Dealing with a weak link in the safety chain
June 13th 2008
More stringent CDM regulations and the Corporate Manslaughter Act mean construction firms can’t afford to leave any gaps in the health and safety chain.
Nearly eighteen months on, firms are still getting to grips with the increased responsibility placed on them by the Construction Design & Management Regulations (CDM) 2007 to plan the management of safety risks on all projects right from initial design through to completion.
Although the paperwork is less burdensome, there is now less scope for hiding behind the letter of the law by applying exemptions due to the size of project or failing to manage risk because the law was not explicit.
As these regulations marked their first anniversary in April another potentially more worrying piece of legislation emerged in the form of the Corporate Manslaughter Act. This makes it easier to charge firms with Manslaughter in the event of a site death, leaving them open to fines of up to 10% of turnover and a reputation-destroying publicity order.
No longer will it be necessary to identify a single ‘controlling mind’ at the top in order to make the charge stick. Any significant gaps in a firm’s safety procedures could be enough to convict, if they can be linked to the incident concerned.
Failure to comply with CDM ’07 or a slack system for vetting sub-contractors could, in the event of a site death, leave a firm vulnerable to a Manslaughter charge.
CDM ’07 strengthens the crucial requirement for co-ordination and co-operation on sites with multiple contractors and stresses the need for a single business entity to guarantee this. Fundamentally it places greater onus on developers and contractors to verify that the firms they engage are sufficiently experienced and competent for the job.
It is this sub-contractor link in the chain that could prove the Achilles Heel of many otherwise safety-conscious firms. Interestingly the CDM ’07 regulations were accompanied by HSE guidance on methods for pre-qualifying sub-contractors by checking for documentary evidence of good practice.
The net effect of these and other regulations is that main contractors are far more likely to be held accountable for the safety failings sub-contractors – a fact underlined by recent court cases where both parties were heavily penalised.
This pressure on contractors to vet those they engage, and on sub-contractors themselves to prove their credentials, has boosted the popularity of third party assessments by independent health and safety professionals. An estimated 20% of sub-contractors now belong to at least one pre-qualification scheme.
These systems are designed to help main contractors engage only those sub-contractors with a proven safety commitment and reduce the time involved in repeated vetting.
Some accreditation schemes will continue to apply higher entry standards than others to meet the requirements of their clients or the level of risk for those trades they assess. However the challenge now lies in agreeing common industry-wide vetting criteria that would persuade more firms to adopt this approach. The major pre-qualification service providers are currently working with HSE to achieve this.
Strengthening this weak link in the safety chain would not only protect those working on site but would greatly reduce the vulnerability of major construction firms in the face of April’s new Corporate Manslaughter Act.