OSHCIM - ANOTHER BURDEN OR RELIEVE?

Occupational Safety & Health in Construction Industry Management OSHCIM, another hybrid of Design for Safety DfS soon to be enacted, will be another matter to be dealt with by the construction industry. It adds up additional cost, 2% out of the developer's pocket, well much decent compared to the architect's fee.

So to speak, this new regulations will significantly shift the risks upstream back to the architect. Blatantly erred, to say that architect like it or not, has to owned up to their design liabilities and what has this regulation imposed are not much the different. Yet, they forgot negligence has to be proven. As this legislation that foresee to be gazetted 6 months down the road, Singapore took 6 years, imposed a self declaration of design liabilities, that they called risks, voluntarily into a document called risk register. This document will be expended as it snowballs downstream right to the occupier.

The question remain to be seen is, how easy would the occupier take this document to find faults with each and every party in the delivery system, since it is already a self confessed 'sin'? This document has no privileges in evidence law. One may say, just 'simply' do it and make it as ambiguous as possible? Nay, CIDB will imposed a self regulatory mechanism with a paid consultant monitoring this processes, full time at your expanse via the weekly OSHCIM meeting. They will not provide solutions to the problem as they would not want a piece of the design liabilities from the architect, they are basically checker to make sure that the architect crosses the T n dots the I, in their self imposed declarations of liabilities. Least to say, they imposed strict rules for the architect to owned up to their liabilities under the spirit of if you fail to plan you should first plan to fail, in that way you will minimize risks downstream. In reality the architect's risk has not reduced an ounce but has increased significantly as it includes other risks as well particularly from the builders.

​It becomes clear that CIDB via this mechanism manage to pass the buck of their conundrum upstream to the architect in a subtle way as the dialogue now imposes that architect is responsible for Contractor's safety on site and the ministry buys it! Given the scenario of below cost acceptable tender sum is taken by foreign contractors and 0.5% dirt cheap architectural fees were forced through our throats, now, plaguing the profession and the construction industry at large, do the architects want to support it?