Canadian Occupational Safety

16 Canadian Occupational Safety www.cos-mag.com By Mari-Len De Guzman T he construction industry has come a long way in improving its safety perfor- mance — with signi cant reductions in workplace injuries and fatalities — but despite the progress, the fatalities that occur in the industry are still devastat- ing, and more work needs to be done. " e safety programs have gotten stronger and the amount of training available has gotten greater," says Clare Francis, health, safety and environ- ment manager for the Toronto District at PCL Constructors. He was part of a roundtable discussion on safety in Canada's construction industry, hosted by Canadian Occupational Safety. "But when you look at 20 plus work- ers dying every year in Ontario, that's 20 plus too many. It's kind of hard to say we're at a good place in safety when there are still fatalities happening on our construction sites," he says. e unfortunate thing about all these fatalities, according to Patrick Dillon, business manager for the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario, is that every coro- ner's inquest following these tragedies has found these incidents could have been prevented. Dillon says there needs to be a "real culture shi " in the way workers on construction sites are managed. He nds many major construction proj- ects do not have a health and safety representative. " e workers are not taking the health and safety representative's job because if they raise an issue, they get laid o on ursday," says Dillon, In the same way the current system provides incentives for employers that achieve good safety performance, "workers that raise safety issues (should) actually get an incentive for raising the safety issue — not get laid o ," he says. Challenges While many of the big construction rms have led the way for improve- ments in construction safety, a big part of the safety issues in the construction industry lie with smaller, indepen- dent contractors, says Dave Shanahan, project manager at Canadian Standards Association (CSA). at, coupled with the transient nature of the workforce, makes it lot more challenging to provide and maintain health and safety training, says Dan Fleming, corporate director of health and safety training at EllisDon Corporation. " ere's always workers coming from contractor to contractor, so it's always di cult for the contractor to maintain a consistent level of training for workers," says Fleming. Another challenge, according to Tammy Oliver, director of operations with the British Columbia Construc- tion Safety Alliance (BCCSA), is the language and culture barriers that exist in many construction sites. Many con- struction projects employ migrant workers from diverse cultural back- ground and the work practices they have been used to may be di erent from the Canadian practice, Oliver says. is is why it is important to inte- grate safety training with the workers' skillsets, says Enzo Garritano, vice- president of research, education and specialty consulting with Mississauga, Ont.-based Infrastructure Health and Safety Association. And evaluating those skills is also critically important, Garritano says. "Not only doing a written test — which is o en di cult for those with English as a second language — but to see them do something to con rm that they are doing the right thing before they leave the door. at is the bottom line of what we need to do." In addition to language barriers, low literacy challenges also come into play, says Cordelia Clarke Julien, director of training and safety programs under the Ontario Ministry of Labour's newly established Prevention O ce. " e overall reality is that there are a lot of di erent challenges within the sector and as a result of that you have to look at approaches that are diverse as well," Julien says. "I can put a whole bunch of people in a room and train them to a standard but if their literacy levels aren't there, then you also have additional chal- lenges that you have to face." Panelists at the roundtable agree training is an important element for ensuring worker safety in the construc- tion industry, and certain initiatives are underway to enhance worker safety training. e Alberta Construc- tion Safety Association (ACSA), for instance, is looking at integrating a mandatory "culture-type course" for its National Construction Safety O - cer (NCSO) training, says Tammy Hawkins, manager of learning services with the ACSA. NCSO is a program run by the ACSA that combines formal training with the individual's personal eld experience. Having a NCSO certi cate indicates the participant has practical knowledge in various construction-related health and safety management skills, according to the ACSA website. Many training and educational programs on workplace safety are also being introduced now to work- ers at a younger age, some are even being incorporated into high school programs. " at component is being intro- duced to people in the workforce at a younger and younger age," says Scott Papineau, co-ordinator and training instructor with the Alberta Ironwork- ers Apprenticeship and Training Plan. " at gets their mindset in the right gear but it's the hands-on component; it's the watching. Anybody who's been in the education business knows that 'tell, show, do' — and that's where you'll see if all that work is paying o ." Despite the many training programs and initiatives that exist across all juris- dictions, many industry observers have been calling for a standardized way of delivering training. "What is good training? What is the standard of training? Right now in many jurisdictions, including Ontario, there isn't that standard of training," Garritano says. Standard approach Many of the panelists agree having a standardized approach to safety train- ing for construction workers will be a signi cant improvement towards ensuring worker safety in the indus- try. e manner in which this national standard could be achieved is, however, the subject of much debate. For one thing, moving toward stan- dardized training needs a great deal of political will, which does not o en come so easily. "What is happening now is in our regulatory body, our government agen- cies… there seems to be a reluctance to set a standard and to (be placed) in care and control of that standard," says Papineau of the Alberta Ironworkers. "Nobody wants to be the person to say, 'It's my standard, I'm going to be the one who looks a er it.' What is hap- pening in our area is the contractors are taking that amongst themselves; they are all setting their own little playing eld… and they are saying, ' is is our HIGH COST OF SAFETY Canadian Occupational Safety gathered experts from Canada's construction industry for a discussion on the state of the industry and how to achieve regulatory harmony across jurisdictions in the name of safety | SPONSORED FEATURE

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