Safety responsibility
The United States is a country with a high degree of legalization, and its legal system is relatively sound, perfect and complete. In terms of building safety management, in addition to civil law, labor law, employer's liability law and other legal provisions, the occupational safety and health law issued mainly according to 1970 is applicable to all States and regions in the United States. Section 5, Article 1 of the Law clearly stipulates that every employer shall comply with the following requirements: it must provide each employee with a workplace that is not considered to cause or may cause employee death or serious physical injury; Occupational safety and health standards promulgated in accordance with this law must be observed. Judging from the legal cases involving construction safety in the past 20 years, a considerable part of the ultimate legal responsibility and economic losses of construction casualties fell on the owners. Therefore, in the United States, the responsibility for safety has surpassed the traditional employer-employee relationship. Since the early 1990s, owners and general contractors have paid more and more attention to safety issues. In order to avoid legal disputes in the future, the owner will generally list the contractor's good safety construction record as one of the necessary conditions for obtaining the bidding qualification when bidding for the project; In the construction stage of the project, the owner also actively participates in the safety management of the contractor, and usually adopts the following safety measures: in each project, the owner's safety representative is appointed to hold a safety meeting with the contractor; Require the contractor to resolutely implement the safety standards formulated by the owner; Facilitate the safety training of contractors; Require all contractors to receive safety guidance and review their safety plans; Regularly check the contractor's safety status; Implement safety incentive plan in all construction projects; Owners pay more and more attention to safety issues, prompting contractors to realize that providing safe engineering services is the only way for them to stand and develop in the industry.
According to article 16 of Chapter 5 "Management of Construction Safety in Production" of China's Building Law, the responsibility for construction safety is almost entirely borne by the construction enterprise, and the responsibility borne by the construction unit (that is, the owner) is very limited. Therefore, in our country, construction safety is generally regarded as the business of the construction unit, while the construction unit and supervision unit often only care about the quality, progress and investment of the project, so it often happens that the construction unit defaults on the project progress payment or forcibly grabs the progress to catch up with the construction period and ignores the safety of the construction unit personnel. Some responsible persons of construction units lack the necessary awareness of safety laws, and under the condition of lax supervision, there is a wrong idea that reducing safety investment is regarded as saving costs, which makes building safety have great hidden dangers.
Safety insurance
According to American law, before the project construction, the owner and contractor must apply for relevant compulsory insurance, otherwise they will not be able to engage in corresponding business activities. The United States has the largest insurance market in the world. The insurance industry is very developed, with fierce competition, complete types of insurance and sound insurance supporting legal system. The types of compulsory insurance related to engineering stipulated by American law mainly include: contractor insurance, installation engineering insurance, industrial injury compensation insurance, professional liability insurance, etc. Although the law stipulates that the subject participating in the project construction must take out compulsory insurance, the insured can freely choose a satisfactory insurance company, and the insurance rate is determined through consultation in full accordance with market rules. In the United States, the safety insurance premium paid by contractors is closely related to their performance and reputation in safe construction. If the contractor has good safety performance and reputation, the premium is often low and the construction profit is high; On the other hand, the high premium may lead to the loss of project cost, even the insurance company refuses to insure, and the contractor cannot obtain the qualification for the main construction. Under the leverage of this market economy, not only the contractor has a strong sense of safety, but also the insurance company attaches great importance to construction safety for its own benefit and actively participates in construction safety management. In addition, through a lot of practice, the contractor realized that in order to establish a good construction safety performance, it is necessary not only to save the cost of safety insurance, but also to reduce the time lost in work, improve the productivity of employees, reduce the litigation cost and significantly reduce the total construction cost of enterprises because of safe production.
In China, the safety insurance awareness of construction enterprises is generally poor, which has a lot to do with the imperfect construction laws and the single insurance market in China. China's "Building Law" only stipulates in Article 48 that construction enterprises must handle accidental injury insurance for employees engaged in dangerous operations, but the internationally accepted compulsory insurance such as all risks of construction projects, all risks of installation projects and employer liability insurance does not clearly stipulate the requirements. At present, China's insurance market is scattered, with few types of insurance business, high premium and unsatisfactory service; There is no authoritative safety statistical information in the construction market, which makes it impossible to protect the legitimate rights and interests of the other party when claiming compensation. In the case of lax law enforcement and lack of mutual restraint mechanism, some construction enterprises are bound to have short-term awareness, take chances, and pay no attention to construction safety production and personal accident insurance work. Leverage adjustment of market economy has not played its due role in China's construction safety management.
safety supervisor
Good safety performance is reflected by a series of evaluation indicators, and the reliability of evaluation indicators first lies in the authenticity and standardization of safety accident records. The United States has established a complete set of rules and regulations on the recording, maintenance, inspection and punishment of safety accidents, which effectively ensures the understanding of safety information in the construction industry. According to American law, employers with 1 1 or more employees must record and keep detailed safety information of each employee. Records are divided into two prescribed formats, namely, occupational injury and illness log and occupational injury and illness supplementary record. Each occupational injury or disease incident shall be recorded in detail within 6 working days after the incident, including the time when the injury or disease occurred, the name of the affected employee, the work of the injured or sick employee, the work department to which the injured employee belongs, the category of the injury or disease, the description of the lost working hours caused by the injury or disease, the causes of the injury and disease incident and a list of other affected matters. In addition, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the United States also requires each employer to prepare an annual report for each construction site under its jurisdiction. These records and reports do not need to be sent to the US Occupational Safety and Health Bureau, but they are required to be kept at the employer for at least five years (from the year of the accident) and can be produced at any time when requested by the inspection officials and state officials of the US Occupational Safety and Health Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to American law, employers must post a safety record form for one year before February 1 every year so that all employees can see it conveniently. Even if the total number of work-related injuries and occupational diseases in the previous year was zero, an announcement is required. The announcement must be kept until March 1 day, which is convenient for employees to check, supervise and report. According to the American Occupational Safety and Health Law, any act of tampering with safety records will be punished with a fine of $654.38 +0000, or half a year's imprisonment, or both. Violation of the announcement requirements will be fined $7,000; Prosecutors have the right to inspect the construction site. Anyone who stops, opposes, hinders or interferes with the work of inspection officials will be fined $5,000 and imprisoned for up to three years. Inspection officials are generally not allowed to inform the employer before the inspection, and cannot disclose the inspection information, otherwise the prosecutor will be fined 1000 or imprisoned for 6 months; If violations are found in the inspection, fines or even criminal sanctions will be imposed according to the circumstances.
Our government also attaches great importance to building safety management and has promulgated a series of laws and regulations on building safety. Most provincial and prefecture-level cities in China have set up construction safety supervision and management institutions, initially forming a "vertical to the end, horizontal to the edge" construction safety production supervision and management system. The Ministry of Construction has carried out nationwide activities to create civilized construction sites and meet the safety standards of construction sites, which has greatly reduced the hidden dangers of construction safety, and the national construction casualty accidents have shown a good momentum of continuous decline in recent years. However, we should be soberly aware that there is still a big gap between China's construction safety management level and advanced countries such as the United States. Outstanding performances are: laws are not obeyed, law enforcement is lax, and violations are not investigated from time to time; The way of government safety inspection and supervision and the safety responsibility should be further improved and clarified; At present, it is common for construction enterprises to conceal, omit or even fail to report industrial accidents; The problem of occupational injury of construction workers has not attracted people's attention. Due to the lack of credible first-hand statistical data of safety injury accidents, it has brought great obstacles to China's construction safety prediction and prevention research, enterprise safety performance evaluation, and the establishment of an effective market insurance adjustment mechanism.
Through comparative study, the author believes that China's construction safety management should further deepen the reform, learn from the advanced management experience of the United States, vigorously cultivate and standardize the construction insurance market, and give play to the regulatory role of market economic leverage on safety; Establish an authoritative and transparent system for recording, maintaining, inspecting and evaluating construction safety accidents, and accelerate the construction of construction safety informatization; While earnestly implementing the laws and regulations on construction safety production and improving the responsibility system and safety supervision mechanism, we must strengthen active control and seek to establish a benign restraint mechanism for safe operation, so that all parties in construction production can actively participate in safety production management, thus fundamentally improving the construction safety situation in China.
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