A rise in residential-construction projects in pockets around the country—namely in Boston, Texas and Northern California—and a growing need for skilled workers will characterize the construction industry throughout 2013 and into 2014, says Tom Varney, head of Allianz's Risk Consulting business. And that's where proper risk management, job training and loss control will become critical.
"Most contractors are busy, and the trend this year and in 2014 is there are going to be more construction projects and more approvals for big construction projects," says Varney, who oversees engineering risk consulting and Property risk consulting. His scope includes the construction industry, construction projects, building codes and builder's risk.
Allianz Risk Consulting offers liability products and consultations in environmental liability; product liability and recall; liability for pharmaceuticals and clinical trials; information and communication technologies (ICT); facility management; product tampering; employers' liability; and risk assessments in several major industries—oil and gas, power plants, renewable energy, heavy industry, electrical engineering and buildings & construction, including structural and civil engineering.
"The big concern becomes the amount of people available to hire to do the work," Varney says. As many contractors are getting more work following the recession, they may not have adequate staffing, or properly skilled staffing, on hand.
"You could have people who are not familiar" with established safety protocols, he explains. Proper training and quality control need to be implemented from the start, before activity ramps up and the job can suffer if workers become injured.
Risk consultants can help such clients field those challenges and identify the risks of inadequate staffing and safety training.
Hiring under-trained or inexperienced workers is a big risk factor for construction firms beyond the normal regulatory compliance and safety operations, Varney says. Construction job safety, he explains, is all about how a company implements building codes, how it enforces them with local contractors and how it trains and makes its employees aware of any risks involved.
"Invest in training rules and standards," he adds. "Experience is always important in this kind of job."
Construction is the type of industry where mistakes can be readily seen—or felt.
Recent recommendations from the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which monitors workplace safety, concern a series of reports of fatal injuries among temporary workers—many of which occurred during their first days on the job. OSHA announced that its Bureau of Labor Statistics' Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries for 2011 showed fatal work injuries involving contractors accounted for 542—or 12 percent—of the 4,693 fatal work injuries reported that year. Of those, Hispanic/Latino contractors accounted for 28 percent of fatal work injuries.
The announcement came on Workers' Memorial Day, which is observed nationally on April 28 to honor employees killed on the job. OSHA recommended that its inspectors use a newly created code in their information system to denote when temporary workers are exposed to safety and health violations, and to assess whether temporary workers received required training in a language and vocabulary they could understand.
Surprisingly, Varney hasn't yet seen "a firm movement" toward any construction code changes in the six months following Superstorm Sandy, which could be expected after so brutal a storm. But so far, no national or regional building codes are on the radar. Any building code changes due to the October 2012 hurricane would affect new construction and additions to existing buildings, he adds.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.