Almost every visit to a construction site in Israel will introduce you to a phenomenon that has become routine, which is unskilled and unprofessional manpower. Not infrequently, these are inexperienced young people who arrive from the territories following family connections with veteran workers. Many of them enter the gates of construction sites, one of the most dangerous places for workers in Israel, without even undergoing basic training.
The clear and worrying lack of match between the level of professionalism of simple construction workers and the scope of accidents at construction sites requires recalculating the route. This is primarily about human lives and accidents that cause the loss of precious life, but the implications are even broader.
A large scope of unprofessional construction workers leads to delays in projects, closure orders for sites, poor quality finishing, construction defects and more. This is how we too feel the repercussions and echoes of this market failure in the construction insurance industry, which has been in real turmoil over the past three years.
The state indeed invests, or at least tries to invest, resources in increasing safety at construction sites, but it's possible that an effective solution is within reach and has not yet been implemented.
In the short article before you, we ask to raise a "call" for transforming the Israeli construction worker into a professional worker with specific training for their areas of activity.
The vision of the "Certified Builder."
Call to Action: The Certified Builder – The time has come to train construction workers
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The Role of the Human Factor in Workplace Accidents in the Construction Industry
Many researchers have long sought to track the human factor as a key point in decoding the issue of workplace accidents in the construction industry. When examining this at the individual level, that is, at the level of the individual worker, one can see a great influence of aspects such as skills, expertise, personality, and even the manner of "risk perception."
Among these researchers, mention can be made, for example, of Dr. Rana Abbas from the research department of the Institute for Safety and Hygiene, who addressed this in an article she recently published under the title "The Human Factor in Workplace Accidents in the Construction Industry."
The article argues that there are quite a few reasons that connect the human factor to the occurrence of serious and fatal workplace accidents in the construction industry in Israel, all of which fall under the umbrella of lack of professional training and lack of expertise.
For example:
Conscious or unconscious ignoring of safety instructions ("written in blood").
Failure to monitor and supervise adherence to safety procedures among junior workers in the field (such as not wearing protective helmets, continuing work despite fatigue and lack of sleep, etc.)
A work environment that encourages unsafe behavior due to pressure to meet output and performance targets.
Financial incentives that prioritize productivity over safety.
Social factors related to construction workers - poverty, social pressure, family pressure, and the like.
The image of the "tough worker" who is willing to perform dangerous work to impress his colleagues.
It is easy to see that unprofessional manpower is the "mother of all sins" when we talk about workplace accidents and safety at construction sites. If we take, for example, the causes of fatal accidents in the construction industry, we will see that these are certainly issues that can be mitigated and reduced with the help of real and thorough training.
According to the Safety Administration report for 2021, approximately 41% of deaths are due to falls from height. The additional causes, in descending order, are blows from moving objects, equipment collapse or part of a structure, and electrocution. It goes without saying that professional training that will include content on these subjects will be able to greatly assist in reducing workplace accidents at construction sites in Israel.
It's Time to Transform "Construction Workers" into "Certified Builders"
As an insurance agency that is in continuous contact with thousands of contractors and developers managing thousands of projects nationwide, the issue of safety is one of the central flags that occupy us. Not only in terms of the insurance response but on the human and professional level.
Licensing and Certification - We believe the time has come to transform construction workers in Israel into skilled certified professionals. Certified builders. Professional training programs should be developed and opened, including recognized certificate studies, which will dramatically raise the level of professionalism and skill of construction workers in Israel, brand the profession, and provide graduated certification and licensing according to the training, experience, and seniority of the construction worker.
Sharpening the personal responsibility of the construction worker - We believe that training, certification, and graduated licensing - will naturally sharpen the worker's personal responsibility for their safety and the safety of their colleagues and environment.
Recording and tracking the worker's safety history as a measure of their advancement on the ladder of grades and wages, and as a tool for checking their suitability for work on one project or another or in one workplace or another.
Improving the Industry's Actuarial Results
We believe that actions in these directions can encompass many advantages for the entire industry. Far beyond the clear need for preserving human life.
For example, professionalism and expertise will clearly reduce the scope of workplace accidents in Israel and consequently mitigate the heavy economic burden imposed on contractors and developers who are required to bear expensive insurance and deductibles.
Note that this economic burden is connected to cardinal changes in the construction insurance industry over the past three years. Foreign reinsurers, which are the insurance companies that provide economic backing to Israeli companies, have significantly tightened conditions for issuing construction insurance.
The Israeli construction industry has been marked by reinsurers as "prone to disaster" and they are trying to "protect" themselves through toughening and hardening. Their actions affect construction insurance in the country and create increasing difficulty in issuing policies for types of projects marked as claim-generating and for types of occupations in construction fields considered particularly dangerous in their eyes, as well as general price increases and increases in deductible rates to dimensions we haven't known, sometimes in the scope of hundreds of thousands of shekels and more.
In this context, we'll note the Israeli jurisprudence in tort law that constantly expands the boundaries of liability and duties of care (imposed on contractors, developers, work managers, etc.) and consistently increases compensation amounts when events occur (partly in light of the doctrine of lost years).
Improving the quality and quality of construction
We believe that comprehensive professional training of construction workers, turning them into professionals and branding them as "certified builders" could lead to a significant improvement in the quality and standard of construction in Israel.
In other words, not only will consumers receive a higher quality product, but they (as well as contractors and developers) will face fewer expensive, unnecessary, and exhausting legal proceedings on issues such as construction defects and "home inspection" claims.
Furthermore, introducing a program for certified builders into the human resources methodology in the construction industry may help in branding the profession, including attracting workers from other sectors who are currently "moving away" from construction sites despite the good salaries.
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What do contractors think about the "certified builder" idea?
During December 2022, we distributed a questionnaire to approximately 1,500 contractors among our clients,
to examine their opinions regarding the "certified builder" idea presented here in the article.
Below are the survey results, which speak for themselves:
