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Risk Theory and Health & Safety

14 November 2014
Risk comes from not knowing what you鈥檙e doing – Warren Buffet Take a

HSE Inspection Blitz

A month long blitz by the Health & Safety Executive in the UK has shown that 40% of workers in repair and refurbishment construction sites are at unnecessary risk of injury. They visited just under 1800 sites and found dangerous practices at roughly 700 of them with 1 in 5 being so bad as to require formal enforcement action. What were the main causes for concern?
  • Failure to control dust
  • Asbestos
  • Unsafe working at heights
  • Noise and vibration
  • Inadequate welfare facilities
Philip White of the HSE said, 鈥淭hese results show that whilst the majority of employers in the refurbishment sector are getting it right, a significant part of the industry is seriously failing its workers. 鈥淭he inability to properly plan working at height continues to be a major issue, despite well-known safety measures being straightforward to implement. It is just not acceptable that Inspectors had to order work to stop immediately on over 200 occasions because of dangerous practices. 鈥淲e also find health is often overlooked as its implications are not immediately visible, however the effects of uncontrolled exposure to deadly dusts such as asbestos and silica can be irreversible. We urge industry to ensure the most basic of measures such as use of protective equipment and dust suppression methods are put in place to help protect the future health of workers. 鈥淲e need to continue to educate industry through initiatives like this and encourage a change in behaviour on small projects where over half the industry鈥檚 fatal accidents still occur and many workers become seriously ill.鈥� In response the General Secretary of the construction union UCATT said, 鈥淭hese findings are simply appalling. Time after time employers are putting workers in danger. The HSE inspections only touch a tiny fraction of construction sites and most construction workers never see a HSE inspector unless a major accident has occurred. 鈥淭he HSE are uncovering basic and straightforward safety breaches. It is imperative that far greater emphasis is applied to uncovering dangerous construction practices and prosecuting the guilty. Construction employers will never improve safety unless they fear being caught.鈥�

What鈥檚 going wrong?

Reading this, on the face of it, gives you cause for great pessimism. Given all the efforts at an official level to cement health and safety practice in the construction industry you would think that the result of such inspections would be significantly better. Even though it would be easy to agree with UCATT that there need to be even greater controls in place to force employers into compliance there is something about these results that suggest there are other forces at play here. It is not just as simple as producing greater fines and everyone will come into line. There seems to be something contained, not just in company culture, which produces this risk acceptance at the most detailed level. The types of dangerous practices that the HSE found were in the order of:
  • Workers not using the correct dust masks
  • Workers not using or being provided with ear defenders
  • Workers not applying legal protocols when working at heights
Now, anyone who has worked on a building site, particularly this type of home refurbishment site, without the strict procedures of a large construction site, will recognise that employers will often forgo health and safety procedures on the basis that it, 鈥榞ets in the way鈥�, or, 鈥榠t鈥檚 too much hassle鈥�. The calculation is always that the chance of something serious possibly happening is less than the chance of something definitely getting in the way of work being done. Take a

Risk Theory

Our calculations (all people I mean) involving risk are biased depending on whether we stand to gain or lose. This is a theory that comes from an area of research known as 鈥榖ehavioural economics鈥� and is called Prospect Theory as developed by Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman. A key aspect of the theory is that we think about risks of losing differently from the way we consider risks of winning. Given the choice between a 5% chance of losing your hearing and a 100% chance of having to go to your foreman to demand a pair of ear defenders many workers will choose the former. Given a 5% chance of falling to your death from an open window and a 100% chance of getting the exterior window frame painted many (not all) workers will choose to paint the window. Prospect theory describes this as being 鈥榬isk seeking for losses鈥�. That is, gambling on a big loss to avoid a definite small loss. I am not trying to suggest that workers themselves are to blame for decisions made during the course of hard, busy days. It is, obviously, the responsibility of employers to provide a safe working environment and it is also their responsibility to protect workers from themselves. What this shows is that we have to fight against our intuition to make safe choices on construction sites. What needs to be instilled in the culture of the industry is that the rewards of safe behaviours must always outweigh the risks of unsafe behaviours. Sometimes it will be easier to jump on a window ledge to put a lick of paint on the window frame but a culture of safety must be able to counter this. The HSE鈥檚 blitz of these sites shows up some of the failings of the safety legislation and promotion and now is the time to start working with employers to provide incentives to instill safety at the heart of their working culture. This could take the form of annual awards to safe workplaces, grant systems to cover training costs, or advertising campaigns that promote the idea of the safe worker. The elephant in the room for many of these small builders is that health & safety compliance is considered expensive and slows down operations in a marketplace with small margins. Perhaps the authorities governing health and safety need to address this perception and give more in the way of carrot as well as giving the stick. For more information or Take a .
Sonya Sikra

Sonya is the Brand Strategy Manager at 糖心传媒. She specializes in communicating how implementing tech in construction can drive productivity and profit.

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