It results in

that they seldom have safety consciousness and prefer to cut down the fee for project safety. The

suggestion solution is to increase the weight of legal responsibilities of owners, push owners

implementing the principal of “safety first” during the whole cycle of construction project.

Thirdly, Designers worries about increased liability that could be held partially responsible for

construction accidents[5]

. Indeed, the desire to avoid undeserved liability underlies the paragraphs in

the standard model contracts including China that explicitly state the design professional is not

responsible for means and methods or for any safety programs. It is suggested preventing designers

from contributing to construction safety concerns are only cost reason, not the additional designers’

liability. Obviously, performing safety-related actions will increase both direct and overhead costs

for designers, and the magnitude of direct and indirect cost increases for designers cannot be easy to

predict. As a result, designers choosing to design for safety would likely need to substantially

increase their professional fees. Such increased fees would clearly make the firms uncompetitive

with design firms who continue performing the traditional design process. It is recommended that

encourage or state in laws the owners pay a premium for safer designs or award design contracts

based on project life cycle costs rather than on merely low design fees.

Conclusion

To better play designer roles in preventing accidents to achieve an injury-free worksite, this

paper suggested an approach of inputting site safety knowledge into design decisions, and discussed

the facing challenges including lacking safety expertise, lacking owners’ requirement, fear the

incurring increased liability exposure, and empty of regulations and policies of designer roles for

safety. It is clear that increasing designers’ role in construction safety would require long-term,

intentional and focused effort by education organisms, owners, designers’ professional

organizations and government law makers.

Acknowledgement:

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation (No. 51008301), and

Ministry of Housing and Urban &Rural Development of China (No. 2010-K3-9).

REFERENCES

[1] Hecker, S., Gambatese, J., and Weinstein, M., Eds. (2004). Designing for safety and health in

construction: Proceedings from a Research and Practice Symposium, Univ. of Oregon Press

[2] Gambatese, J. A., Behm, M. and Hinze, J.W. (2005). “Viability of Designing for Construction

Worker Safety.” Journal of Construction Engineering and Management 131(9): 1029-1036.

[3] Behm, M. “Linking Construction Fatalities to the Design for Construction Safety Concept”

Safety Science 43 (2005) 589-611.

[4] Shanwu Wang, “Understanding of hydropower projects safety management,” J. Sichuan

Water Power. Vol. 28, pp. 151-153, Aug 2009（In Chinese）

[5] Toole, T. M. and J. Gambatese (2008). “The Trajectories of Construction Prevention through

Design.” Journal of Safety Research 39(2): 225-230.

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