Occupational health and safety in construction project management
By Helen Lingard and Steve Rowlinson

The construction industry performs poorly in occupational health and safety (OHS).

Despite many OHS campaigns and initiatives, the statistics reveal that construction workers continue to be killed or injured at work each year.

More insidious is the large number of construction workers who suffer impaired health or long-term illness caused or made worse by their work.

Occupational health and safety in construction project management: Many of these illnesses only manifest themselves years after exposure and many are ultimately fatal.

We believe that these injuries, deaths and illnesses can and should be prevented.

Their persistence indicates a serious management failure in an industry that prides itself on having considerable management expertise and utilizing state-of-the-art project management tools and techniques.

Construction contractors have traditionally borne the responsibility for OHS on site.

Their site-based project managers and site staff are responsible for the day-to-day management of OHS.

However, site-level managers and professionals usually have a limited understanding of their legal obligations relating to OHS or OHS principles and practices–which we suggest is, to a large extent, the result of a serious gap in most construction management and engineering degree courses.

Occupational health and safety in construction project management aims to provide construction professionals and students of construction project management with an understanding of theory pertaining to OHS as well as to introduce a range of tools and techniques representing best practice in the management of OHS.