Partnering: incorporating safety management

The philosophy that underpins this paper is that partnering needs the partners to set mutual objectives — these objectives are agreed upon and stipulated within a project charter. Objectives within the charter should be regularly reviewed and performance assessed. The question addressed is — can this mechanism, which has proved successful in a commercial context, assist in applying safety legislation, rules and management systems to a construction project? Also, partnering advocates an open and trusting relationship between all parties — can this ‘philosophy’ be used to assist the management of site safety? Implementing the partnering concept in the construction project environment provides an opportunity for the continuous improvement of safety performance. This paper addresses partnering as a concept and draws from examples of partnering in the UK and Hong Kong. A number of characteristics of partnering agreements have been identified that can all assist in promoting safety. These characteristics are: continuous evaluation, the project charter, mutual objectives and team building. The context in which partnering in safety can be undertaken is reviewed and a discussion takes place of how the global trend to move away from prescriptive legislation towards performance‐based legislation in the regulation of safety provides an ideal opportunity to adopt partnering as a methodology for safety improvement.