About OSHCIM

Managing occupational safety and health risks at the planning and design stage is often more effective, easier to sustain and cheaper to achieve than making changes later when the hazards become real risks in the workplace. These guidelines provide practical guidance to the client, designer and contractor on the management of safety, health and welfare when carrying out construction projects1 of a structure2. This guidance is for people with legal duties under the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Factories and Machinery Act. These include client, designer and contractor. It explains what they must or should do to comply with the law and recommends duties to them in order to manage their projects. Any actions taken should always be proportionate to the risks in the construction project.

Responsibility for occupational safety and health in construction are shared among all stakeholders in the industry’s supply chain. Stakeholders such as client, designer and contractor should work together to design occupational safety and health hazards out of the construction industry’s processes and products. By working together, they should identify and eliminate or reduce, as far as is reasonably practicable, all foreseeable design risks to safety or health of any person.

Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, organisations or individuals can concurrently be one or more duty holder for a project or workplace. Duty holder can also have more than one duty. Each duty holder must comply with that duty to the standard required by the Act even if another duty holder has the same duty. Duty holder must perform his or her duties and cooperate with other duty holders to perform their duties, and promote safe execution of construction and maintenance works so that buildings and structures can be safe workplaces.