Developing a Safety Standard in Construction Management for a Vunerable Country like Nigeria

CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA

During 2006 the construction service department of Nigeria has not been given a prioritized effort in health and safety that is why more problems continue to arise in construction related incidents. Although it may vary from different location and instances but statistic show a varying degree of danger and disastrous numbers of recorded situation. Particularly operation from building construction, roads, bridges, quarries that accidents may arise.

By this time health and safety should now be a major concern to eliminate incident of casualties between workers. In a world of construction where the involvement of danger from various operation including quarrying, concreting, painting, roofing, machinery operation and more may be required to health and safety programs by the management and labor legislator to intensify a governing rules of discipline in their work area. Health and safety may also work in favor to the management and people for a continuous workflow.

Eventually workers definitely will perform better if they are sure that they are safe and taken care of. Management must identify the site including the high risk area even a low risk area so that workers can have an extra amount of caution over their area of work. Usually large machineries like tractors and millers have a high risk since it involve a place of heavier production and delivery of materials. Therefore the monitor of this construction site must be done in strict condition.

The larger and wider the scope of construction the more the machinery and the more the machinery the more there will be danger. Accidents on construction site can be prevented and why not? If ever there will be an accident there should also be an investigation to be conducted so that a thorough inspection can be done and accident on the same place can be prevented.

There are also many basic construction accident control requirement that must be met and this should be thoroughly implemented. For some reasons accidents occur because they simply ignore such facts. First and foremost the workers should be physically and mentally fit to work, workers cannot work if they are under the influence of drug or they simply have a hangover during the night when they are drunk. There are also the supervisor’s safety rules and regulation that are written and employed in the worksite and it should be enforce in the time of work. Construction workers should also be taught to memorize most of this safety condition.

Safety working condition of small tools should also be checked. Protective clothing like safety helmets, boots, goggles, gloves, mask and others should be worn. First Aid in the construction site should always be available and there will be assigned individual about the medicine to see that all of this are relevant and not expire and if the accident is rigid they must be brought directly to the hospital.

To the higher degree of safety there are occupational health and safety programs conducted by the engineers and managers of the site or it may be depending on the project. They can even provide a health professionals or a doctor, disaster control program are also discussed and included, crew leaders safety discussion that must be passed on to ordinary laborers, more safety instruction to new workers, safety gears and devices, tolerable site inspection are scheduled program thorough investigation.

And finally a thorough training of workers themselves in order to promote safety awareness, this training should be done at least twice a month or as necessary as possible. The contractor themselves should also be responsible in the provision or occupational safety standards and they are also be the one to provide the necessary health and safety materials for all workers with the help of their safety engineers.

Together they must maintain a real solid construction materials that are safe and adequate to use in construction for they will be the one to take full responsibility in selecting these materials like hollow blocks, metals, machineries to be use etc. so that they are protected and most of all their compensation should not be delayed in time for their employee to supply their own basic needs while they are living in a construction site or nearby location.

At the same time employees must respect their provision in order to maintain a healthy working relationship among employees, government and contractor. If in time they feel the needs, they should reports incidents of probable causes of accidents. And basically with all these kinds of methodology accidents should be eliminated or as much as possible prevented.

Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com