Health and Safety For Structural Engineer

Health and safety offences are concerned with creating a risk of harm. They do not require proving that the offence has caused any actual harm. The standard of Health and safety in the UK is enforced by the government agency Health and Safety Executive. Short-form HSE. This includes work in all occupations.

For Structural engineers, responsibilities are as follow:

As an organisation:

  • Health and Safety at Work Act section3 ' Risk to non-employees' to not exposing non-employees to harm as reasonably practicable.
  • Corporate Manslaughter Act when things go wrong and senior management has taken action to cause the problem.
  • CDM 2015 (Reg 9)
  • Management of Health and Safety at Work Act relates to the requirement for risk assessments.
  • Duty of care to others under common law
  • Contractual

As an employee:

  • Health and Safety at Work Act section 7 Take reasonable care for H and S of himself and others and section37 'Director's duties'
  • Gross negligence manslaughter which is compatible as other manslaughter charges
  • CDM 2015 (Reg 9)
  • Duty of care to others under common law
  • Duty to employer

Under CDM2015, the principal designer is a role responsible to produce efficient designs that can be built, used and maintained healthily and safely by contractor who are provided with sufficient information on reduced significant residual risks within reasonable bounds. Principle contractor is in response in a similar manner in the construction phase.

To discharge the rile of principal designer, a set of appropriate documents are usually created.

  • Client brief is written at the start of the project. Depends on the construction knowledge of the client, assistance form the principal designer is required.
  • Resource schedule and the associated fee is produced to show the resources required to undertake the role of principal designer against the project programme in order to determine a fee for the role.
  • Pre-construction information is a document initially containing information in client’s procession relevant to the project, with an appropriate level of detail and proportionate to the project risk involved. It is then added and recirculated with the team of designers to be subsequently and continuously used by the designers, who should work under the health and safety control of the principal designer.
  • The principle designer should:
    • ensure that immediate information from the client is circulated to designers at the start of the project
    • ensure that information gaps are identified by designers and the principal designer (continuous process)
    • managing the distribution of further information as it becomes available (continuous process)
    • distribute information supplied by designers on health and safety hazards from the design and construction process and how they will be addressed (continuous process)
    • distribute information to the principal contractor to allow incorporation into the Construction Phase Plan and management of significant residual health and safety hazards (continuous process).
  • Design ‘significant residual risk’ schedules
  • Health and Safety File