Copy, but don't paste (Lesson learnt 2)
This is me, 1992, all outfitted for my site visit. How many safety breaches can you spot?
I am sure I was perfectly happy and confident during that visit. I could swim (probably even better without heavy steel-tipped shoes), obviously was looking where I walked and well adapted to the weather in my shorts.
Outside of a discussion on how much safety these days has really improved or is just a ‘tick the box’ exercise for some there is no denying that safety is generally taken much more seriously, and rightly so. But, if you look at this picture in 5 years time I bet the answer to the above question will be longer. Life is evolution and so is professional life. The environment changes, materials change, cost structure changes as do rules and regulations. This isn’t just the case in safety.
I do honestly believe experience is extremely valuable but it does not mean the same as ‘what was good enough yesterday …’.
While there are existing developments in the world of physics that could upend some basic theories, structural mechanics, for all intents and purposes, do not change and, while there are interesting developments much or our materials remain similar too. I don’t see the and the stress-strain diagram of steel changing anytime soon (for the same alloy and treatment off course)
Design methods (software) and construction methods however do change at a rapid pace as do economics. For this reason the design of the jetty I am standing on there, with 600mm piles and a 10m span is still technically correct but would no longer be optimal.
So, the same boss I mentioned before was a great believer in efficiency and while designing this jetty had us copy longhand calculation sheets of standard rebar and anchors etc. with the numbers blanked-out so we could easily and quickly make and report our design calculations (the start of the 90’s was in a time of green monitors and dot-matrix printers). Because copying can be efficient. But ‘pasting’ the same full design on a new project without thought … think again.
We are living in a time where there finally seem to be some fundamental changes in construction with 3D concrete ‘printing’, RFID tagged prefab and robotic stacking as well as mega barges and increased ecological considerations, to name a few things. Many of the day-to-day work and projects may still seem the same on the surface and, with projects easily taking years from idea to construction, we are still hardly moving at lightning speed but; change is the only constant. I am going to play with my AR goggles.
Coming back to safety, at least I wasn’t this guy.
