Safety in Design

Safety in Design sounds like paperwork. In New South Wales it is a legal duty that sits with whoever designs a building, and it starts long before anyone picks up a tool. The decisions we make at the drawing board shape how safely a building can be built, cleaned, maintained, altered and one day pulled down. Get those decisions right and the risk never reaches the site. Get them wrong and someone has to manage that risk for the life of the building.

This article explains what the duty actually requires, why the design stage carries so much of the responsibility, and how we work it into every project we document.

What the law requires of a designer

Under section 22 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), a person who designs a structure that will be used as a workplace must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that it is designed to be without risks to health and safety. That covers the people who build it, the people who later work in or on it, and anyone nearby who might be exposed while that work happens.

The same section asks the designer to do three things. Design out the risk where it can reasonably be done. Carry out or arrange any calculation, analysis, testing or examination the design needs. Then pass on what you know, in writing, to the people who rely on the design. A building site is a workplace, so almost every project we draw falls inside this duty.

The phrase that does the heavy lifting is "so far as is reasonably practicable". It does not ask for the impossible. It asks us to weigh how likely harm is and how serious it could be against what it would take to remove or reduce it, and then to act on that.

Why the design stage carries the most weight

There is a reason the law leans on designers. The earlier a hazard is dealt with, the cheaper and more completely it disappears. A risk that is designed out never needs a harness, a sign, a method statement or a person remembering to be careful. A risk left in the drawing has to be managed by every trade that meets it, on every visit, for decades.

This is the hierarchy of controls applied at the one point where the most powerful control is still on the table. Once a building is built, the strongest options, elimination and substitution, are usually gone. At the design stage they are still ours to use. Moving a plant deck so it can be reached from a safe landing instead of a ladder is elimination. Specifying a material that does not need solvent based sealing in a tight, enclosed space is substitution. Neither is available once the concrete is poured.

The five principles we design to

Safe Work Australia sets out five principles of safe design in its Code of Practice for the Safe Design of Structures. They are the backbone of how we think about it.

1. Persons with control. The people who make the design decisions are the people who can remove risk at its source. That responsibility cannot be delegated to the site.
2. Product lifecycle. Safety applies at every stage, from the first sketch through construction, occupation, maintenance and eventual demolition. We design for all of them, not just opening day.
3. Systematic risk management. We identify the hazards a design creates, assess them honestly and control them in a structured way rather than by instinct.
4. Safe design knowledge and capability. Whoever controls the design has to understand the safety consequences of it, or bring in someone who does.
5. Information transfer. What we learn about a building's risks has to travel with the drawings to the builder and the owner. A hazard nobody is told about is a hazard nobody can manage.

What it looks like on a real project

Safety in Design is easiest to understand through the ordinary moments in a building's life that most drawings ignore.

Someone has to clean the windows. Someone has to clear the gutters, service the air conditioning, replace a light over a stairwell void and inspect the roof. If the design has not given them a safe way to reach those places, the building hands them a fall every time. So we think about access early. Where does plant sit, and can it be reached without a ladder propped against a two storey wall. Can a window be cleaned from inside, or from a surface that is built to carry weight. Is there an anchor point where one is genuinely needed.

We look at how the building goes together, not just how it looks finished. A wall that can be braced and stood safely. A slab edge that is protected before anyone works near it. A sequence that does not ask trades to work on top of one another. We think about the heavy and awkward things that have to be carried, lifted and held, and whether the design is quietly setting up a manual handling injury.

We pay close attention to water, because water that gets into a building becomes a long term health and safety problem, not just a maintenance one. Getting the waterproofing right is a safety decision as much as a durability one, which is why we detail it with the care set out in our guide to waterproofing for Class 2, 3 and 9c buildings.

Handing on what we know

The last duty is the one that is easiest to skip and most often forgotten. A designer has to give clear information to the people who use the design about the risks that remain in it and the conditions needed to keep it safe.

In practice that means the risks we could not design out are written down and travel with the documentation, so the builder can price and plan for them and the owner knows what the building will ask of them over its life.

For apartment and other Class 2 buildings, Class 3 buildings and Class 9c buildings, where the documentation bar is already high, this discipline sits naturally alongside the detail those projects demand.

How we approach it

We treat Safety in Design as part of designing well, not as a form to sign at the end. A building that is safe to build, easy to maintain and honest about its own risks is usually a better building in every other way too. If you are planning a project and want a practice that designs with all of that in mind, come and talk to us about it.