Health cheque

The government aim goes beyond enforcement.

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As one of the biggest concerns for today’s construction industry, the matter of health and safety, is attracting more attention than ever before.

Recent research by UAE University indicated that approximately two-thirds of occupational injury admissions to a Middle Eastern hospital in 2008 involved accidents common to construction workers. Falls from height particularly, have been identified by experts as the primary cause of death in the construction workplace.

Taking the lead on the subject in early May, the emirate of Abu Dhabi established a new building and construction sector environment, health and safety (EHS) department in its Al Ain municipality.

Having incorporated international principles with existing federal laws to set minimum standards for EHS, government officials are now looking forward to a more standardised system of working, whereby small contractors as well as large firms can reap the benefits of healthy, safe and sustainable workplaces.

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By compelling 190 high-risk firms across the sector to devise and implement their own EHS management systems before 2012, they hope to breed a new ‘health and safety culture’ throughout the emirate, and in the future, across the whole of the UAE.

But like all new pervasive and regulatory frameworks affecting entire industries, concerns exist over how the scheme will work in practice, as well as the day to day impact on contractors. This is in addition to apprehension over how the scheme might affect business in the region and how smaller firms might go about implementing it.

‘Nominated entities’
To begin with, the scheme is only going to affect what are currently being referred to as ‘nominated entities’.

Essentially, these are high risk companies (including contractors, sub-contractors, developers, consultants and suppliers) with projects in Abu Dhabi who have been nominated by the municipality.

In effect, this means that any large company in the GCC region should already be working towards a formal health and safety policy, and indeed, many have already begun preparations without notification.

Formally, once notified, nominated entities will have a year in which to devise their own EHS management system specific to their individual companies’ risks, and then a further year to implement the system internally and across their network of subcontractors and suppliers.