What Project Planning Approach Improves Construction Safety?
December 3rd, 2006 by HalArticle Series - Improving Construction Safety
- The Key to Improve Construction Safety
- What Project Planning Approach Improves Construction Safety?
Some people think that construction safety is a matter of establishing safety as a value. If people value safety, those people argue, then workers will work safely. While that might be true, we don't have time for that. It can take years to establish a value for anything. The task of producing the value for safety becomes more difficult with new people always being introduced to the construction environment. We need to improve safety immediately. And we can.
While most planning approaches define what should be done that is insufficient to assure work will be done.
In the previous post in this series I said we need to follow the rule to only do work that is in a condition to be started and finished. But how do we do that without impacting productivity? Working to the safety rule is supported by a process for making work ready.
Making work ready — including all aspects for working safely — is an aspect of the planning system. While most planning approaches define what should be done that is insufficient to assure work will be done. The Last Planner System® is an approach to project delivery that has an explicit process for turning what should be done into what can be done. I have described this approach previously in the series on Project Meeting Protocols and Project Reliability Soars when Work Is Ready. We have the minimum exposure to the inherent construction hazards when work is in a ready state. Safety incidents will fall when you establish a make-ready planning practice coupled with following the rule of only doing work that is in a condition to be started and completed uninterrupted.
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December 4th, 2006 at 10:04 am
While I am not in the construction industry, I applaud you Hal for your continued efforts to improve safety. Your emphasis on making work ready is a practical step to prevent injuries.
December 4th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Hal, like you I think that this is a really important issue and I am really pleased to see that you are emphasising the Making Work Ready bit rather than Look ahead plannning or similar. For tasks in the lookahead window the key activity is Making them Ready. [for those for whom these terms are new have a look at http://www.obom.org/DOWNLOADS2/LPSoverview.pdf - LPSoverview.pdf doesn’t tell you the whole story - you can get that from Hal and his team who are very good at helping construction companies and others involved in one off project based production learn how to do this.]
Just how much difference making work ready makes has been ably illustrated by comparison of sites where, inter alia, work is systematically made ready and sites where it is not in two companies - boldt Construction in Wisconsin USA and MT Hojgaard in Denmark. In MT Hojgaard accidents on “MakeReady” sites are around one third of those elsewhere — and there is a significantly reduction in sickness absence too.
Thanks Hal
Alan
December 4th, 2006 at 11:49 am
Hal,
I, too, applaud you for your efforts to improve safety. While I’m not in the construction industry or a safety (environmental, health, & safety expert),
planning is certainly key; it seems to me the starting point is not the plan, but 1) a solid safety related policy to solidify 2) and key (let’s say) Cardinal Rules (electrical safety, fall protection, hazardous energy, …etc.) that describe conditions/etc. to be aware of or followed at each site/project site to drive safety awareness for each worker, let alone the particular company doing the work.
Just a thought….
PS…skiing much?
rgds,
Katie
December 4th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
Thanks for all the encouragement. As Katie indicates any company intent on keeping people safe on their construction sites must have a clear policy. But like creating a value for safety policies take leadership, education, and accountability. Working to the above safety rule coupled with making work ready can be adopted immediately. The results, as Alan points out in his reference to Boldt and MT Hojgaard (MTH), are astonishing. MTH, an already safe company, reported they reduced incidents by over 60% in their first year. Anyone know another action that will produce a similar result?
No skiing yet…but soon!