Session 1.5
Workshop: Health and Safety Risk Assessments with 4D BIM
Synopsis:
In this workshop we will perform Health and Safety Risk Assessments on 4D BIM model set to a phase of construction featuring machinery and workers.
No BIM experience is required. This workshop is aimed at people in the construction fields as well as architects & engineers.
The Diagnostic Tool we’ll be using is a collection of triangular Hazard Symbols, showing pictorial representations of potential hazards e.g. Excavation, Working from Heights, Live Wires, Mobile Plant.
Learning Objectives:
1. Perform a Health and Safety Risk Assessment on a 4D BIM model set to a particular phase of construction.
2. Diagnose the severity level of discovered hazards and propose a mitigation.
3. Open discussion of unforeseen hazards and avoidable construction site accidents.
Body:
A staged (4D) BIM model gives us an opportunity to perform Health and Safety Risk Assessments with accurate and useful visualisations.
This workshop takes a BIM model set to a phase and uses it determine health and safety hazards, diagnose a severity level and propose a mitigation.
The phase in question will be a snapshot in time midway through the construction of a commercial building and feature construction machinery and workers.
Note: No BIM experience is required. This workshop is aimed just as much to people in the construction fields as well as architects & engineers.
The Diagnostic Tools we’ll be using is a collection of triangular Hazard Symbols, which show pictorial representations of the potential hazards e.g. Excavation, Working from Heights, Live Wires, Mobile Plant.
The first half of the workshop will be a search & discovery of potential hazards in the model, some of which will be deliberately planted, applying the appropriate Symbol then determining the ‘Severity’ level as represented by the colour of the symbol : Green=Low, Medium=Yellow, Red=High.
A brief explanation of what can be done to remove/minimise the hazard will be required. This is the ‘Proposed Mitigation’. For example, on the risk of ‘Noise from equipment’ the appropriate PM could be: “Use hearing protection.”
Hazard symbols can either be applied electronically via use of a suite of face based generic families (provided) OR via use of pre-printed stickers on A1 hard copies (provided). Again, no BIM experience is required.
The second half of this workshop will be an open discussion of our H&S Risk Assessment and delegates in the construction fields will be encouraged to share their experience on sites like the one we’ve just reviewed … and in particular to learn of any unforeseen hazards that were not ‘planted’ in the model.
The primary learning outcome of this session is to promote 4D BIM enabled Health and Safety not as a chore, or a checkbox to tick, but rather as a commitment to the safety of your team.
Bonus materials:
– You will be shown how to create a Hazard Register Schedule of your H&S Risk Assessment which can be placed at the front of the construction set of drawings (typically where the legends go).
– Your will be provided some guidance for writing on the site Hazard Board (from Worksafe NZ).
– You will receive a copy of the Hazard families (*.rfa files)
– …and of course, the stickers are yours to keep.
Note: New legislation in Australia and New Zealand means industry professionals can be found accountable for not acting on observed hazards.