The British Standards Institution (BSI) has launched a specification for the sharing of health and safety information through a construction project lifecycle.
PAS 1192-6 has been developed to enable users of BIM methods and techniques to identify, use and share health and safety information in a collaborative way.
BSI says it will ultimately help to further drive down H&S risks through the lifecycle of a project and built asset.
Health and safety risk management in the construction industry to date has largely been a paper-based discipline. PAS 1192-6 sets out a model process of how digital health and safety risk information should flow through every stage of a construction project. It focuses in particular on the needs and perspective of the end user.
Because risks on a construction site vary widely, PAS 1192-6 requires each risk to be placed in context and hazards filtered according to a scale. The guidance assists in prioritising those risks which are safety critical.
The institution says PAS 1192-6 is relevant to any organisation or individual that contributes to the design, construction, and maintenance of an asset – including the end of life of an asset. It specifies how H&S information can be used to:
- Provide a safer and healthier environment for end-users;
- Mitigate the inherent hazards and risks across the asset lifecycle;
- Result in improved construction H&S performance, fewer incidents and associated impacts;
- Provide for clearer and more relevant H&S information to the right people at the right time;
- Reduce construction and operational costs.
According to the BSI, PAS 1192-6 will make it easier to access and share health and safety knowledge and guidance already accumulated from prior built environment projects or from elsewhere. The specification can be applied in conjunction with the duty holder’s own management systems, policies and arrangements.
Ant Burd, head of the built environment sector at BSI, said: “We know that health and safety standards and approaches in the construction sector save lives and reduce the operational costs of a project.
“Consequently, guidance on applying H&S information from the start to the end of life of a project or asset is a win-win for all stakeholders in a built environment project.
“Users of BIM will be the first to admit that, to date, there has been a dearth of guidance on how you should go about sharing all-important structured health and safety information across project and asset lifecycles.
“Sharing information can help to drive down risk on a construction site – and PAS 1192-6 was developed to make it easier for built environment professionals to do this.”
