The Cost of Safety: Trade-offs in Construction

Tune in to hear us talk about how the drive to reduce costs can negatively impact safety. We frame this week’s discussion around the paper, An Industry Structured for Unsafety.

Topics:

• When you submit a low bid for a tender, what does that end up doing to safety?
• How to work with and understand your contractors.
• Fixed and direct costs.
• Marginal cost pricing.
• The effect of cost-cutting on protective equipment.
• What you can do about cost-cutting.

Quotes:

“I think this is going to be a really important question for many of our listeners.”

“The important thing here is that it’s all equipment that meets the technical minimum standards, but that means it’s cheap in other ways.”

“I still have only seen a handful of times in my career, where an organization has genuinely dismissed a tender because of safety performance…”

Resources:

Oswald, D., Ahiaga-Dagbui, D. D., Sherratt, F., & Smith, S. D. (2020). An industry structured for unsafety? An exploration of the cost-safety conundrum in construction project delivery. Safety science, 122, 104535.

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