What influences construction activity in the sector, and which have the most impact on a project’s health and safety management (both at the small and larger project scale)?

Background

HSE Strategic Objective: Increase and maintain trust to ensure people feel safe where they live, where they work, and in their environment (https://www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/assets/docs/the-hse-strategy.pdf)

Research is required to address priority knowledge gaps that will underpin effective and proportionate regulatory regimes for building safety, construction and chemicals through evidence-based approaches. To underpin policy, regulatory and operational activities in this strategic objective the evidence requirements in this area will include:

To address key areas of focus for the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) to inform its continuing work to develop a collective understanding of the built environment that will underpin policy and regulatory decision-making and standards development with an improved understanding of building safety risk. This will involve identification and assessment of emerging risks and keeping abreast of changes and trends across the built environment. Research will also underpin the BSR strategic objective to lead the development of policy relating to the regular review of Approved Documents and the provision of associated technical advice to aid compliance with the building regulations.

To further develop understanding of innovation and of new and emerging legacy issues and their impact on building safety and on construction health and safety and associated standards and guidance. This will include identifying potential implications of new and emerging technologies for building safety risk profiles through the building life cycle and identifying opportunities to eliminate or reduce risks at the design stage whilst also informing the development of appropriate intervention strategies.

To inform standards and guidance development to improve the safety and standard of buildings and develop effective strategies for oversight of the built environment, evaluation of the BSR and to measure and build competence across the built environment and construction sector.

To enable transformative advances in health and safety across the diverse construction sector through technology and innovation and the new opportunities and risks arising from such changes.

To ensure that our approach to regulating chemicals and microbial control agents is effective, efficient, agile and based on up-to-date understanding and evidence. This will ensure that HSE continues to be an internationally influential and competent regulator that ensures the protection of workers, bystanders, consumers and the environment from chemicals whilst enabling GB to grow and prosper.

To develop the evidence needed to ensure that our regulatory approach to chemicals is fit for purpose for the future. This requires an understanding of the future trends in chemical use, technological changes and consequences for both health and environmental hazards.

To develop the evidence for innovative approaches to regulation through collaboration across HSE and other government departments, to make sure we maintain our world-class reputation for regulatory excellence. We will continue to make the best use of new data collection techniques, modelling and analytical methods to help us make proportionate regulatory decisions.

The questions provide more detail of the evidence needs within the main Areas of Research Interest Question Group.

Next steps

Get in touch: [email protected]

Source

This question was published as part of the set of ARIs in this document:

HSE areas of research interest 2025

Topics

No topics assigned yet

Research fields

No research fields assigned yet

Related UKRI funded projects


  • IMPROVING DESIGN FOR SAFETY: A WEB-BASED DESIGN FOR SAFETY CAPABILITY MATURITY INDICATOR (DFS-CMI) TOOL FOR THE CONSTRUCTION SECTOR

    The global construction sector is estimated to account for 100,000 fatalities annually and about 30-40% of all fatal occupational injuries. In the UK, although the construction sector accounts for only approximately 5% o...

    Funded by: EPSRC

    Lead research organisation: University of Manchester

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project focuses on improving design for safety in the construction sector, which directly relates to health and safety management.

  • IntelliBuild

    We are pleased to present our groundbreaking project aimed at revolutionising the construction industry through the development of an innovative AI tool. Our objective is to leverage on-site knowledge and expertise to pr...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: UNIT 9 LIMITED

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project introduces an AI tool for real-time recommendations in construction, which partially addresses the question by focusing on efficiency and project outcomes.

  • A vision-based system for proactive management of safety on construction sites

    Evercam is a construction-oriented software company. With our disruptive technology, we focus on increasing construction productivity by improving project visibility and team communications. To do this, we build tools th...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: EVERCAM UK LIMITED

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project focuses on proactive management of safety on construction sites, which is relevant to the question about influences on construction activity and project health and safety management.

  • University College London and Heathrow Airport Limited

    To develop and deploy a new Prevention and Appraisal Methodology and associated Dashboard which will increase construction project success rate and reduce in-project and post-project quality issues....

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

  • Improving Construction Productivity and Health & Safety on Small Construction Sites in a Covid-19 environment

    The funding sought aligns with the grant themes of remote-working or working at socially safe distances in the construction sector as it emerges progressively from the Covid-19 pandemic. Supporting the government's Indus...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: HBXL GROUP LIMITED

  • Smart Hazards

    Smart Hazards is an intelligent safety tracking and detection platform designed to make construction sites safer, smarter, and more efficient. Construction is one of the world’s highest-risk sectors, where accidents can...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: IMAGE + LIMITED

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project focuses on health & safety management in construction, utilizing innovative technology to improve compliance and safety protocols.

  • Resilience funding for enabling safer and more efficient construction through video analytics and machine learning

    **Introduction** The COVID-19 contingency has highlighted the urgent need for site monitoring systems that enable measuring relative distances, effectively and accurately, among workers and plant equipment to ensure saf...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: ZEST CONSULT LTD

  • DesignBuildAI

    DesignBuildAI is an innovative, AI-powered application designed to revolutionise the UK construction industry by seamlessly integrating the design and build phases of construction projects. By leveraging comprehensive da...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: NEIGHBOURING PROJECTS LTD

  • Computer Vision and IoT for Personalised Site Monitoring Analytics in Real-Time (CV-SMART) towards Behaviour-Based Safety

    The "One Death is too Many" (Donaghy, 2009) catchphrase for the UK zero-harm agenda shows that no fatal accident is admissible on construction sites. Modern H&S problems can only be solved from a combinatio...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: WINVIC CONSTRUCTION LIMITED

  • The Building Safety Application

    ONE Creative's innovation will embed core Building Information Modelling (BIM), information management, facilities' management (FM) and IoT (Internet of Things) capability within a central, cloud-based information manage...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: ONE CREATIVE ENVIRONMENTS LIMITED