The Association’s Occupational Health and Safety Manager 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 objective of the summit was to provide a forum for industry role players to address construction health and safety related matters with specific emphasis on topical issues, the development of knowledge and skills areas, and to debate challenging issues.

Topics included:

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 reinforced that health and safety practitioners need to embrace technology in curbing health and safety-related issues. Many consulting engineering firms work on the basis of ‘seeing the end at the beginning’. By doing so, clients can see what the end product would look like and 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 related 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.
  • 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.

Recommendations from the summit included:

• Built environment-related tertiary education must include Industry 4.0 in their programmes.
• Construction industry stakeholders must promote, and preferably provide Industry 4.0 continuing professional development (CPD), and evolve such guidelines and practice notes.
• 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.
• 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 it is clear that the 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 the construction industrial base of the country, its alignment with existing industrial policy, and the specific state interventions needed to create suitable social conditions as well as the enabling environment in which the construction industry can adapt, absorb and implement these new technologies and approaches.

Neil Enslin | Occupational Health and Safety Manager