Accidents will happen...

The construction industry is one of the most dangerous sectors in the Polish economy to work in. Unfortunately, it is human error that is the cause of most accidents. Last year 117 people died on building sites. however, the incidence of such tragedies is falling

Emil Górecki

On the building site of the National Stadium in Warsaw last December, a personnel lift with two labourers in it plummeted from a height of 18m. Both workers were killed. The accident prompted a wave of inspections to be carried out on this type of equipment all over Poland. A similar accident happened on the building site of the Poznań city football stadium some time earlier, when a crane toppled from a height of 
34 metres and the operator suffered a foot injury.

At the end of February, an accident happened on the building site of the Plaza shopping centre in Suwałki, as a result of which three employees of the Unibep construction company died. A press release issued by the company claimed that the people involved in the accident were working on an assembly platform built from system elements by a company specializing in the assembly of such equipment. The platform had passed quality control and been admitted for use; it had also been inspected several times by the relevant services, including external ones. Falls from similar heights were the cause of 36.9 pct of accidents on building sites in 2009.

In March there was a thankfully less tragic accident on the building site of Reinhold’s Lipiński Passage project in the centre of Warsaw. This time one person was slightly injured. However, five cars were not so fortunate, ending up covered in liquid concrete. A few days later, on the Poznań stadium site, a tyre on one of the cranes blew up, with the debris hitting one of the workers. No serious injuries occurred this time, either. Nevertheless, being hit by a falling object is the cause of 8.9 pct of construction site accidents.

Certificates not just for show

Being buried by soil slippage results in 6 pct of accidental deaths in the construction industry. A year ago one man died and another was hospitalized when earthworks slid at roadworks at the junction of ul. Marsa and ul. Płowiecka in Warsaw. The people were employees of P.R.I Pol-Aqua, the subcontractor in this case. “Fortunately, prior to this there had not been an accident in our company involving casualties for a long time. We are in the process of acquiring PN 18001 certificates, which confirm compliance with industrial safety regulations. I believe that the companies in possession of such a certificate should receive extra points in public tenders,” argues Wojciech Wolski, quality control manager and proxy of the management board with regard to the management system of P.R.I. Pol-Aqua. “The idea behind the certificate is exactly right, and companies able to present such a certificate have usually implemented the correct procedures and industrial safety regulations on their building sites. It is, however, important that the document is not simply put proudly on display, but should instead be a motivating force for the regular monitoring of industrial safety conditions on building sites, and for the implementation of improved procedures and the maintenance of necessary services,” believes Grzegorz Łyjak, director of the supervision and inspection department of the National Labour Inspectorate (GIP).

Building sites under supervision  

Last year, the National Labour Inspectorate carried out nearly 6,300 inspections on 3,900 building sites. What were the inspectors’ most important observations? These included: a general lack of protection against falls from heights (1,484 cases), a lack of protection on passages and staircases (517 cases), a lack of protection for technological openings (557 times) and a lack of personal protection for employees working at heights (392 times). Worryingly, the list of the deadly sins of construction companies is not a short one. “Polish construction sites are no safer and no more dangerous than those in the west. It is difficult to compare the numbers, because there is no uniform methodology with regard to the classification of accidents at work. Polish companies are getting better and better and we can see a downward trend in the statistics for accidents,” claims Grzegorz Łyjak.

The authors of the National Labour Inspectorate report have come to the conclusion that there are considerably fewer irregularities when it comes to work carried out by big, specialist construction companies with many years of experience as established general contractors. They have well-organized industrial safety services, which monitor all employees working on building sites and insist on compliance with industrial safety regulations from subcontractors.

No points for proving safety

Inspectors also study the reasons for any lack of compliance with industrial safety standards on building sites. These could involve a poor understanding of how to cut costs by giving the responsibility for safety standards to subcontractors, which have much smaller financial and technical resources than big companies. In addition, there could also be scant knowledge of industrial safety and an indulgence of risky behaviour. “Contracting companies see the reasons somewhat differently. There is a big rotation of workers, and as a result their understanding and experience is less, and there is also a lack of resources to provide safety,” claims Grzegorz Łyjak. He goes on to add that the law governing public tenders somehow creates favourable conditions for such situations, because the companies participating in tenders are encouraged to cut costs – and often this is at the expense of safety.

In the case of construction work, the regulations for public tenders allow the ordering party to take only into consideration the criteria stipulated for the order – not the company applying for the contract. “We can reject an offer from a company which offers other guarantees, terms, functionality, technology or environmentally-friendly solutions than those strictly required by us. Even when we know that a given contractor has failed to fulfil the conditions of contracts set by other employers, if its offer ends up with the most points we have to accept it. The only possibility for excluding a company is when it is on the so-called blacklist of the president of the Public Procurement Office, which only happens after a legally-binding court decision. Consequently, we cannot reject the cheapest offer because the contractor has not got an industrial safety certificate,” explains Bartłomiej Miluch, deputy director of the municipal public procurement office in Szczecin. He also adds that each contracting company operating on the market must comply with the industrial safety regulations required under construction law.

The method for acquiring the health and safety plan (BIOZ) for a construction site says a lot about the overall approach to industrial safety regulations. The plan is required when the construction work is expected to last longer than 30 working days and, at the same time, if there will be a minimum of 20 employees working on the building site and the labour intensity of the planned work exceeds 500 man-days (as well as in a few other cases). Such a document should be prepared especially for these projects. “It is very common though that such a document is downloaded from the internet without a clear assessment of the risks involved. The formal requirement is admittedly met, but its real meaning in terms of the safety of workers carrying out the construction work is non-existent,” insists Grzegorz Łyjak of GIP.

What will the company lose?

As Wojciech Wolski points out, the costs of each accident on building sites are substantial and not all of them can be calculated. The first problem that springs to mind is due to the suspension of the work, which the relevant commissions require for the accident to be studied. This is followed by the cost of the individual worker’s absence from the building site, the possible damages to be paid and the lost profit resulting from the accident. “However, the most important costs are uncountable. This mostly concerns the health or life of the employees, as well as the reputation of the company on the market. If such accidents recur, potential contracting parties will be discouraged,” explains Wojciech Wolski.

The National Labour Inspectorate may also be the source of additional costs for unreliable companies. The fines are unimportant for big companies, starting at around PLN 1,000 or PLN 2,000, going up to PLN 5,000 in extreme cases. This is why the Inspectorate is increasingly employing alternative methods, and tabling motions to the National Insurance Office (ZUS) for an increase in companies’ injury insurance contributions, or is instructing the particular construction building site inspector in certain cases to order a stop to the work on a building site. These methods are used when there is no visible improvement in a given company’s methods and the same mistakes are observed during a second inspection in a 12-month period. For example, after the accident at the National Stadium in December, a special post-accident team was established, which spent seven days at the building site investigating.

What if the accident is the result of negligence on the part of the subcontractors? The representative of the management board of P.R.I. Pol-Aqua for quality control emphasizes that we should pay attention to a potential partner’s history of accidents, as well as to the certificates the company has at the stage of subcontractor selection. “If an accident happens, the possible irregularities are checked; if the subcontractor does not remove them, the cooperation contract can be terminated. It has happened in our case, but these are isolated cases,” explains Wojciech Wolski from P.R.I. Pol-Aqua.

The number and the length of inspections carried out by the National Labour Inspectorate has grown every year. Recently, a new tactic has been employed, involving a quick response focusing on individual issues, such as working at heights. “The main point of such inspections is to force a constant improvement in industrial safety conditions – we are less interested in punishment. We want construction companies to know in advance what we require and why we carry out intensive prevention and information activities targeted at employees, employers and those people directly responsible for safety. The ultimate aim of this is to limit the number of accidents,” emphasizes Grzegorz Łyjak.

Twenty years ago today

“The level of industrial safety and health protection on building sites in Poland is the same as 15-20 years ago in the UK, the European point of reference in this respect. The difference is visible even in big, international construction companies. There are a number of reasons: inferior law and its implementation, a lack of relevant education, and, above all, the lack of a culture of awareness – including managerial disregard for the problem. The UK has put a lot of effort and funds into educating workers about the results of accidents, employing the motif of orphaned children, among others. These days, British building sites enjoy maximum levels of safety, and there are considerably fewer accidents compared to the European average in this respect. I have been employed in Poland and previously in Hungary in order to intorduce the best practices,” adds Steve Iddon, industrial safety consultant for Skanska. ν