Health, Safety, and Wellbeing in Every Brick: Scaffolding Success

Occupational health, safety and wellbeing (OHSW) in the architecture, engineering, and construction sectors undoubtedly requires improvement in developing and developed countries. While a marginal reduction in accidents, injuries, and fatalities has been recorded in specific industry sub-sectors, the potential for harm to people and damage to property remains significant. Applications of innovations and lessons learned lag those in advanced industries such as manufacturing, while research attention is disproportionally focused on the issues and challenges of improving OHSW. This chapter presents opportunities, best practices, and drivers of continuous improvement (CI) and case studies that promote CI in OHSW. The CI drivers shared are robust, resonate with practice, and promote policy deployment in projects of varying complexity through planning, control, and improvement. This chapter covers areas such as design for wellbeing, early consideration of project safety, design for safety and to promote positive mental health and wellbeing in organisations, and sharing best practices with front-line workers.