The ICE Manual of Health and Safety in Construction draws together the knowledge and experience of established construction professionals to develop a comprehensive and well illustrated health and safety reference source. The manual covers an extremely broad section of construction safety-related material, being well structured by being divided into five distinct, but nevertheless, closely linked sections.
Chapter 1 describes the basics of the health and safety legal framework in Britain and chapter 2 gives an insight into the health hazards in construction. It explains the importance of sustaining the health of construction workers through the prevention of injury and ill health and the need to ensure that workers have access to support and rehabilitation.
Chapter 3 provides an informative description of duty-holders' responsibilities under The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007, and the manual continues with chapters 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 which give comprehensive coverage of the need to ensure that processes are established to protect and enhance the workers' conditions and to recognise and manage hazards in construction. Chapter 5 is a valuable contribution to the manual, but seems misplaced as although it discusses the integration of health and safety into the design process it is situated in what appears to be the middle of chapters concerned with construction management. It may have been better if chapters 4 and 5 were interchanged so as to group the design risk management issues together. Chapter 10 deals with procurement issues and again, may have been better placed with the duty-holders' responsibilities in chapter 3 in order to reinforce the importance of establishing the competency of those carrying out design and/or construction work.
Chapters 11–13 continue with an informative description of chemical, biological and physical hazards, and are followed by the subject of working at height and of roof work in chapter 14. Excavations and piling, which are relevant because most projects will require some sort of excavation works, are dealt with in chapter 15, and this is followed by a comprehensive section on confined spaces in chapter 16. Falsework, demolition, refurbishment and decommissioning are covered in chapters 17 and 18 and chapter 19 deals with the issue of transportation and vehicle movement – a subject which could have been developed to include more on the problems of principal contractors when carrying out their waste triage and/or storage activities in compliance with the Site Waste Management Plans Regulations 2008. Useful advice to engineers on when to seek further assistance if confronted with fire and explosion hazards is given in chapter 20 and finally chapter 21 discusses working on, in, over or near water.
The wide-ranging health and safety content of this manual would be of practical use to anyone planning, or working on, a construction project. It could also be useful in giving an insight into construction-related health and safety matters to potential National Examining Board in Occupational Safety and Health candidates, as an aide-memoire to site managers and of practical use to trades foremen and construction operatives. This well illustrated manual should be of interest to the entire construction team, from company owners to site operatives.
