Safety in Construction and Design (Part 3) - Tools and tips for Clients, Designers and Constructors (to save lives)

In Part 3 of this series we consider how Clients and Design teams can consider safety during design development. If you read Parts 1 and 2, this will provide background why reviews are needed to prevent accidents.

At the end of this article I've upload a useful tool to help make your project safer.

Why consider safety during design?

By consideration of health and safety from concept design, the whole team?can give the Client a project that is focussed on design risk management and the health and safety needs of those constructing, maintaining and using the structures.??

Along with quality, programme and cost; safety is determined during the design stage.

How to consider this?

There are many methods, but the following sections gives guidance on how to ‘design out’ health and safety risks during design development. This will improve safety, constructability and maintainability in a coordinated way with all stakeholders.

Introducing STAGE reviews

STAGE is a Safety Targeted Assessment via Gateway Evaluation. This creates pre planned stages in a project when health and safety is formally reviewed. It acknowledges that design is always in a transitional state but establishes moments to confirm key arrangements are in place.

When should we do this?

Design reviews can vary from project to project, but for average sized schemes you should consider team reviews during the following key phases. On larger complex schemes, you may need to do repeated sessions to track design development during long phases.

What should we consider at these reviews?

A pre-set generic STAGE agenda can assist project teams to consider health and safety risks created and encountered by their designs. It should be used as a tool to stimulate discussion within an open workshop environment with records kept on any issues raised.

A key philosophy behind STAGE reviews - only highlight unusual or significant issues that a contractor / end user could not reasonably expect to foresee or easily manage. The process should not become bogged down in detail, unless the issue is unusual or significant.

On large schemes its recommended that STAGE reviews?should form part of the project execution plan and be included into the master project programme, thereby establishing commitment and a set programme deliverable to complete these.

Now lets look at each of these STAGEs in turn.

STAGE 1 (RIBA C/D or PRINCE Stage 1 – Concept Design)?

This should to be undertaken as soon as the key design and project team members have been assembled. Ideally, this will establish group norms for the project team towards safety, thereby establishing the foundations of a safety culture for the project ahead.??

The Stage 1 intervention should in essence act as a form of induction to the project team of both the Design Safety and the tools and process to achieve this outcome. These tools and process should be integrated within the overall project management process, so making health and safety an integral part of the overall process and not an add on standalone process.?

At this stage the Health and Safety Register should be administered and explained to all team members with the register effectively becoming ‘live’ from this point until project completion.?

The need to introduce client members is essential for two key aims, firstly to reaffirm client and project commitment to safety and secondly so the client is made aware of their duties and responsibilities towards the design team. This may include the need for them to provide information on existing known hazards or to make allowance in project resource to make further investigations, such as for type 3 Asbestos surveys.?

On larger more complex schemes, this may be an appropriate time for all attendees to sign a project charter that reaffirms their organisational commitment for health and safety.

Initial Key goals

• Establish client commitment towards health and safety
• Establish group norms toward health and safety
• Defining expectations of Design and Project Team members for health and safety
• Providing basic awareness towards health and safety in design and benefits
• Providing team approach, methodology and how it is to be applied on the project
• Establishing key deliverables within the project programme
• Establishing a unified project health and safety register and defining its use
• Providing tools and or other information required by the project team members
• Establishing trust, openness and health and safety advice
• Define the stage review process and define expectations for stage 2

Key Goals

• ?Client providing all known existing information to design team
• Client arranging / approving further investigations where deemed necessary
• Design team considering sufficiency of information and / or need for further investigations
• Design team considering impact of building footprint on existing environment
• Design team considering impact of building footprint for construction, including sequencing of key structural elements
• Design team considering impact of building footprint and infrastructure for end use/ maintenance
• Structural / Civil Engineers considering future alteration and demolition

STAGE 2 – (RIBA E or PRINCE Stage 2 – Early Detail Design

At this time the design of the structure should be well defined. Information regarding the existing use of the site and its surrounding environment should be well established and inherent risks identified.

Stage 2 should be focusing on build ability issues and if appointed, introduction to the Principal Contractor of outline proposals. This would start to consider the general building logistical issues. Also at this phase, a general understanding of the overall building finishes is being developed, therefore outline consideration of end use issues should be considered, especially whilst considering future maintenance strategies.

On large complex projects, it may be necessary to hold specific design discipline reviews (i.e. structural, M&E) prior to holding the main collective STAGE 2 review.

The design team have ability to amend initial proposals if a proposed strategy has major implications towards build ability and end use; and STAGE 2 is considered the most important STAGE because design ideals had formed, but are not set.

Key Goals

• Design team considering impact of building structure and fittings for construction, including construction sequencing of all elements
• Design team considering impact of building structure and fittings and infrastructure for end use, maintenance and demolition
• Establish clear policy on maintenance strategy
• Arrangement off line meetings to discuss critical health and safety items that require detailed review
• Establish that sufficient information has been provided on the existing structure (Confirmation of sufficiency of information)

STAGE 3 – (RIBA E or PRINCE Stage 3 – Detail Design)

The key aim of the STAGE 3 review is to confirm existing environment risks have been controlled and final build ability outcomes have been considered. This is best achieved with support of the appointed contractor. A further important aim is to confirm in detail the overall maintenance and operation strategy for the final end users/ occupiers.

At this stage of the design, it is still relatively easy to make minor amendments to design proposals, therefore is critical and considered a ‘last chance’ review prior to the scheme being committed in to an actual structure on site.

This is the final stage of review prior to construction so the aim of the team should be total close out of all issues raised.

Where issues have not been closed due to project constraints, all outstanding issues must be communicated to the contractors, preferably during the pricing/ tender stage. This will allow the main contractor to allocate resource for further studies/ actions and allow them time for planning.

Again, the reviews should only highlight unusual or significant issues that a contractor could not reasonably expect to foresee or easily manage.

Key Goals

• Confirm close out of existing environment risks on site
• Confirm close out sufficient surveys and confirm sufficiency of existing information
• Confirm that build ability has been sufficiently considered
• Confirm that future maintenance and end user and demolition / modification issues have been considered, reduced and communicated
• Confirm provision of information for pre construction health and safety information
• Introduce principal contractor / specialist contractors into the design reviews to upstream their health and safety knowledge
• Agree future information and training requirements for end users, such health and safety file format and pre handover training requirements

STAGE 4 – (RIBA J/K or PRINCE Stage 4? – Operations on Site)

The STAGE 4 assessment is programmed to allow a physical review of the developed environment and to allow, at a cost, modification on smaller design elements should these been missed by the earlier designer development reviews.?

This STAGE is focused on end user aspects of the structure and how the structure will be transferred into client ownership, thus allowing consideration of any user training needs, information requirements and providing the sufficient time to prepare for their own statutory obligations prior to occupation.

?Key Goals

• Confirm maintenance strategy is valid
• Allow a physical on site review of the physical built environment
• Allow confirmation of procedure for building handover
• Confirm progress of developing health and safety file
• Raise awareness of new asset for future end users and establish training needs
• Allow preparation time for future end users to consider life safety issues prior to occupation

STAGE 5 – (RIBA L – Completion / Feedback )

The STAGE 5 review provides a mechanism to review the success of the project and confirm that all outstanding Health and Safety issues have been sufficient addressed and communicated by the relevant stakeholders.

The review should focus on critical life safety issues and review project performance, both on site health and safety and the STAGE process itself. This includes open and honest debate and reflection on all stakeholders own participation to allow continued improvements for future projects.

Key Goals

• Ensure all life safety information has been supplied
• Ensure all outstanding ‘risk’ on the central project register has been closed out, and where necessary, communicated to the relevant stakeholders
• Confirmation of sufficiency of health and safety file information
• Review project performance, including good practice actions and lesion learnt items for negative instances. Review should focus on the experience of all project stakeholders, including the client
• Allow knowledge transfer of project experience improve future project delivery

Hope you find this helpful. I've uploaded a supporting STAGE Review agenda and risk register here for safety improvement and not reselling.

Other articles in this ‘Safety in Construction and Design’ series covered:

Safety in Construction and Design (Part 1) - Ancient origins

Safety in Construction and Design (Part 2) - Why Designers fail safety during design (and cost lives);

Safety in Construction and Design (Part 3)- Tools and tips for Clients, Designers and Constructors (to save lives); This article

Safety in Construction and Design (Part 4) - Case study showing why Design for Safety makes better buildings (and saves lives)

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