Safety and safety planning - Tunnel Engineering: Basics and Additional Services for Design and Construction - page 301

In principle, this determination of dangers and the associated decision about protection
measures does naturally not represent anything new, as it is no less than that part of con-
struction planning, which is seen from the point of view of the employee.
In practice, this means that the contractors already determine the dangers to health and
safety resulting from the individual working steps in the project preparation phase as part
of work preparation and quality management, decide the necessary protection measures
and document the process as an aid for the responsible managers on site and as a basis for
the instruction of the miners who will work in the tunnel.
Further tasks for contractors are to coordinate their works and also their protection meas-
ures with the other contractors working on the site, make sure that dangers to the health
and safety of their employees are avoided and follow the proposals of the coordinators
appointed for the project.
8.2.2 Directive 92/57/EEC
- (construction site directive) minimum regulations for health and safety applicable
to temporary or mobile construction sites -
The construction directive, which is applicable to the performance of construction works
of any type, is based on an analysis of previous experience, that more than two thirds of
all construction accidents - and parallel to this, also of all quality defects - do not have
their cause in the construction phase of a structure, but could have been avoided through
appropriate measures during the design phase and in the management.
This directive was passed by the Council of the European Union on 24 June 1992 and be-
came obligatory for all member states. After the expiry of a transitional period, the direc-
tive had to be implemented into national law. The successful implementation is checked
by the EU Commission.
Since it had been shown that the consideration of safety equipment and occupational safe-
ty measures in the design phase were often
- not appropriately thought through or their function not fully planned,
- tendered without the necessary technical expertise,
- not appropriately regulated in the contract and
- not available at the correct point in time and in the necessary quantity, or with the speci-
fied quality for the construction works.
This directive introduces a completely new approach to reducing the high accident rates in
the construction industry through the introduction of
- health and safety coordinators,
- the prior notice,
- the health and safety plan and
- the file.
The intention is to mitigate danger points, which arise due to the simultaneous or parallel
working of different trades, and which arise from the inherently dangerous nature of the
relevant works, through careful planning and communally usable safety facilities.