Abstract
M. Tech.
The objectives of the study were:
• To measure the extent to which clients understand their role in health and safety on site
and accept it as their responsibility from the inception phase through to the maintenance
phase;
• To establish to what extent clients actively influence construction health and safety
performance on their project;
• To determine whether clients address health and safety in all phases of their construction
projects;
• To establish whether clients pre-qualify their appointed contractors on the basis of
construction health and safety performance; and
• To evaluate whether there is a correlation between client involvement in health and safety
and actual health and safety performance.
The literature is largely silent on client influence on health and safety during the later phases of a project. Very little has been written about client influence on health and safety and this is further enforced in clients delegating health and safety responsibilities to the consultants and contractor and regarding this as completion of their duties. Further, client should have major influence on the initial phases of construction rather than the later stages as the literature has shown decreased influence on health and safety with project evolvement. Clients regard themselves as most influential in the later phases of a project.
The literature found that 63% of fatalities were traceable to pre-construction activities. The
reason for poor health and safety is that clients see themselves as being responsible for and addressing health and safety in the later phases of a project.