The UK construction industry is in poor health, statistics show rates of occupational illness significantly higher than for workers in any other industry. Recently, the scope of occupational health ...management on large sites has increased as public health has become included within the organizational remit. Concerns have been raised around the consequences of this development, its close relationships to Corporate Social Responsibility, and how this is now shaping the wider discourse. To explore this phenomenon, a critical discourse analysis of UK "construction worker health" has been carried out, using the public-facing data of ten large UK contractors. Findings show that "public" has now overtaken "occupational", the latter restricted to legal compliance presented as corporate citizenship, the former championed as evidence of benevolent organizational values. Yet public health concerns are limited to those of lifestyle and individual responsibility, whilst more complex issues around the social determinants of health as associated with work are missing from the discourse, separating organizations from the impacts of their work on their workers. A contemporary mapping of "construction worker health" is developed for consideration by industry and academics to support future health initiatives and research.
The world will never be the same again, and neither will the UK construction industry. As one of the few sectors projected to bounce back rapidly from the pandemic, positive rhetoric abounds in the ...industry press, Government and quasi-governmental bodies about the opportunity that lies ahead to "Build Back Better". Something else that could and more importantly should never be the same again is the health, safety and wellbeing (HSW) of the UK construction workforce. Pre-Covid-19, UK construction was neither a safe nor a healthy place to work, and transforming this situation is arguably the most important win our industry can secure from this situation. In this essay we argue that the pandemic and associated socio-economic crisis offers a unique, once-in-a-generation opportunity to bounce forward to a "new normal" of healthy, safe and hygienic construction operations, one where the worker's psychological wellbeing shares the foreground with their physical welfare. This paradigm shift will require a radical redefinition of the matters of concern that shape construction practice, moving away from a focus on sites as the locus of production, to a focus on people. Moreover, we suggest that there is a concurrent obligation on the research community to support such a transition by using the pandemic as a new point of departure for shifting the safety discourse via more critical research approaches. These should question the axioms which currently define the ways in which projects are constituted and managed, and where production takes primacy over the workers that deliver it.
The "New View" of occupational safety is gaining increased attention within both the construction industry and its associated academe. With the potential to overcome the current plateau in accident ...rates and support the further enhancement of occupational safety on sites, the "New View" offers an alternative approach to more traditional command driven safety management and instead takes a sociotechnical perspective, valorising the workers and acknowledging their contributions to the system in the form of adaptability and resilience. Yet empirical research of "New View" thinking and practice within construction is lacking. Meaningful research in this space demands non-positivistic approaches able to reveal nuanced and local insights able to inform and illuminate "New View" practices and the contexts in which they could potentially be implemented on sites. Here, we make a methodological contribution with the aim to advance empirical research in this space. Social practice theory is employed and evaluated as an approach able to make such a useful contribution. Through the exploration and explication of the block of "site safety practice," we demonstrate the utility of this theoretical approach for "New View" researchers, whilst also making a fundamental contribution to knowledge in the form of insights of the local and situated contexts, in which "New View" thinking could be practically applied.
Zero Target safety management programmes have become prominent on the UK sites of large construction contractors, who promote 'Zero Harm', 'Mission Zero' or 'Target Zero' on their hoardings and ...corporate websites. However, while Zero Target programmes may inspire increased commitment to safety from some, they may also cause detachment in others who feel it an unattainable goal for a high-risk industry. Examination of the practical realities of such Zero Target safety programmes has been undertaken, to illuminate and understand their position and potential impact on UK construction site health and safety management. A social constructionist methodology was employed, with discourse analysis of corporate websites, reports and promotional materials from five large contractors currently operating Zero Target safety programmes on their UK sites, supplemented by conversations with site management and operatives working on such sites. Zero was constructed as both a philosophy and a target, the corporate and site voices developing alternative visions of zero in practice. There is incoherence and inconsistency within the understandings of zero, which may affect the practical successes of Zero Target safety programmes, but zero was also found to have a very necessary place within industry safety management, in order to support future improvements in practice.
Universities face the challenge of developing undergraduate structural engineering students' design judgement. This study evaluates whether introducing 'learning from failure', centralised around ...'real-world' case studies, serves to facilitate the development of engineering judgement in structural design. The study identifies the use of three characteristics of engineering judgement: diagnostic, inductive, and interpretive in the work of the first-year undergraduate structural design students. Thematic analysis, combined with a constant comparison method and the rigour of inter-researcher reliability, was used to develop coding and mapping to evaluate students' work. The majority of students correctly applied diagnostic engineering judgement to the definition of a problem for a failure case study; and displayed the inductive aspect of judgement. Students' interpretive understanding embraced multi-faceted considerations, with engineering practice, complexity in causality, and learning from history being dominant. Introducing case studies deepened students' enquiry, stimulating the development of a more nuanced understanding of structural engineering judgement.
As part of a wider programme, the UK Department of Health produced a Responsibility Deal Construction Pledge, seeking organizational commitment in improving the health of its workforce. Yet ...commercial involvement with the health of the worker beyond the workplace is a contentious issue, a fundamental challenge to personal freedoms. The exercise of this paternalistic or pastoral power should be questioned, and consequently the agendas and interests behind it have been explored through a critical discourse analysis of the press release of the Pledge. Workers' inability to make the 'right' decisions about their health was used as justification for corporate intervention to guide workers to their 'true' interests and the 'right' choices. The occupational health of individual construction workers on sites was negated for their wider contributions as a workforce to industry and the UK economy. Whilst the real interests of construction workers are likely to be served by a balance of good health and work, this should not be dictated by government, much less commercial organizations with vested interests in worker output. Concerns are raised for workers' health and well-being in terms of their fundamental autonomy, and an increasingly controlled relationship between productive activities and power relations.
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are joint ventures in which the private sector works in partnership with government bodies to deliver public sector projects with the intention to deliver them more ...quickly, efficiently and with better value for money. They are also one of the most contentious project delivery mechanisms to have been mobilised in recent decades. Research has demonstrated the lack of realised value within many such projects, yet construction management academics continue to examine ways of increasing, implementing and optimising this approach in practice, even encouraging its adoption worldwide despite growing social and political dissatisfaction. Here, we go beyond what we see as myopic construction management perspectives, placing our body of work firmly within wider economic, political and social contexts. We challenge uncritical academic compliance with a process that demonstrably contributes to economic inequalities, opportunism and exploitation. We confront the lack of criticality in construction management research of PPPs, and call for construction management academics to broaden their research focus and engage in more robust critique and analysis of construction systems, as they are realised in practice.
•Western-centric approaches to safety management and its research dominate globally.•Many non-Western contexts are also impacted by the legacy of colonialism.•In Ghana, a challenging ‘cross-cultural’ ...context exists: their own and their former colonisers.•Decolonisation of OSH research and practice is needed to achieve benefits for all.
From its Christian foundations, the notion of being one’s ‘brother’s keeper’ maintains a considerable influence on OSH across the world. This manifests in the global dominance of Western-centric ‘best practices’ for OSH, supported by an academe itself dominated by Western-centric methodologies. But this situation is problematic, constraining the development of meaningful methods of enquiry and the production of culturally-relevant findings able to improve and enhance OSH practice in non-Western countries. In parts of the world like sub-Saharan Africa, this situation is further magnified by the legacy of a more explicit colonisation, which still casts its long shadows on both OSH practice and research. Here, we explore this phenomenon using Ghana as our case study country and construction as our case study industry, to explore a core tenet of safety culture; that of belief. Interviews with Key Informants, including contractors and health professionals, reveal local societal cultures and how the colonial legacy still manifests in Ghana. Our analysis found that construction site workers in Ghana always work in challenging ‘cross-cultural’ contexts: theirs and their former colonisers. They have to manage dissonance between traditional and Christian beliefs, the enduring legacy of a lack of education and training, and the vestiges of colonial ‘divide and rule’. The direct application of Western OSH practices and many Western-centric research methodologies to non-Western cultures and contexts are shown to be folly. As a field, we need to decolonise OSH research and practice in order to achieve benefits for construction workers across the world.
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