Designers

How can you reduce the health risks in construction work?

As a designer, you are in a unique position to reduce the health risks that arise from construction work, and you have an important role in helping to protect workers.

Why?

Early design decisions and assumptions affect health and safety because they influence the choice of materials and construction methods, and the build programme.

You need to understand how a design affects the health of the workers who will construct or maintain a structure. By identifying and assessing health risks, then taking action to eliminate hazards, reduce risks, and share information, you can reduce health risks to workers.

Thinking about heath risks in the early design stages of a project can help to avoid the need for expensive redesign once a scheme hits site.

How does the design process influence occupational health on site?

• Stage 1: The design process
• Stage 2: Identify health hazards
• Stage 3: Eliminate health hazards and assess risks
• Stage 4: Inform

Stage 1: The design process

Occupational health (as well as safety) should be an integral part of the design process. Remember to take a ‘whole-life' approach when assessing risks - think about the maintenance, use and eventual demolition of the structure.

A competent designer should:

• identify significant occupational health risks that arise from a design;
• eliminate the hazards so far as is reasonably practicable;
• prioritise and assess health risks, and reduce them where possible; and
• provide adequate information about any significant risks associated with the design

Construction industry designers are not legally obliged to prepare a risk register for health and safety, but a register can help to show that you have considered the risks. It may also help you share information with the client and contractors.

You need to be aware of REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals). If your design relies upon a product(s) (particularly unusual or specialised ones) we recommend that you contact suppliers to find out if the chemical(s) contained in the product will be registered under REACH.

• What REACH means for users of chemicals

Stage 2: Identify health hazards

To identify hazards effectively, you need to know about the materials and processes that are likely to be used in the construction, maintenance, use and eventual demolition of a structure.

If you don't have enough knowledge or experience of how to deal with a health hazard, you will need to consult others. For example, you might need to get advice from a specialist designer, contractor, consulting engineer, occupational health practitioner or the CDM co-ordinator.

As well as considering the properties of a material, you also need to know how it is likely to be used. For example, a hazardous substance or heavy component may pose a greater risk if it is handled or used in an enclosed area. Some health risks can be managed more effectively if a material or component is assembled in a factory environment, rather than on site. Off-site assembly can also improve quality.

Sometimes it makes sense to specify a material with a relatively high application risk because of the lower risks of maintaining the product over its lifespan - you should take a ‘whole-life' approach to risk management and design.

Stage 3: Eliminate health hazards and assess risks

Eliminating health hazards should be an integral part of the design process.

At routine design reviews, confirm that health hazards have been properly addressed. Also, project risk review gateways can link to RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) plan-of-work stages.

Make sure that eliminating one health hazard doesn't create a new and more significant hazard.

Risk assessments should be systematic and structured, and solutions should be selected on the basis of the risk control hierarchy.

Red-Amber-Green lists can help designers identify and eliminate hazards, and control risks.

RED:

Hazardous products, processes and procedures to be eliminated from the project:

• Make sure that asbestos is removed if it is likely to be disturbed by work on existing/derelict buildings.
• Avoid the need to scabble concrete.
• Design piles to enable cropping by a method other than manual breaker.
• Avoid processes that create dust.
• Avoid spraying harmful substances on site.

AMBER:

Products, processes and procedures to be eliminated or reduced as far as possible and only specified if there is no other option. The designer should provide information about these risks, and the reason for their selection:

• Avoid specifying heavy building blocks (eg weighing >20 kg).
• Avoid specifying large/heavy glass panels, unless they can be installed using mechanical handling methods.
• Avoid specifying heavy lintels unless it is possible to transport and install the components using a mechanical handling solution.
• Design structures to receive services, instead of chasing out concrete later.
• Avoid specifying solvent-based paints and thinners, or isocyanates, particularly inside buildings and basements.

GREEN:

Products, processes and procedures to be positively encouraged:

• Design the layout of plant rooms so that mechanical lifting aids can be used when carrying out maintenance and replacing components.
• Specify precast concrete products that incorporate integral fixings to avoid drilling.
• Specify half-size plasterboard sheets for easier handling.
• Treat timber off site if hazardous preservatives need to be used (boron or copper salts can be used for cut ends on site).

Stage 4: Inform

Designers should provide adequate information about significant risks associated with the design.

They must provide information that other project team members are likely to need to identify and manage the remaining risks. This should be project specific, and concentrate on significant risks which may not be obvious to those who use the design.

Designers also need to provide information about aspects of the design that could create significant risks during future construction work or maintenance.

Significant risks are not necessarily those that involve the greatest risks, but are those that are:

• not likely to be obvious to a competent contractor or other designers;
• unusual; or
• likely to be difficult to manage effectively

Information should be brief, clear, precise and in a form suitable for the users. For example by the use of:

• notes on drawings (preferred - as the information is immediately available. The notes can refer to other documents if more detail is needed.)
• written information provided with the design (project specific and only containing information which will be useful to those constructing or maintaining the structure)
• suggested construction sequences (where this is not obvious - contractors may then adopt this method or develop their own approach)

Too much paperwork is as bad as too little, because the useless hides the necessary. Large volumes of paperwork listing generic hazards and risks, most of which are well known to contractors and others who use the design are positively harmful, and suggest a lack of competence on the part of the designer.