Hitesh Dalpat Rathod outlines challenges they faced across nine areas of construction health and safety based on over 7 years of experience. Key challenges included relying on suppliers and ensuring adequate equipment, convincing management to increase budgets, hazards being overlooked due to production pressure, language barriers impacting risk communication and investigations, non-compliance with regulations, medical conditions not being disclosed, extreme weather conditions, waste management issues, communication difficulties, and emergency preparedness shortcomings such as not enough radios. Rathod aimed to compress the main challenges experienced into brief explanations for each knowledge area.

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Annexure 2
2015
Hitesh Dalpat Rathod
I.D number: G6856997
Construction Health and Safety Project report
Project Report
CHALLENGES
Based on the nine knowledge areas in construction Health and Safety, I will highlight the
challenges which I had faced over the 7 + years of my HSE career. Although for
Communication Management and Procurement Management I was not quite broadly
involved, I will give a brief explanation as to what challenges I could have encountered had I
been involved in those two knowledge areas.
Construction Health and Safety - Procurement Management
My biggest challenge for procurement would be relying on the suppliers to deliver the
equipment on time and when required. Usually there would either be a delay or shortage of
that particular equipment. Also too was the cost for some equipment which management
would feel an alternative would be less costly and thus purchasing equipment which is of a
cheaper quality. This would become a significant problem especially when the workforce
identify that the quality of equipment is poor and would make them feel that they are not
valued.
One other challenge was relying on the store controller to ensure that adequate amount of
stock was readily available especially at a peak in manpower.
Construction Health and Safety - Cost Management
When working for a smaller company in comparison to a larger company can be very
challenging when it comes to managing a budget. The budget is much smaller and it's
always more difficult to convince the management that spending can increase employee
morale. Having worked for a small construction company I learned that money is not easily
available and it made it harder to encourage the workforce to work towards achievement an
HSE milestone. Although when a budget is allocated for incentive schemes the workforce are
much more appreciative. Though sourcing items for workers performance on a very small
budget is really difficult.
Construction Health and Safety - Hazard Identification Management
When field supervision overlook hazards or don't take Note of hazards because of production
pressure became challenging due to the fact that I would have to monitor the activities more
frequently to ensure that the employees are working safely. It was never easy to control
hazards immediately when pressure was on production and this increased risk to the project
and to the workforce. When supplying field supervision with theme audits to conduct would
not always be done honestly and would become a paper exercise which would require me to
do more field verifications and rectify deviations myself. Employees not reporting hazards
would also become a challenge as employees would feel that they would get their
supervisors into trouble.

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Construction Health and Safety - Risk Management
The challenges faced with risk management was training and communicating the risk
assessments to the workforce where there was always a language barrier that made it
difficult for them to understand. Ensuring that a risk assessment is done effectively requires
involvement from certain individuals and at times due to pressure on the project a risk
assessment would end up being conducted by myself or with 2 or 3 involved parties making
the risk assessment not as adequate as it should be. Some field supervision do not like to
read and understand the risk assessments for their tasks and would often deviate from the
risk assessment process.
Construction Health and Safety - Accident / Incident Investigation Management
Interviewing witnesses would be one challenge I had to face as this process would become
lengthy when there was a language barrier. Gathering evidence would at times also be
difficult as some employees would tamper with a scene before I arrive to demarcate it off.
Some challenges I faced involved not being supplied with enough resources to conduct a
thorough investigation or not having important people required for the investigation available.
Having to compile all relevant incident investigation packs and submit to client would also
become difficult as some clients would demand the investigation be closed out soon as
possible where at times certain items which were difficult to obtain would delay the close out.
Putting corrective actions and preventative actions in place and ensuring that they were
effective was challenging because at times the field supervisors do not seem to change bad
habits they pick up and tend to allow same incidents to reoccur.
Construction Health and Safety - Legislations and Regulations
When it came to the legal side on a project the Construction Regulations 6.2 field supervision
tend not to fulfil all their legal requirements which places more pressure on me to
continuously emphasise the consequences if they do not fulfil their obligations. Based on
section 19 of the OHS Act 85 of 1993 One case I remember experiencing a challenge was
with the HSE committee meetings which were not being held monthly and the issue was
raised with the site manager and I was told that there is not enough time to hold these
meetings, or not everybody who needed to attend would be available for the meeting.
Another challenge I experienced was according to the section 8 of the Facilities Regulations
the seating arrangements for employees which were to be made available for the workforce
was not sufficient and the site manager did not want to spend any further to purchase more
table and chairs. On one project based on section 7 of the Facilities Regulation due to water
shortages there were days where drinking water was not available for workforce because the
mine had experienced a shortage supply which caused project delays.
Construction Health and Safety - Health, Hygiene and Environmental Management
There was one case where an employee was working on a project of mine and he had
collapsed while working on site because he suffered from epileptic seizures and did not
make mention of it on his medical history report which was a challenge as it came to my
knowledge that employees feared they wouldn’t be employed if they are honest about their
health conditions. Working in extreme heat conditions was also a challenge where the heat
reached a high of 42 Degrees Celsius, making the heat a huge risk factor and I had to
conduct extreme weather conditions management program that at times became very
challenging especially when the mine did not have sufficient water supply. One challenge I
had experienced was when our employees were suffering from food poisoning after eating
the mines food supplied to the workers. On the mine there was no running portable water
point for the workers to wash their hands after using the toilets and I had to request for the
company to have large water drums allocated on site. Waste removal was a big concern on

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one of my projects as the waste removal company was the only company on the mine which
caused a lot of waste to accumulate and become uncontrollable.
Construction Health and Safety - Communication Management
When the servers were down emailing became a challenge as it was difficult to communicate
certain items to the client and the company head office especially at a time when
documentation was urgently required. Working on a mine where the plant was built in the
middle of an open field there was continuous struggles with cellular phone reception which
made it difficult for my company head office to contact me.
Construction Health and Safety - Emergency Preparedness Management
The challenges faced in this Knowledge area was on one project we did not have enough
radios to communicate with the field supervision for me to coordinate the emergency
scenario effectively. On one project the plant production office struggled to provide all the
contractors with enough space to assemble when there was an emergency, which caused a
lot of problems when trying to account for all the people. At times the employees also don't
seem to actually take an emergency very serious and at times tend to take things very
gradual when evacuating the plant.
To conclude with my report these were the challenges which I had faced within the nine
knowledge areas. My intention here was to compress the main challenges I had experienced
into each knowledge area and not stray from the topic. For some areas where I was not very
involved in for example communication management, procurement management and cost
management I did manage/try and put myself into a scenario and put the challenges I may
have faced had I been involved in those areas.