Health, Safety and Welfare in Construction and the Built Environment

Assignment Tasks

Task 1: Information leaflet

P1 Outline the roles and responsibilities of people assigned specific health and safety duties at work

P2 Outline the legal duties of employees and employers in relation to three pieces of health, safety and welfare legislation relevant to the construction and built environment sector

M1 Explain how members of the site construction team interact in terms of their health, safety and welfare roles and responsibilities.

Scenario: You are a health and safety officer. Your company has asked you to produce an information leaflet for employees on the responsibilities of employers and employees at work, including people who are assigned specific duties related to health, safety and welfare at work.

The roles you should address in your information leaflet are:

• Clients

• Designers and architects

• Directors

• Managers

• Employees

• Principal contractors

• Construction design and management coordinators

• Sub-contractors

• Directors

• Managers

For the job roles listed above, outline the roles and responsibilities of each one relating to health, safety and welfare.

You must relate these roles and responsibilities to three pieces of health, safety and welfare legislation relevant to the construction and built environment sector. One of these must be HASAWA (1974) (you are advised to access this document using the internet – the two sections you should refer to are the legal duties of the employer, and the legal duties of employees).

Within your leaflet you should also explain how members of the site construction team interact in terms of their health, safety and welfare roles and responsibilities. Think of who reports to whom, who is responsible to whom, and who does what. You must explain the hierarchy of responsibilities in relation to the roles listed above.

Task 2: Risk assessment presentation

P3 Describe how to identify the hazards present in a given workplace situation, the people who may be at risk, and the possible consequences

P4 Describe the main principles and features of a typical risk assessment for a given workplace situation.

Scenario: Produce and deliver a presentation on risk assessments. Your report should describe how to identify hazards present in a workplace situation, the people at risk, and the possible consequences. You should also describe the main principles and features of a typical risk assessment.

Your presentation should focus on an aspect of working at height on a construction site. Think about the tasks you may be required to do from a raised platform, beneath the platform, or in close proximity to it. Think about all aspects of this type of work, such as working at heights, risks of falling objects, loose ground or human error. Alternatively, you can take a scenario that you have observed whilst on a construction site, and base your risk assessment presentation on this. Your tutor may want to provide their own scenario for you.

Using materials such as handouts, information sheets, short videos or slideshows etc. create an informative presentation describing how to carry out an effective risk assessment.

Follow these five steps as a starting point for your presentation:

1. Evaluate an activity and identify the associated hazards, who might be harmed and how they might be harmed

2. Decide who might be harmed, and how

3. Evaluate the risks and decide on control measures

4. Record your findings and implement them

5. Review your assessment and update if necessary.

Each part to the risk assessment should be described in full.

Task 3: Risk assessment

M2 Carry out a typical risk assessment for a given workplace situation using a suitable format.

Scenario: Carry out a typical risk assessment for a given workplace situation using a suitable format (you can use the format given in T2). You may decide to video yourself conducting the risk assessment, or produce a detailed report that details the steps you took.

Your risk assessment should focus on lifting and manual handling tasks. Think about all the aspects of these tasks, and what could potentially cause harm. Your risk assessment should develop the issues you addressed for P3 and P4.

Task 4: Risk assessment review

D1 Justify the contents of a risk assessment, in terms of available control measures and what is ‘reasonably practicable’.

Scenario: Using the risk assessment you completed for T3, create a review of its content. Justify why you chose to take the actions you did in the risk assessment. You should explain the reasons behind why you chose to take the control measures stated in your risk assessment, and what is reasonably practicable for the scenario you chose. Your judgements should be based on the consequences of the risks present

Task 5: Control measures

P5 Select control measures for a given workplace situation to reduce risks and meet legal requirements, using workplace health and safety policies

Scenario: You are a Health and Safety Officer, and you have been asked by a company to implement control measures within their workplace to reduce risk levels.

The control measures you select should reduce risks and meet legal requirements, so you should refer to workplace health and safety policies. You can pick any one of the following scenarios to select control measures for:

1. The company has suffered a spate of break ins on their site, so the control measures you select must be appropriate in reducing the risk of future break ins.

2. On a particular construction site, there has been a high frequency of workers coming into contact with moving vehicles. It appears that labourers work in close proximity with traffic.

3. The company has been tasked with deconstructing old housing. The housing contains large amounts of asbestos.

Your tutor may want to provide a separate scenario for you to suggest control measures for

Task 6: Control measures

P6 Describe the role of the individual in accident recording and reporting procedures.

M3 Explain how accurate data on accidents and incidents contributes to improving health, safety and welfare in the workplace.

Scenario: Another role you have as a Health and Safety Officer is to make workers aware of the importance of using accurate and precise data when reporting accidents and incidents. Produce a report to be circulated around construction businesses describing the role of the individual in accident recording and reporting, and explaining the effects that accurate data can have on improving health, safety and welfare in the workplace.

Your report should be split into two sections.

1. The first should describe the role of the individual in accident recording and reporting procedures, including the procedures used to record and report accidents, dangerous occurrences and near-misses.

2. The second part of your report should explain how the collection of accurate data and information on accidents and incidents contributes to improving health, safety and welfare in the workplace.

In order to do this, you should consult health and safety statistics to explain how future health, safety and welfare legislation and provision can be influenced by accurate data relating to previous accidents and incidents. You will find a selection of featured resources in the ‘Learn More’ tab, but you should do your own research as well to find other relevant sources of information. You should discuss some, if not all, of the following factors:

• Gender

• Age

• Type of injury (minor, major, fatal)

• Location

• Occupation

• Cause of accident.

You should also show how keeping accurate records can lead to noticeable improvements

Task 7: Report evaluation

D2 Evaluate a given accident report and suggest improvements to workplace systems to avoid a recurrence.

Scenario: Your work as a Health and Safety Officer means you now have to evaluate an accident report and suggest improvements to workplace systems to avoid a recurrence of the incident in the future.

For this task, there are two examples of accident reports provided for you to familiarise yourself with. You can access these by clicking on the ‘Learn More’ tab. Your tutor will provide a separate scenario for you to evaluate.

For one of the scenarios, think about what the main causes of the accident were, and suggest improvements that could be made to workplace systems to avoid a recurrence. Explain the ‘reasonably practical’ control measures that you would implement.