The
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is meeting with designers and planning
supervisors in an attempt to try and reduce the number of accidents involving
falls from height in the construction industry.
HSE
Construction Inspectors have scheduled over 130 appointments with planners in
Scotland and Northern England in a bid to reduce the number of injuries and
deaths on construction sites.
The
meetings will focus on the way design issues impinge on site safety,
particularly working at height, and on the safety of maintenance workers during
the life of the structure.
Planning
supervisors and designers will be given the opportunity to demonstrate what
they have done during the design stage to reduce the risk of working at height
while building takes place.
HSE
inspectors will be looking for examples where innovative solutions have been
used by designers to address work at height problems, in the hope that these
can be shared with the wider design sector.
In
the past five years 437 employees have been killed on construction sites in the
UK – 225 as a result of a fall from height.
