THE Bahrain Financial Harbour (BFH) has been successful in preventing major accidents during its construction because of excellent safety management, a seminar heard yesterday.

Al Hamad Construction and Development Company, the main contractors for the project, has adopted a new safety culture, said National Occupational Safety and Health Centre managing director Alawi Shubber.

Al Hamad hired the services of the centre, which has been responsible for the safety management at the construction site over the past two-and-a-half years.

"The centre developed a workable health and safety management system based on international safety standard OHSAS 18001, for the BFH project," Mr Shubber said in a presentation at the seminar on Accidents Prevention in Construction and Industrial Workplaces.

The three-day seminar will end at the Crowne Plaza's Bahrain Conference Centre today. It is being held under the patronage of Labour Minister Dr Majeed Al Alawi.

Mr Shubber's presentation was on Safety Management Challenges in Major Construction Projects.

"Al Hamad's success story at BFH in terms of safety was based on the management's commitment, training and awareness, and compliance with legal and other requirements."

Challenges

"One of the challenges was the lack of safety awareness among employees. This was solved through training and awareness programmes, safety posters, implementation of disciplinary action system, and discussing the issue in the safety committee meetings."

Mr Shubber said monthly safety awards were introduced to recognise employees' performance.

"Another major challenge was the lack of proper system for scaffolding and non-availability of trained scaffolders," he noted. We arranged third party training for scaffolders, in-house monthly scaffolding training and daily inspection by the safety officer. There were daily meetings of safety officers with crane operators and riggers.

"To meet the shortage of safety officers, experienced carpenters were promoted as assistant safety officers," he added.

"During the peak construction phase, there were 2,400 workers, and we were able to minimise the number of minor injuries between 17 and 30 a month, which is an internationally accepted number.

"The management's commitment and the workers' awareness helped us to eliminate major accidents and enhance the health and safety performance."