Purchasing generalised, non-specific - yet expensive – ‘Health & Safety Files’ from consultants to expedite the start of building projects has become a ‘menacing monster’  threatening building sites, Doug Michell, Master Builders Association (MBA) North Construction Health & Safety Manager, has warned.

Michell says increasing reports are being received of contractors having to wait several weeks to start construction projects because of delays in obtaining client approval of the Health and Safety plans submitted by the contractor in response to the requirements presented by the client’s representative. “There are disturbing allegations of contractors being warned that the Health & Safety plans they have laboriously compiled will achieve no more than, say, 20% of the required standards and that it would be better for the contractors to purchase a so-called ‘Health & Safety File’ from the consultant – usually at an exorbitant fee.

“The contractor may be a specialist contractor who has taken the time and effort to develop specific risk assessments and other relevant documents drawn up with the help of experts in their fields - which the consultants now recommend rather be replaced by a generalised Health & Safety File he or she can sell to speed matters up. This expensive, pre-packaged H&S File would normally have been compiled by a generalist often with limited insight into a particular project’s associated risks – and whose priority and expertise lie mainly in satisfying the client’s Health and Safety agent.”

Michell says this alarming tendency totally negates the Construction Regulations’ quest for ‘project specific’ Health and Safety specifications, taking the relevant project’s specific factors into account when the H&S specifications are drafted.

Such factors may include:

• The scope of the work and what is being built;
• Location of the site and elements specific to the location, such as municipal by-laws, weather factors, or geographical factors;
• Geo-technical reports containing findings regarding soil conditions, and other issues that may hinder the project progress;
• Baseline risk assessments based on the scope of work eg is this a high-rise building in a built-up area, or a greenfields site?; and
• Controls specific to the client’s requirements eg two-day induction periods, colour of overalls, and entrance to existing premises.

“When a client appoints a principal contractor with the ‘necessary resources and skills’ this should include the premise that this contractor complies with SA law as a minimum, and that the Health and Safety specifications to be followed will not just be a regurgitation of the Basic Occupational Health and Safety Act and Construction Regulation requirements, pre-packaged and sold as an all-purpose Safety File. A specific Health and Safety Plan should be a far more comprehensive document than just a standard H&S File with copies of monthly inspection reports and minutes of meetings.”

He says discussion and negotiations regarding the safety plan’s content should take place between the parties concerned before final approval of the plan for implementation at commencement – and for the duration – of construction work.
“However, recent experiences suggest that the off-the-shelf Health and Safety file is becoming so preferred and acceptable that some observers believe the contractors’ specially compiled Health and Safety Plan is not even read by the client’s Health and Safety agents.

“This was surely not the intention of the legislator who first initiated the principles in the Construction Regulations in July 2003, and now redefined the requirements in the recently promulgated amended Construction Regulations 2014. Eleven years on, we  now have Health and Safety Files that have become menacing monsters to threaten the lives and health of site workers. The generalised File has become an instrument of frustration for many and a healthy source of income for far too many peddlers of these potentially dangerous documents which, with their bureaucratic approach, prescribe in advance, rules and instructions which are often impossible to implement, let alone enforce.

“The time has come for practising Health and Safety practitioners to reflect on this ominously fast-growing H&S File syndrome and ask ourselves if, in its current form, these Files are helping to protect life and limb – or endanger it,” Michell warns.