Ian Whittingham, the subject of this month’s cover story (p16), makes a bleak observation about construction deaths: they just aren’t news. The assumption is that construction is a dangerous business so if someone happens to die while building something, so what?

A soldier killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan – hardly a surprising situation in a warzone – makes it into all the papers. But if a construction worker is killed ... nothing.

We can’t blame the media as people working in the industry have equally low expectations of their working environments. Graduates who come to the industry expecting better are scoffed at.

Another story in this issue highlights this culture of acceptance. A survey into the working hours of site managers (p36) reveals that these men (and they were all men) are expected to work more hours than they would like and more hours than their managers think they should be working. The result is stress and damage to family life. But the attitude from managers is that there’s really nothing that can be done.

At a time when site managers – and others – are in short supply, it doesn’t seem to make sense to work the ones you have into the ground. And it doesn’t do anything to encourage young people to join the industry.

The author of our research decided to look into this subject while on work placement from university. He was horrified by the overworked, run-down site managers he came across.

It is difficult to provide top-class working environments and reasonable working hours. But some firms are rising to the challenge. It would be great to see that those headed up by CIOB members are leading the way.

Source

Construction Manager

Postscript

Kristina Smith, kjsmith@cmpi.biz