Health and Safety during Construction Process of Car Parking - Case Study Example

Report on Health and Safety During Construction Process of Car Parking Customer Inserts His/Her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name Insert Date Here (Day, Month, Year) Introduction Millions of people work in construction industry today, and every day they are succumbed to numerous hazards on account of the poor sites. Construction Industry alone is responsible for many deaths than any other industry. BBC reported on 18th September 2002 that construction workers have six times more chance to get killed as compared to any other employee as determined by government agency. In-spite of many health and safety measures, industry still remains dangerous. The construction process of a four-storey car park in front of the foster building involves a crane and at-least 150 workers to work in the project. Statutory requirements The whole construction process has to follow The Construction Design and Management Regulations 2007. These are the rules any construction company including car parking must follow to ensure safety of the workers. Whole project must follow the building code and zoning requirements. Zoning is a process required to prevent any new developmental process for causing harm to current residents or businesses and for preserving the nature of a community. The process zoning is conducted by counties and municipalities and is determined by the state or planning authorities and or legislation. The construction of car parking also involves zoning on particular kinds of parking space like residential space, agricultural, industrial or commercial. Secondly it also checks the area at which it could be built, the height at which building could be constructed, the amount of space it can be occupied and the location of building. It also looks into how much landscaped space it could cover, and impervious surface. Building code or control is a set of rules, which consider the minimum level of safety requirements for the objects constructed like building and non-building structures. Main motive of the building code is to give protection to the public health, their safety measures and ensure general welfare. The building code is generally considered as a law for incorporation towards the particular jurisdiction if the proper authority enacts the process. Safety System of Work for Daily Operation To keep activities of the construction move on safely require the needs of daily maintenance and safety measures. As health and safety advisor, I would recommend that highest health and safety standards should be maintained such as: The safely access to the work by everyone involved in the project means the roads, gangway, passageways, passenger hoists, staircases, ladders and scaffolds should be kept under good condition and inspected regularly; There should be need to see that open edges of scaffolds, gangways, buildings, mobile elevating work platforms are protected with guard rails or any other protection; Stability of the working structures should be examined that they are satisfactorily braced and not overloaded; The working areas and walkways level should be free from obstructions and trip hazards and also materials should be stored safely; It needs to be taken into consideration regarding the proper collection and disposal of waste materials; Lightening should be sufficiently provided in the work areas if there is dark inside or the work is carried out at night; It should be examined that competent persons should erect all the work platforms and scaffolds; Handover certificates are required for scaffolds and work platforms and it should be seen that the company possesses it; The access to the scaffold should be safe; Uprights to be procured with base plates or any other equipment so as to prevent from sinking or slipping and all the struts, ledgers, braces be in position; Scaffold should be secured or fastened to the structure in enough places in order to prevent collapse; Working platforms should be fully boarded to prevent tipping or tripping and should have guard rails to prevent falling of people and materials; Warning notices and effective barriers should be placed to prevent people from using incomplete scaffold; Scaffold should be designed and constructed to bear the load of the materials and workmen; If powered equipments such as luffing tower cranes are used, then competent person should erect it and competent and trained persons should use the equipment; incase the equipment is fixed then it should be firmly attached to the structure against which it is to be functioned; and not to forget isolate the power supply and secure the equipment at the end of day. With the following of these precautions, safety of the workforce is ensured and would prevent accidents causing loss of lives. Use of Luffing Tower Crane: Tower Cranes are mostly used where most of construction activities are involved. Use of the tower cranes is very risky proportion and therefore requires adequate safety measures. For its fruitful operations, planning process of tower crane should begin as early as possible but for the development of its work or project, it should reduce many of the health and safety risks. To make effective use of the tower crane requires the consultation of many persons like contractors, crane owner, crane supplier, designer, project manager and electricity entity. In this project of multi storey car park, the luffing tower crane has been hired. Risks involved in the Luffing Tower Crane Operations Crane operations may pose risk or injury to persons on account of their structural failure including its collapse; many times it may cause collision with the other structures; falling objects and falling from heights. The failure of the structure may include failure to the any component of the crane like the boom, jib or wire rope or hydraulic rams. This structural failure can also be caused if the crane is overloaded without warning and a tower crane could also show collapse if the crane could become unstable because of overloading. This collapse could be on account of many reasons like if the counterweights are used in incorrect way, if the bolts of the tower crane are incorrectly turned, if the crane is installed in the incorrect way and if the base of the tower crane is designed poorly. Collision of the crane could occur if there is no clear and sufficient clearances between the tower crane and other plant and structures like concrete pumping booms, buildings and overhead power lines. Falling of the objects may be caused on account of the erecting and dismantling of the activities and according to the way security is maintained on the loading operations during the process of lifting operations. Falling objects may pose a risk of injury to workers and other members of the public and persons may caught themselves in the risk during the process of erecting or dismantling of tower cranes. Planning of Luffing Tower Crane Operations The effective planning of crane operation would ascertain protection of persons who wanted to climb, erect, engage in commissioning and dismantling of a tower crane and involvement in the engagement of the performance of many other activities during workplace etc. There are some points to be considered to ensure the tower crane operation process, which includes contacting electrical people to ensure safest supply of electricity and ensuring measurement for existing operation of power supply. To look after main requirements of the cranes involve loading bays and access of the site at the project design stage, reducing of the number of tower cranes to avoid unnecessary collisions among cranes as well as other plants. Thirdly to make sure that tower crane should be installed at an appropriate distance away from remaining tower cranes and framing concrete placement booms; there is also a need to make sure that the crane machine deck could be kept at a much safer distance above the building and also to ensure that the placement of the tower crane boom is kept at a much appropriate distance above the concrete placement boom. Control methods for the reduction of hazards As operation of the crane itself involves numerous risks therefore it is utmost important to assure the assessment and its safe operation at the work place especially when it involves reducing the danger of collision between cranes, or between cranes or other plants or between the structures and overhead powerlines and workers. The assessment of the risks should be undertaken looking at the size and complexity of the work undertaken. The risk assessment is also undertaken during the process of the appointment of the crane coordinator. The sitting of a tower crane may pose a risk or injury to the persons involving workers or members during the public vicinity of the crane for e.g. if the crane overturned on account of the failure to stand the forces or if any collision occurs between the crane and other plant or structures at workplace. The crane standing must follow instructions of the crane manufacturers and should be able to stand all the forces that could be implied on it while it is in service, out of it or if it is performing erecting or dismantling process. These forces are lifting attachments or weight of the load, weight of the crane, wind loadings, other kind of forces or loads. If the crane is supported or tied to the permanent structure, the design of the structure should be able to suppress the forces they intend to impose on it by the crane. Appropriate precautions should also be taken if the stability of the crane needs to be ensured, if it is known that the crane is placed during the vicinity of the underground services, embankments or excavations. A suitable communication process is required to be taken into consideration between a crane operation and the other people to ensure safe operations of crane. Failure to ensure the appropriate method of communication during the process between crane operator and other persons could lead to falling of the loads and/or collision. In the whole process, only one dogger should attain visual and audible signals but if there are more than one doggers, each dogger should have the capacity to understand when they have the responsibility to lift the operations and hand to the other dogger. Communicating with the help of the radio has also become the most common attained practice. Persons handling radio equipments should also be able to attain the familiarity with the operation of the instructions. The radio frequency should be attained and selected to maintain the duration of the crane operation to prevent any interference. The radio communication should make use of the crane operator and dogger for the performance of the safety check of the operation and ensure that the radios are dry, and they have adequate supply of fully operated battery and spare parts. There is also need to ensure that the operators should have familiarity with the special procedure for effective use of the radio communication. All the persons involved in the communication process must have awareness of the progress that could take place during the lifting operations. Construction Plant and Hire Association in UK has published a luffers guide in which three technical information notes (TIN) are issued which offers the use of cranes in gusty conditions. The first one is TIN 023, which aims at crane owners to assess the risks, second is TIN 024, which aims at the users guiding them to the particular care to be taken when planning lifts taking into account windy conditions and specific characteristics of the site. The final is TIN 25, which aims at crane operators and offers advice highlighting the risks and dangers of operating the cranes in windy conditions. This guide should be precisely followed when luffing cranes are used for such an operation. Conclusion Any construction industry remains inexplicably a very dangerous proposition; where there is an urgent need to impart development of several health and safety measures. The health and safety officer has to ensure several safety measures for workers. A safety officer needs to ensure that every worker is safe at its work place, guardrails are positioned very safely and soundly to protect workers from fall. On the site officer needs to ensure that all the holes and openings are guarded very appropriately. The working structures are stable with all the walkways free from obstructions, and from hazards etc. If all the adequate measures are adopted and construction industry follows the guidelines posed by The Construction Design and Management Regulations 2007, the whole process would be conducted without any risk to any worker. Reference List BBC News. 2002. Building sites' safety record 'disgraceful'. [Online] Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2266432.stm [28 January 2009] Benfield ATT.co.uk. Health & Safety Issues On-Site. [Online] Available: http://www.benfieldatt.co.uk/technical_information/building_process/health_safety_issues_on_site [28 January 2009] Cranes Today. CPA publishes luffers guide. [Online] Available: http://www.cranestodaymagazine.com/story.asp?storycode=2050841 [28 January 2009] Health and Safety Executive. 2008. Legal requirements. [Online] Available: http://www.hse.gov.uk/construction/cdm/legal.htm [28 January 2009] Health and Safety Executive. 2009. Health and safety in the construction industry. [Online] Available: http://www.hse.gov.uk/construction/index.htm [28 January 2009] Mann, W. 2008. Crane accidents - key issues explained. [Online] Available: http://www.contractjournal.com/Articles/2008/03/03/58264/crane-accidents-key-issues-explained.html [28 January 2009] The Construction Plant-hire Association. 2008. Tower Crane Operator’s Handbook. [Online] Available: http://www.cpa.uk.net/downloads/286_Tower%20Crane%20Operator's%20Handbook%20LR.pdf [28 January 2009] The State of Queensland. 2008. Planning and coordinating tower crane operations. [Online] Available: http://www.deir.qld.gov.au/workplace/law/codes/towercrane/planning/index.htm [28 January 2009] The State of Queensland. 2008. Risks associated with tower crane operations. [Online] Available: http://www.deir.qld.gov.au/workplace/law/codes/towercrane/risks/index.htm [28 January 2009] UCISA. 2009. Exhibitor Handbook. [Online] Available: http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/~/media/Files/events/ucisa2009/UCISA09_ExhibHandbook%20pdf.ashx [28 January 2009] Read More