Safety and Health Assessment System in Construction (SHASSIC)

WHAT IS SHASSIC ?

Safety and Health Assessment System in Construction or SHASSIC is an independent method to assess and evaluate the safety and health performance of a contractor in construction works/ projects. SHASSIC was developed by a Technical Committee comprises of industry stakeholders. It was published as Construction Industry Standard or CIS 10 : 2008 in November 2008.

SHASSIC OBJECTIVES 

SHASSIC was designed and developed to enable the user to achieve any or combination of the following objectives:

• to benchmark the level of safety and health performance of construction industry in Malaysia
• to have a standard system on safety and health assessment in the construction industry
• to assess safety and health performance of contractor(s) based on this standard
• to evaluate the performance of contractor(s) on the safety and health practices at site
• to improve and to take necessary corrective action on OSH performance and management at site; and
• to compile data for statistical analysis.

USE OF SHASSIC IN CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITIES
 SHASSIC is intended to complement the normal contractual requirement and specification in a project. It is not intended to be used independently as working requirement and specification. Unless specified in the project contract, safety and health designated person should not use SHASSIC to decide if the project site or parts of the project site are in accordance with requirement of the relevant Acts and Regulations or OSH Management System. It is still the responsibility of the contractor to ensure that safety and health of the construction site conforms to legislations requirement, approved standards, code of practice, guidelines, specifications and contractual requirements.

Preferably, the assessment shall be carried out when there are different type of activities that are on going at same time (concurrent activities) and many workers of different trades are involved at the site. It is recommended that SHASSIC assessment be carried out when the actual physical work progress had achieved or fall within 25 % to 75 %.

SCOPE OF SHASSIC

SHASSIC sets out the safety and health management and practices of contractor for various aspects of the construction work activities. SHASSIC cover 3 (three) main components of assessment such as document check, site/ workplace inspection and employees interview and covering components such as OSH policy, OSH organization, HIRARC, OSH training and promotion, machinery and equipment management, materials management, emergency preparedness, accident investigation and reporting and records management and performance monitoring.
Application shall cover COSH management system and practices during construction work activities, particularly work activities covered under Occupational Safety and Health Act, 1994, Factories and Machinery Act, 1967 and regulations made under this act such as Factories and Machinery (Building Operations and Works of Engineering Construction) (Safety) Regulations 1986, and Factories and Machinery (Safety, Health and Welfare) Regulations, 1970.

For the purpose of terms and references, the following Acts, Regulations and OHS management system standards shall take precedence, Occupational Safety and Health Act, 1994 (Act 514) and Regulations, Factories and Machinery Act, 1967 (Act 139) and Regulations and Rules, OHSAS 18001: 2007, MS 1722: 2005 and ILO OHS MS: 2001.

SHASSIC ASSESSMENT

Basically, SHASSIC  assessment is divided into 3 (three) different components namely, document check; work site inspection and employee interview.

Document check
Checking of OSH related documents and records will enable the assessor to determine the compliances of the establishment of safety and health programmes and activities. There are 63 questionnaires identified for this component check and is listed out in Annex A.

Site/ workplace inspection
There are 62 items identified for inspection for this component and they are listed out in Annex B. Workplace inspection shall be carried out at 5 (five) highly risk areas within a site. These locations will be determined by the SHASSIC assessor. The assessor may also discuss with the principal contractor prior to selection of these high risk areas for assessment.
This assessment shall provide the assessor with the valuable visual comparison evidence on the OSH programs implemented, enforced and practiced at site/ workplace.

Employees interview
Employees shall be randomly selected from all levels and occupation so that they could be interviewed by the assessor using established standard questionnaire. There are 48 questions for this component as listed in Annex C.
The employees in this component are categorised into 3 (three) categories, as spelt out in Annex C. The numbers of employee from each category to be interviewed are as follows:

•  Category ‘A' - 1 (one) employee from management personnel,
•  Category ‘B' - 3 (three) employee from safety and health personnel or OSH Committee members and/or combination of both; and
•  Category ‘C' - 10 (ten) workers from various trades/skills.

WEIGHTAGE & SCORE

The weightage for safety and health performance are allocated in accordance to 3 (three) components as shown in Table 1 and the score calculation is shown below.

WHO CAN BE A SHASSIC ASSESSOR ?

SHASSIC Assessor must be a person who is qualified and have certain years of working experience in construction industry. A SHASSIC Assessor shall fulfil one of the following criteria below.

• Has successfully attended and passed one day course organised by CIDB and has a minimum of 5 years working experience in the construction industry; or

• Has successfully attended and passed OHSAS 18001 Lead Auditor Course and has a minimum of 3 years working experience in the construction industry (construction site). (Exempted from attending 1 day course conducted by CIDB); or

• A Construction Safety and Health Officer (CSHO * ) with 2 years experience in the construction industry. (Exempted from attending 1 day course conducted by CIDB)

* Note :  CSHO means a person who is registered with DOSH as Safety & Health Officer and attended successfully 5 (five) days course organised by CIDB for Construction Safety & Health Officer.

Contractors may engage any qualified person above to carry out SHASSIC assessment or alternatively they can make arrangement with CIDB to carry out SHASSIC assessment. Currently CIDB is providing this service  Free of Charge ( FOC )  and contractors are entitled for 20 CCD for a successful assessment.
Contractors just need to fill in a FORM which is available at Standard & Quality Division, 10th Floor, Grand Seasons Avenue, Jalan Pahang, 53000 Kuala Lumpur and fax to 03 - 40451808. That's all, so simple !  CIDB officers will contact the contractor and will make arrangement for SHASSIC assessment.

 HOW CONTRACTORS CAN BENEFIT FROM SHASSIC ASSESSMENT ?

 Some of the benefits that the contractor could expect after carrying out SHASSIC assessment are as listed below :-

•  Base on SHASSIC score, contractor could identify those ‘areas' where they have failed or did not score high. Customise training or remedial measures could be arranged  to improve safety and health management for these ‘areas'
• A proper safety and health assessment system would be established at construction sites and would make easier for authorities to inspect at site as OSH system already in place.
• Guided checklists based on SHASSIC's document will help the Safety and Health    Officers to discharge their duties more effective and efficiently

CONCLUSION

SHASSIC was developed to assist everyone particularly the contractors in managing their safety and health at construction sites based on safety and health performance's assessment.  CIDB believes, by using SHASSIC assessment system as a norm of practice at site, accidents could be prevented or minimized.

 Course Brochure (click to view)

 Course Brochure (click to view)