We live in an age when takeaway coffee cups carry a “Caution: Contents Hot” warning. We live in a society in which every pack of peanuts has “May Contain Nuts” emblazoned across the packaging.
These warnings are there not because our streets are filled with coffee drinkers sporting third degree burns or because those with a nut allergy are incapable of recognising that – as the name suggests – a peanut is, in fact, a nut.
In fact, those warnings are there not to protect the general public at all. They are there to prevent large corporations from being sued on the off-chance that someone is stupid enough to pour a scalding cup of coffee on their own head.
Yet nowhere is that ass covering at all costs so prevalent and all pervasive than in the field of demolition and construction.
The moment an empty field is declared a construction site, anyone in that field is required to wear a hard hat. There may not be another building for miles around; there is no crane or excavator working overhead. In fact, the only thing that could possibly hit a worker on the head is the poop form a bird displaced by the initial construction activity. But hard hats are required NOT to protect the exposed noggin of a construction worker but because it is easier to insist they are worn everywhere and all the time rather than trusting a worker to use their own discretion.
Construction machines now have beacons atop them to indicate that the operator has fastened the seat belt. We all know that many of those seat belts are fastened first and then sat upon by the operator. But perish the thought that a site manager might leave the warmth and comfort of their site office to actually check that seat belts are being used properly; or, better still, that the operator has been adequately trained to understand that seat belts are not a hindrance but a potentially life-saving item of equipment.
We have seen the advent of multi-coloured hard hats that, we are told, help the site management to identify who is where. Again, if they left the site office from time to time, such measures would not be required. And if they did leave the site office and actually engage with those in their care, maybe the on-site bullying, misogyny, homophobia, mental health issues and drugs and alcohol abuse would not be quite so commonplace.
Demolition and construction equipment is now offered with a plethora of reversing cameras and alarms, proximity sensors and collision mitigation systems. They’re fantastic. But they would be almost entirely unnecessary if we set in place working protocols to ensure that men and women were entirely absent when a machine is working. Rather than investing thousands on a reversing camera and monitor package, designate and enforce a “machines only” area. And if someone does need to speak to the operator, do it via a £100 walkie-talkie and make the operator get off the machine to receive instruction.
In a housebuilding environment, we often see groundworkers and their heavy equipment working around bricklayers, frame erectors, plasterers, painters, decorators and landscape gardeners. That too could be overcome by the housebuilder allowing sufficient time for each discipline to carry out their designated work. That would ensure that the heavy equipment was at one end of the job while the other trades were at the other. No need for illuminated pedestrian walkways, proximity warnings and reversing cameras because men and machines might be on the site but methodologies have been devised to ensure that never the twain shall meet.
How many times is a demolition contractor required to work tooth by jowl with a piling contractor that has absolutely zero understanding of the hazards contained within a demolition environment. Such processes serve to place the piling operatives at unnecessary risk through a lack of foresight and – more often – a desire to condense a six-month project into three.
At every turn, the UK demolition and construction is covered in sticking plasters that have been applied to cover a shortcoming or to cover someone’s arse. Meanwhile,. What lies beneath that sticking plaster is allowed to fester, ultimately infecting the entire sector.
