Safety and volunteer construction workers

Fred Sherratt, Martin Crapper, Lydia Foster-Smith and Sinead Walsh

Construction Management and Economics, 2015, vol. 33, issue 5-6, 361-374

Abstract: The construction industry is dangerous, with 39 fatalities at work in the UK in 2012/13 and comparable and even larger figures reported worldwide. People also take part in construction on a voluntary basis; most volunteers have limited training and no technical qualification, whilst safety regulation frameworks range from being comparable to professional sectors to zero regulation in some international contexts. Unstructured interviews were undertaken with volunteer construction workers from two areas: those returning from international development projects and those regularly volunteering on UK heritage railways. Taking a social constructionist perspective, data was explored using discourse analysis to illuminate 'safety' within this unique construction 'industry'. Those with engineering or technical backgrounds developed more tangible constructions of safety, around risks and hazards, within their activities, yet volunteers without this experience also acknowledged a wider context of danger. Volunteers on overseas projects developed discourses of 'difference' between safety at home and safety outside the UK, associated with negative practices overseas yet with acceptance of their inevitability as part of the voluntary experience. Further work is proposed to determine whether these insights can contribute to improved safety management within the voluntary construction context.

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01446193.2015.1024269 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:33:y:2015:i:5-6:p:361-374

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RCME20

DOI: 10.1080/01446193.2015.1024269

Access Statistics for this article

Construction Management and Economics is currently edited by Will Hughes

More articles in Construction Management and Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().