We use the word ‘safety’ so much, often in company with its partner ‘health’, that it should be easy to find a definition. Yet the dictionaries do not offer much assistance — ’Safety [is] the absence of danger’ one says, unhelpfully supplying the entry for ’danger’ as ’absence of safety’! Others suggest ‘a state of protection’ and ’a condition not involving risk’. Perhaps the best we can do is to agree that there is no arbitrary state of ’absolute safety’, as there is always a chance — a risk — of something going wrong, however small that chance may be.

In the same way, a little thought about ’health’ brings the same conclusion — it is a relative notion, in the sense that in any population there will be those in varying states of wellness. But this does not stop us using the word in an everyday sense to convey the idea that, in the workplace at least, the aim should be that workers do not leave their work less ’healthy’ than when they arrived.

The management of workplace health and safety is done together, and in the same way, so that often in speech the word ’safety’ is used to mean both. In recent years, it has been recognised that environmental issues also need to be managed, and again often by using the same techniques and practices. So, for reasons of space and ease of understanding, in this article the reader will often find the word ’safety’ used alone although the presence of its natural partners ’health’ and ’environment’ should be understood.

Basic terms

An accident is an incident plus its consequences; the end product of a sequence of events or actions resulting in an undesired consequence (injury, property damage, interruption, delay). An accident can be defined more formally as ’an undesired event, which results in physical harm and/ or property damage, usually resulting from contact with a source of energy above the ability of the body or structure to withstand it.’.

In normal conversation we use the word ’accident’ loosely, and in doing so we often couple in a sense of bad luck on the part of the injured person, and a feeling that it could not have been foreseen. In safety management, we need to be clear that the luck, or the element of chance, is only concerned with the physical outcome of the incident, which is ’that sequence of events or actions resulting in the undesired consequences’. For ease of reading, this article uses the word ’accident’ to describe injury events, except where an important distinction has to be made between ’accident’ and ’incident’.

An injury is thus a consequence of an incident — but not the only possible one. It has been shown that hundreds of incidents occur in the construction industry for every one that causes injury or loss. But all incidents have the potential to do so. This is why it is important to look at all incidents as sources of information on what is going wrong. Relying on injury records only allows a review of a minority of incidents — those which happened to result in a serious injury consequence. We can make some reasonable estimates about the likelihood of, say, failure of a lifting appliance. Only chance will decide whether an injury rather than, or as well as, property damage will occur on a particular occasion, and how severe either will be.

Hazard means ’the inherent property or ability of some- thing to cause harm — the potential to interrupt or interfere with a process or person’. Hazards may arise from interacting or influencing components, for example two chemicals interacting to produce a third.

Risk is ’the chance or probability of loss’, an evaluation of the potential for failure. It is easy to confuse the terms ’hazard’ and ’risk’, but a simple way to remember the difference is that ’hazard’ describes potential for harm, risk is the likelihood that harm will result in the particular situation or circumstances, coupled with a measure of the degree of severity of that harm. Comparisons between risks can be made using simple numerical formulae.

What causes accidents?

Accidents are the direct result of unsafe activities and conditions, both of which can be controlled by management. Management is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the working environment and tasks, into which workers must fit and interreact. Control of workers and their behaviour is more difficult. Workers have to be given information, and the knowledge that accidents are not inevitable but are caused. They need training to develop skills and recognise the need to comply with and develop safe systems of work, and to report and correct unsafe conditions and practices. Their safety awareness and attitudes require constant improvement, and the social environment of the workplace — the safety climate — must be one which fosters good safety and health practices and conditions, not one which discourages them.

On investigation, and after a little thought, it can be seen that accidents are relatively complex events. A man falls off a ladder. It seems straightforward — the ladder was not securely tied down, and witnesses say that it was set at the wrong angle and not secured against slipping. This incident could be put down to carelessness on the part of the man, having failed to observe the physical situation. Carelessness, though, is rarely either a good or an adequate explanation of events like accidents.

Unsafe acts and unsafe conditions are often referred to as immediate or primary causes of accidents, because they are the most obvious causes and because they are usually directly involved or present at the moment the accident happens. Secondary causes are also important, although they are usually harder to seek out and identify. They are the failures of the management system to anticipate, and include lack of training, maintenance, adequate job planning and instruction, and not having safe systems of working place.

Some examples of unsafe acts and conditions are given below.

Unsafe acts

• Working without authority
• Failure to warn others of danger
• Leaving equipment in a dangerous condition
• Using equipment at the wrong speed
• Disconnecting safety devices such as guards
• Using defective equipment
• Using equipment the wrong way or for the wrong tasks
• Failure to use or wear personal protective equipment
• Bad loading of vehicles
• Failure to lift loads correctly
• Being in an unauthorised place
• Unauthorised servicing and maintaining of moving equipment
• Horseplay
• Smoking in areas where this is not allowed
• Drinking alcohol or taking drugs

Unsafe conditions

• Inadequate or missing guards to moving machine parts
• Missing platform guardrails
• Defective tools and equipment
• Inadequate fire warning systems
• Fire hazards
• Ineffective housekeeping
• Hazardous atmospheric conditions
• Excessive noise
• Not enough light to see to do the work

These are all deviations from required safe practice, but they must be seen as the symptoms of more basic underlying indirect or secondary causes which allow them to exist and persist.

Secondary causes of accidents

Management system pressures

• financial restrictions
• lack of commitment
• lack of policy
• lack of standards
• lack of knowledge and information
• restricted training and selection for tasks
• poor quality control systems resulting from the above

Social pressures

• group attitudes
• trade customs
• industry tradition
• society attitudes to risk-taking
• ’acceptable’ behaviour in the workplace
• commercial/financial pressures between contractor

The primary causes of accidents in the construction industry have been the target of safety law for many years— specifying details of scaffolding and ladders, for example. Relatively recently, legal requirements in several countries, notably the Member States of the European Union, and Australia, have begun to address the secondary causes as well, forcing attention to be paid to all organisational aspects of safety management.

Next time I will discuss the various techniques of accident prevention.

References:

• Principles of Construction Safety - Allan St John Holt BA, FIOSH, RSP
• handbooks on Construction Health and Safety
• Occupational Health and Safety Act and  its Regulations
• The performance approach to construction worker safety and health  

Neil Enslin | Occupational Health and Safety Manager