I recently attended a summit on health and safety in the construction industry under the theme; “The Role of Industry 4.0 in Construction Health and Safety (H&S)”
The object of the summit was to provide a forum for construction industry role players to address construction H&S related matters with specific emphasis on topical issues, the development of knowledge and skills areas, and to debate ‘challenging’ issues.
Topics included but not limited to:
· The Role of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in Managing Construction H&S
· The Role of Industry 4.0 in Construction H&S: Pr and Candidate CHSAs’ perceptions
· The Potential of Industry 4.0 to Improve Construction H&S
· The Role of Virtual Reality (VR) in Construction H&S Training
· The Role of Industry 4.0 in Managing Occupational Health and Primary Health Promotion in Construction
· The Role of Drones in Managing Construction H&S
Speaker after speaker emphasized that health and safety practitioners need to embrace technology in curbing health and safety-related issues. Most consulting engineering firms are moving towards various solutions to improve services rendered and working on the basis of seeing the end at the beginning. By doing so clients can see what the end product would look like and this means health and safety practitioners need to understand and work with these types of programmes.
The advantage of these programmes is that you can identify the following:
· Linking of 3D model elements to a detailed construction programme
· Clearly show what is planned to be constructed and information can be filtered and organized
· Allows the project team to see plan versus actual in real-time
· Site boundaries, construction equipment (crane movements, restrictions) can be added
· Access live model data
· Access what/when elements are to be constructed
· Identify and report in real-time clashes
· Identify and report in real-time hazards
· Identify and report in real-time H&S data
This provides a holistic view of the project, including safety and hazard issues.
The future of reducing risk by using the latest technology:
· Through the use of tracking and sensing technology, working fatalities and injuries relating to being struck by moving construction vehicles can be dramatically reduced
Aside from the physical dimensions of the objects themselves, add further dimensions and zones; e.g., the minimum space requirements around the plant, for access and maintenance – added to H&S
H&S information is generated, shared and stored for re-use in the Cloud by others on-site or in future projects.
· Models created in the design process can be re-used, for example, to develop visual method statements and to show how maintenance operations should be carried out
Facilities managers can use the as-built model to inform their decisions and risk assessments
Some of the recommendations that come out of the summit were but not limited to:
v Built environment-related tertiary education must include, or rather embed Industry 4.0 in their programmes
v Construction employer associations, and built environment associations and statutory councils must promote, and preferably provide Industry 4.0 continuing professional development (CPD), and evolve such guidelines and practice notes
v The Construction Industry Development Board ( cidb ) should evolve a position paper relative to Industry 4.0 in construction and deliberate the development of a related industry standard
v Researchers should actively conduct and document Industry 4.0 case studies to record the benefits of implementing Industry 4.0 technologies
In conclusion, technology is here to stay and each and everyone one of us needs to embrace this and it is clear that construction industry needs to be geared for a rapidly changing environment or risk stagnating or falling behind their peers.
Further analysis is required on the appropriate way to modernise or advance the construction industrial base of the country, its alignment with existing industrial policy,and the specific state interventions needed to create suitable social conditions and the enabling environment in which construction industry can adopt, absorb and implement these new technologies and approaches.
Neil Enslin | Occupational Health and Safety Manager
