Knowing my audience like I think I do, you have probably all been right on top of the recent theme of the blog which has focused a lot of time and energy on construction safety. And in many wys, rightfully so.

This is not to say the construction trades haven’t done enough about improving safety on work sites; it’s not that at all. There are many safety professionals who have done yeoman’s work in improving safety on construction sites. It’s just that construction is such dangerous work compared to other industries – for many reasons – that we have to continue to evolve and develop better and new tools and systems to continue to drive down the numbers of incidents and deaths. While much progress has been made over the last 30 years, we are still losing 1,000 people every year to construction-related deaths due to incidents on the job site.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Jan Tlk via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Jan Tlk via a Creative Commons license]

While we can understand it will seem impossible to ever get that number down to zero, we owe it to our fellow human beings to continue to do everything we can to lower those numbers as much as we can.

A Standard Synergy

With this in mind, ANSI/ASSE has recently introduced new construction and demolition standards, which is considered a “greatest hits” of what is called the A10 series of construction standards.

Known as ANSI/ASSE 45001, this standard is not replacing the A10 standards that have been widely used and implemented around the world, but instead the two standards will be essentially collaborating to further enhance safety on construction sites, as aspects of 45001 are incorporating A10, construction-specific standards, into the general standards.

Understanding the Standards

To be a big help in this process, ANSI/ASSE has supplied several papers about 45001 and how the A10 standards are used. There is also information about the specific parts of A10 that are beimg incorporated:

  1. A10.33-201, which is the Safety & Health Program Requirements for Multi-Employer Projects. This seems to fit very well in that most every construction project is a multi-employer entity with a general contractor and many subcontractors which each have their own specialized workers.
  2. A10.38-2013, which is the Basic Elements of an Employer’s Program to Provide a Safe & Healthful Work Environment. This applies to specific employers at a construction site, but it is designed in this context to address the minimum safety elements needed in a safety program by any single employer at a construction site – but minimums that all employers on the site should honor. This would at least provide a common framework for safety for all workers.
  3. A10.39-1996 (revised in 2011), which is the Construction Safety & Health Audit Program. This standard sets minimum requirements of what is to be included in a proper audit of a construction safety program. Again, provided all of the employers at a site heed by these minimums, that can serve as a due-diligence basis for safety considerations among all workers at a construction site, regardless of the employer in charge of the specific workers.

For more information about this, you can check out several links that contain tech briefs about ANSI/ASSE 45001.