Design for Safety
Construction worker fatalities occur at a rate of approximately four per working day, and disabling injuries at a rate exceeding two per minute per working day. The total direct and indirect costs associated with these injuries and fatalities are in excess of $17 billion per year. Owners must realize that incorporating safety measures in the design phase directly improves safety on the job site, and ultimately leads to lower total installed cost due to fewer dollars spent on mediating hazards and acquiring construction insurance.
In its research, the CII Design for Safety Research Team accumulated a large number of design suggestions that focus on improving construction worker safety. Many of the design suggestions are already being implemented, but no general method is available by which these ideas could be shared among owners, constructors, designers, and architect/engineers.
In response, the research team has created the “Design for Construction Safety ToolBox,” an interactive computer program to aid in planning and designing facilities. The program allows the user to identify potential safety hazards and offers design suggestions that may be used either to control or to eliminate the hazards. ToolBox, as it is called, allows for both the identified hazards and the design suggestions to be documented in a report format. A project history of construction safety design issues and actions is automatically accumulated and can be easily monitored for completeness of review and status of design decisions.
ToolBox can be an important part of pre-project safety planning. The successful implementation of ToolBox will provide numerous benefits, including a reduction of construction worker injuries and associated costs, as well as a reduction in redesign, rebuild, maintenance, and operating costs. Success, of course, greatly depends on owners taking a proactive role to promote safety through design. ToolBox provides owners and others in construction the ability to identify hazards before they become costly accidents at the site.
