From 18 to 24 May, the second edition of the Safety Week will take place on hundreds of construction sites throughout Poland. This is the largest project related to occupational safety on the Polish market. This year, the motto of this initiative is “Security – a common cause”. The organizer is the Agreement for Safety in Construction – an informal association of leading general contracting companies on the Polish market, established in 2010, whose main goal is to eliminate fatal accidents on Polish construction sites. Currently, 10 construction companies belong to the Agreement: Bilfinger Infrastructure, Budimex, Erbud, Hochtief Polska, Mostostal Warszawa, Mota-Engil Central Europe, Polimex Mostostal, Skanska, Unibep and Warbud.
The Memorandum of Understanding’s activities focus not only on the group of signatories who employ over 20,000 Poles. employees and carry out contracts throughout the country, but also on a large group of subcontractors, who account for up to 70 percent. forces implementing a given investment.
Safety Week is a campaign promoting safe work addressed to all employees of the signatories’ construction sites, including subcontractors. This is the second edition of this event. Last year’s Safety Week turned out to be a success, mainly thanks to the ideas of the organizers and the commitment of the participants. Approx. 40 thousand employees of own forces and subcontractors. Each of the companies carried out activities on their construction sites taken from the jointly created “Book of Ideas”. These were m.in. demonstrations of personal protective equipment, high-altitude and water rescue, exercises with fire extinguishers, evacuation from the construction site, workshops on the use of power tools, first aid training and many others. Similar initiatives will also be undertaken this year. Examples of activities do not exhaust the ideas for organizing the Safety Week. Additional information and materials that can be used to promote safety can be found on the www.porozumieniedlabezpieczenstwa.pl Agreement website.
Safety Week is one of many joint projects of the signatory companies. Among those already completed, it is worth mentioning the common template of the Safe Work Instruction, standards helpful in its development, uniform health and safety requirements for subcontractors in all companies, periodic training or the obligation to use glasses.
Very important in the pursuit of improving work safety in the construction industry is also the support of organizations related to this industry that are involved in the activities of the Agreement. This group includes: the Chief Labour Inspector, the National Labour Inspectorate, the Polish Association of Construction Engineers and Technicians, the “Budowlani” Trade Union, the Polish Association of Construction Industry Employers, the Secretariat of Construction and Wood Industry of NSZZ “Solidarność”, the Polish Chamber of Civil Engineers, and since 2014 – the Social Insurance Institution and the National Association of OHS Service Employees.
The Safety Week, organised by the signatories of the Agreement, is a very important element of promoting a culture of safe work in the construction industry. We strongly encourage everyone for whom human health and life is the highest value to undertake this type of initiative.
