Keeping Kids and the Public Safely Out of Site!
A report prepared for the Construction Industry Standing Committee for Workplace Health and Safety Queensland. Meeting on the 21st July 2006.
Prepared by: Tim Wilkinson Introduction
The purpose of this report is to establish that residential housing sites regardless of their location pose a hazard and present a risk to the public, especially to children in Queensland. Due to the failure of the self-regulatory legislative approach in respect to the residential housing industry it is necessary to legislate for the mandatory use of access controls to housing sites in the aforementioned industry.
The farcical nature of this whole issue is the actual cost (to the builder or end user) of enforcing mandatory perimeter access control to all construction workplaces (in this case all residential building sites) is so small as to be almost irrelevant when compared to the average cost of a house and land package in Queensland. If the average house and land package was to be assumed to be $350,000.00 then the cost to the builder or the end user would equate to around 0.1% of the total cost of the project. As pointed out in this paper why should the lax attitude of the domestic building sector to their own safety be allowed to have an affect on the public interest by their activities posing a hazard and hence a risk to the public in Queensland, particularly to children, as proved by the injury statistics contained in this paper. On this subject please pay special attention to section 4 of this paper.
The residential housing industry in Queensland has a well documented poor history in the protection of its own workers from injury, due in part to tight budgets and a general lack of understanding of current OH&S laws and regulations. This situation has lead to not only the workers within the industry being placed at a higher risk than is necessary, but also an unacceptable risk to the general public especially children under the age of 15 years old as per the injury statistics contained in this paper.
It is a fact that the department of Workplace health and Safety Queensland does not have the resources nor funding required to adequately police and enforce current regulations in this sector of the construction industry and that the self-regulatory legislative approach is ineffective in this sector of the industry.
The simplification of the whole issue is that all construction workplaces should have adequate access controls in place as a matter of course, especially outside of normal working hours and where the access of the public, especially children is unrestricted. To simplify the matter further the decision has to be made if residential housing sites are a hazard to the public and hence pose a risk to the same.
The information and statistics contained in this position paper are public knowledge and no part of this paper is to be used for commercial use or publication. Index
1.1 Injuries to children under the age of 15, 1998-2004 on construction sites in Queensland. 1.2 Injuries to children under the age of 15, 2005 on construction sites in Queensland. 1.3 Conclusions from injury statistics 2.1 22 December 2005 Issued by Queensland Workplace Health and Safety as an alert. 2.2 HIA statement on the use of temporary fencing 2.3 Letter from a major home builder to all its site managers 2.4 Conviction of a NSW builder 2.6 Quotes 3. Self Regulation Flawed in the housing sector 3.1 Work plans and risk assessments effectiveness in the residential housing industry in comparison to civil and commercial construction sectors 3.2 What is a work plan? 3.3 A method to ensure compliance 3.4 Allocation of Responsibility 3.5 Evidence of compliance 3.6 Work plans as multi‑purpose documents 3.7 The Inspection of Work Plans 3.8 Inspecting the work plans 3.9 The work plans as an inspection tool 3.10 What constitutes compliance with the work plan requirement? 3.11 The Level and Nature of Compliance with the Work Plan Requirement 3.12 The quality of work plans 3.13 Perceptions of individuals' abilities to conduct risk assessments 3.14 Discussion and exchange of work plans 3.15 Civil Construction 3.16 Commercial construction projects 3.17 Examples of WHS management systems using work plans in civil and commercial construction 3.18 Domestic construction 3.19 Explaining the low level of compliance with the work plan requirement in the housing sector 3.20 The Impact of Work Plans on WHS Awareness and Behaviour 3.21 Inspectors' general reflections about the work plan provisions 4.1 What is duty of care? 4.2 What legislation enforces duty of care requirements? 4.3 What cost do we put on the life of a child? A Critique of Quantitative Risk Assessment 4.3.1 Risk and rate 4.3.2 Acceptable to whom? 4.3.3 Value of life 4.3.4 The idea of accidents as caused 4.3.5 Reducing risk by reducing exposure 4.3.6 Calculating risks 4.3.7 Conclusion 6. Why are residential housing sites left with no access control?
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