Safety and safety planning - Tunnel Engineering: Basics and Additional Services for Design and Construction - page 299

8 Safety and safety planning

8.1 General

The term safety is defined as the state of being without threat, which arises objectively
in the presence of protection measures or the absence of danger and is subjectively ex-
perienced by individuals or social groups as confidence in the reliability of safety and
protection measures. Safety considerations thus presume the recognition of dangers and
the resulting risk.
Safety cannot be related to the structure alone. Integrated safety (Fig. 8-1) includes three
essential components, which have to be included in considerations.

Figure 8-1 Integrated safety.

In general, people on a construction site in a constitutional state are responsible for safety
as a part of their duties. The safety of the structure itself is the classic responsibility of the
engineer. The inclusion of concerns of occupational safety in the design process is also
justifiably required, whether in the selection of a profile or decisions about construction
methods or working procedures. Only this enables the contractor to implement the proper
protection measures for accident avoidance and health provision [217].

8.2 International guidelines and national regulations

The European Union deals with the areas of “safety at work” and “health protection” in
diverse directives, which also provide basic rules for tunnelling.
The member states of the EU are obliged implement all directives into national law.
Directives of the council of the European community can be based on either

- Article 100a or
- Article 118a of the European Union Treaty.