Presentation of confirmation of personal injury claims in work accidents as a condition for participation in state tenders
Aug 5, 2018
There isn’t a single day that passes without a work accident causing bodily injury at a construction site.
Everyone agrees that this “plague” must be eradicated—from the Government of Israel to the last contractor. One of the steps recently taken in the campaign to reduce work accidents in the construction sector is an initiative stipulating that one of the conditions for participating in government tenders is submitting a certificate from the insurance company showing the number of bodily injuries that occurred in the contractor’s projects and sites—similar to the “no-claims” certificate submitted when purchasing a car insurance policy.
A similar trend is emerging in tenders from semi-governmental entities and large private developers, who wish, as part of their evaluation criteria, to obtain information on the scope of accidents at the contractor’s construction sites.
The trend is clear This is only a small first step among a range of measures being implemented to reduce the number of work accidents causing bodily and psychological injuries at construction sites.
Without a doubt, reality demands a much broader, budgeted, and supervised action plan, in collaboration with all relevant parties—government ministries, contractors’ associations, inspection and control bodies, and more. Most importantly, there is a need for accelerated implementation of both existing decisions and those to be made in the future.
The trend is clear: it will not be long before every public entity will be required to select a contractor for construction works based in part on the contractor’s record of work accidents and injuries in past projects. But then…
The following questions arise:
Any action taken to reduce the number of work accidents with injuries is welcome. But... decisions are one thing, reality is another.
Since requests from contractors for this type of approval are already on my desk, it is clear that the preparatory work has not been completed. Insurance companies are not prepared to issue personal injury claims approvals in work accidents, and this is undoubtedly a fact that indicates a lack of attention and proper data analysis, since the insurance companies' report generator has not been updated and calibrated for the purpose of issuing these approvals on a regular basis.
For example, there is no distinction between insurance claims for work accidents with physical and mental injuries and accidents with property damage only, which are not relevant to our case.
Furthermore, I assume that as the channels of the 'war' on work accidents with casualties increase, more and more cases of lack of coordination between the various systems will be discovered, such as the distinction between the types of accidents. Although the bottom line......
One thing is clear.
Contractors, developers, construction companies, and more, are expected to encounter additional restrictive conditions if they wish to participate in state tenders, as part of the trend of attempting to reduce the number of work accidents with bodily injuries on construction sites. In my opinion, this trend will increase and even expand and permeate sectors and private tenders as part of quality indicators for construction contractors.
What about personal injury claims that are not reported? Either because they are below the deductible or because they do not want to include the claims in the trial? Is there synchronization also with claims submitted to National Insurance?
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