‘CONSTRUCTION OS&H’: A FREE, COMPREHENSIVE TRAINING PACKAGE IN OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH FOR THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Construction remains one of the industries with very high rates of accidents and ill-health, and many of the ‘accidents’ are not accidents at all, but occupational safety and health ‘incidents’, because they could have been avoided by good practices, procedures and equipment, together with appropriate knowledge and responsible attitudes. This problem is at least partially related to lack of proper training. A worldwide analysis by the International Labour Office (ILO) in 2007 concluded that there was a shortage of comprehensive, internationally relevant training materials freely available in the public domain. \ud \ud Construction OS&H is an international occupational safety & health (OS&H) training package, freely available to download from the ILO web site. It is designed specifically for four main groups: clients; design and project management teams; construction companies (‘contractors’); and workers; but it will also be useful to other groups, such as government inspectors and company OS&H officers. It provides trainers with a substantial digital resource, rather than set of four linear programmes, so that competent trainers can adapt the contents for a specific programme. It comprises seven main components:\ud \ud Tutors’ Guide. This explains the content of the package and how to use it.\ud Knowledge Base. This provides the main sources of the content of the package and includes Downloads of some of the sources.\ud Theme Summaries. Construction OS&H is based on 15 Theme Summaries, typically 25-30 pages each, totalling 424 pages, which provide most of the educational content of the programme.\ud PowerPoint Presentations (PPPs). A PPP has been compiled from each Theme Summary, typically 50 slides each, totalling 802 slides.\ud Model Courses. Although this is a very flexible resource, four Model Courses are provided, one each for clients, design & project management teams, construction companies and workers.\ud Participants’ Handbooks. The content of each Model Course has been summarised for printing as a Participants’ Handbook.\ud Web site. All the above is available on an ILO web site, for free downloading. \ud \ud The package was validated in depth by bringing together 24 professionals - practicing engineers, academics, trainers, government officials, trades union officials, contractors and consultants - from four African countries, for a two-day workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 2009. The package was then refined and published on the ILO web site in 2011.\ud \ud Evaluating the practical use of Construction OS&H is difficult because it is freely available for downloading from the ILO web site for anyone to use as they wish. The evidence that we have is that one of the authors used it extensively in a five-day course in Panamá, where it was found to be very effective. A call for feedback from ILO offices around the world reported that an independent consultant used it as the basis for a course in Paraguay, which had very favourable evaluations (summarised in the paper) and that it has been used in courses in Azerbaijan, Kenya, Tajikistan and Tanzania, although it has not been possible to obtain evaluation reports