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Managing Health & Safety in Building & Construction
Structural Safety 22 (2000) 291±294
www.elsevier.nl/locate/strusafe
Book reviews Managing Health & Safety in Building & Construction Tony Clarke; Butterworth Heinmann, 1999, ISBN 0-7506-4015-4 It is often tempting to skip the preface of a book. To do so with this book would be a grave mistake. Tony Clarke presents in his preface a very personal and motivational commitment to Health and Safety (H&S) and, if you are a practising professional or student in the building or construction industry, it should make you want to read on. There are a number of good texts that cover construction H&S and give guidance on the interpretation of the legislation, but this book is dierent and timely. It refreshingly takes a systems view of H&S management, which results in the author developing the obvious but nonetheless powerful argument that H&S is a hard business issue that impacts the bottom line. Tony Clarke skilfully maintains this `good for business' tenant as he takes the reader through the application of the legal framework, responsibilities under dierent contractual arrangements, and the practical usage of risk assessments. Sir Micheal Latham and Sir John Egan have spawned a number of initiatives in the construction industry to improve its competitiveness and pro®tability. With accidents accounting for 3± 6% of the project costs, any organisation serious about ``Rethinking Construction'' (Egan Report) must tackle H&S management. As the author prescribes, good H&S management should not be viewed as an appendage, rather it must become an integral part of the management of a business for that business to be successful and prosper. The author makes clear connections to the current trends in the construction industry and describes the role H&S management should play in that change. This book not only preaches the message that H&S is good for business but provides practical guidance through sensible methodologies and real examples. The author uses a predominately process-based approach to tackling the understanding and application of H&S legislation. This results in a very focused and complete set of guidance. This book allows the reader to see what good H&S management looks like. For example, the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations, whilst simple in their original risk based philosophy, have in practice tended to become ambiguous and bureaucratic. The author describes how we can reintroduce some common sense back into H&S regulations, whilst still complying with the law. This in no way advocates short cuts, but rather that the experience of the professionals involved is fully exploited to ensure eective management. The only real weakness in this book lies in its ambition. In an attempt to provide a broad business emphasis for H&S management, the author quite rightly tackles relevant soft issues such as organisation structure, culture, motivation and quality. However, these issues are dealt with 0167-4730/00/$ - see front matter
292
Book reviews / Structural Safety 22 (2000) 291±294
rather super®cially and one questions why they have been addressed at all. Also, the author is quite sweeping in his criticism of the higher education sector for not giving H&S the necessary emphasis in syllabi. Some universities, though by no means all, do recognise the importance of a broad H&S education; Bristol being one of them. In the preface, Tony Clarke nervously questions whether his book is the genuine commitment of an experienced professional or the ramblings of a scribbler. His commitment is unquestionable, and his contribution to the industry through this volume will be signi®cant. Strangely, this very readable book should appeal to seasoned professionals, young professionals studying for management quali®cations or chartership and undergraduates studying subjects in building and civil engineering. They will all probably take something dierent from the text and this is surely the mark of a classic. Neil Allan Engineering Management Group University of Bristol 81 Woodlands Road, Bristol, UK # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0167-4730(00)00011-4
Safety and Reliability: ESREL'99 G.I. Schueller, P. Kafka (Eds.) This book contains the proceedings of the tenth European Conference on Safety and Reliability, ESREL'99, held in Munich, Germany, on 13±17 September 1999. The two volumes of the proceedings (1616 pages) contain 269 papers presented by researchers and practitioners from more than 35 countries. The proceedings cover all major areas of research in the risk and reliability analysis of wide-ranging technological systems encountered in aerospace, civil, chemical, electronics, mechanical, and software engineering. Broadly speaking, the conference theme included probabilistic modelling of engineering systems, mathematical and computational methods, risk assessment and management, and inspection and maintenance planning. The four keynote lectures highlighted emerging applications of reliability theory to the assurance of product reliability, optimal design under uncertainty, oshore oil and gas exploration, and infrastructure management. The papers on probabilistic modelling discussed the theoretical and practical aspects of the identi®cation of sources of uncertainty, selection of probability distributions, modelling of
www.elsevier.nl/locate/strusafe
Book reviews Managing Health & Safety in Building & Construction Tony Clarke; Butterworth Heinmann, 1999, ISBN 0-7506-4015-4 It is often tempting to skip the preface of a book. To do so with this book would be a grave mistake. Tony Clarke presents in his preface a very personal and motivational commitment to Health and Safety (H&S) and, if you are a practising professional or student in the building or construction industry, it should make you want to read on. There are a number of good texts that cover construction H&S and give guidance on the interpretation of the legislation, but this book is dierent and timely. It refreshingly takes a systems view of H&S management, which results in the author developing the obvious but nonetheless powerful argument that H&S is a hard business issue that impacts the bottom line. Tony Clarke skilfully maintains this `good for business' tenant as he takes the reader through the application of the legal framework, responsibilities under dierent contractual arrangements, and the practical usage of risk assessments. Sir Micheal Latham and Sir John Egan have spawned a number of initiatives in the construction industry to improve its competitiveness and pro®tability. With accidents accounting for 3± 6% of the project costs, any organisation serious about ``Rethinking Construction'' (Egan Report) must tackle H&S management. As the author prescribes, good H&S management should not be viewed as an appendage, rather it must become an integral part of the management of a business for that business to be successful and prosper. The author makes clear connections to the current trends in the construction industry and describes the role H&S management should play in that change. This book not only preaches the message that H&S is good for business but provides practical guidance through sensible methodologies and real examples. The author uses a predominately process-based approach to tackling the understanding and application of H&S legislation. This results in a very focused and complete set of guidance. This book allows the reader to see what good H&S management looks like. For example, the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations, whilst simple in their original risk based philosophy, have in practice tended to become ambiguous and bureaucratic. The author describes how we can reintroduce some common sense back into H&S regulations, whilst still complying with the law. This in no way advocates short cuts, but rather that the experience of the professionals involved is fully exploited to ensure eective management. The only real weakness in this book lies in its ambition. In an attempt to provide a broad business emphasis for H&S management, the author quite rightly tackles relevant soft issues such as organisation structure, culture, motivation and quality. However, these issues are dealt with 0167-4730/00/$ - see front matter
292
Book reviews / Structural Safety 22 (2000) 291±294
rather super®cially and one questions why they have been addressed at all. Also, the author is quite sweeping in his criticism of the higher education sector for not giving H&S the necessary emphasis in syllabi. Some universities, though by no means all, do recognise the importance of a broad H&S education; Bristol being one of them. In the preface, Tony Clarke nervously questions whether his book is the genuine commitment of an experienced professional or the ramblings of a scribbler. His commitment is unquestionable, and his contribution to the industry through this volume will be signi®cant. Strangely, this very readable book should appeal to seasoned professionals, young professionals studying for management quali®cations or chartership and undergraduates studying subjects in building and civil engineering. They will all probably take something dierent from the text and this is surely the mark of a classic. Neil Allan Engineering Management Group University of Bristol 81 Woodlands Road, Bristol, UK # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0167-4730(00)00011-4
Safety and Reliability: ESREL'99 G.I. Schueller, P. Kafka (Eds.) This book contains the proceedings of the tenth European Conference on Safety and Reliability, ESREL'99, held in Munich, Germany, on 13±17 September 1999. The two volumes of the proceedings (1616 pages) contain 269 papers presented by researchers and practitioners from more than 35 countries. The proceedings cover all major areas of research in the risk and reliability analysis of wide-ranging technological systems encountered in aerospace, civil, chemical, electronics, mechanical, and software engineering. Broadly speaking, the conference theme included probabilistic modelling of engineering systems, mathematical and computational methods, risk assessment and management, and inspection and maintenance planning. The four keynote lectures highlighted emerging applications of reliability theory to the assurance of product reliability, optimal design under uncertainty, oshore oil and gas exploration, and infrastructure management. The papers on probabilistic modelling discussed the theoretical and practical aspects of the identi®cation of sources of uncertainty, selection of probability distributions, modelling of