Don't blame us for construction accidents, OHSA tells NAO

Blaming Occupational Health and Safety Authority practices for construction site accidents suggested a misunderstanding of the situation on the ground, the OHSA said today. The authority was replying to a National Audit Office report tabled yesterday which raised reservations about "the authority’s practice of not carrying out exhaustive inspection visits on construction sites". "Although OHSAascertains that the responsibility of a Project Supervisor (PS) is duly assigned, there is no rigid and comprehensive system by which the competence of all active PSs is assessed," the NAO report stated. But in a reply issued today, the OHSAargued that the NAO had misunderstood the "clear link of responsibility" between occupational health and safety and the construction industry. The OHSA argued that the NAO report had seemingly ignored the fact that construction was, by its very nature, a high-risk sector. "A zero accident rate is unattainable," it wrote. In its original report, the NAO had found that only heat strongly correlated with the occurrence of occupational accidents in the construction industry. "NAO therefore notes that, apart from random variation, cultural disregard to...