All governments must recognise that architects can only act in a reasonable and practicable manner in minimising risk and hazard in design. Many parties share Safe Design responsibilities and the level of these responsibilities must be directly related to the extent of their control.
The following are priorities for action:
• Legislation and associated guide documents in all jurisdictions must recognise the limitation of the designer’s Safe Design duty as that which is reasonable and practicable for the designer in the circumstances of their engagement.
• There must be a clear distinction between the safe ‘design’ of the construction and demolition processes and the design of completed buildings for safe use during occupation and maintenance.
• Legislation should reinforce that the building contractor has the responsibility for selecting construction methods, not the designer. Legal requirements that dilute or confuse this role should not be introduced. Designers of buildings should only be required to report on residual risks that a qualified contractor could not reasonably be expected to identify when assessing construction risks.
• National occupational health and safety (OHS) template legislation, supported by appropriate guidelines, should be adopted as the foundation for improved OHS on construction sites and in the construction process. An immediate two-year moratorium on any further Commonwealth and State-by State OHS legislative changes, guides or codes should be implemented while a nationally consistent framework is developed through wide consultation.
• For completed buildings, the Building Code of Australia model, supported by a referenced National OHS Standard, offers the best framework to achieve improved outcomes for the design of buildings as workplaces. Overlapping legislation in OHS Acts should be removed.
• Governments should continue to pursue a broad based approach to achieving improvements in OHS, exploring other avenues in addition to regulation under OHS statutes.