Poor temporary works control can be disastrous for any project or organisation, writes Brendan Attewell, Fletcher Construction’s Engineering Services and Innovation Manager and the co-founder of Working Load. Brendan will talk at the CCNZ Conference about the key mechanisms for managing temporary works.
Temporary Works is a broad field making up over 10 percent of construction cost. Poor management means requirements are miscommunicated, leading to conservative designs, extra procurement costs and delayed delivery or ineffective and inappropriate solutions, creating hazards with high failure consequences.
Management of TW risks on NZ construction sites has relied on the knowledge of a few people with first-hand procedural control experience, often through work overseas. The UK set up its procedural control standard (BS5975) in 1982 and has reviewed, updated and republished it, most recently in 2024.
Many procedural control principles have been used here by contractors since 1982, but the first industry-recognised good practice guideline was published in 2019, through the Temporary Works forum (TWfNZ). The TW and construction engineering community is well supported by organisations that know the consequences they face from poorly managed TW risk.
Fletcher Construction has belonged to the TWfNZ from day one, putting forward committee members, hosting public meetings and helping develop guidance documents since 2018.
The company had a temporary works failure 10 years ago, when a temporary retaining wall failed after heavy rain, resulting in a one-tonne concrete block falling onto a worker, pinning them to the ground and breaking their leg. Fletcher had mature TW practices in place, but they hadn’t formally appointed a Temporary Works Co-ordinator (TWC).
Consistent implementation of TW Procedural Control is much more difficult than giving teams access to a well-written TW Management Plan, with templates for Design and Check Certificates, TW Registers (TWR) and Appointment Letters. Each is fundamental as a record of what’s happened, but they’re not a silver bullet to proactive and effective risk management.
Procedures are only effective when users complete tasks efficiently and competently. Consistency is driven by user competency development and mechanisms supporting efficient and timely decision-making.
Systems, workflows and task responsibility
The completion of procedural control tasks is traditionally communicated and documented via templates and forms sent to the project TWC. They must keep the TWR up to date – usually via an Excel sheet on a shared project folder, sometimes with a digitised workflow on a construction management platform. This requires double handling of files with data disconnected from live dashboards and user task lists.
Digitising the workflow is the most effective way to drive consistent project performance. Tasks are tracked against target dates to ensure design development stages aren’t squeezed timewise, resulting in extra cost from conservative design, or critical information being missed, creating a site hazard.
The organisational knowledge hub
When project or operational teams review TWs that went wrong, there will be lessons learned from similar incidents on previous projects, or similar designs used successfully and repeatedly without incident.
As the field of TW is so broad, the TWC isn’t expected to have personal experience in every form of TW they need to manage. However, they need access to technical libraries with good practice guidance, design standards, pre-approved standard solutions and lessons learned for continuous improvement and retention of knowledge.
Procedural competency and engineering judgement
Tasks should be done by those with the competency to do so. Systems should support users with guidance on the procedures, or hard-coded workflows that direct the user so they’re not delaying early decision-making or bypassing the procedure.
The TWC’s competency on the process and engineering judgement should be assessed according to the project scale and complexity each time. These assessments are about the TWC’s competency limitations and their strengths and capability. Where required, TWCs may rely on others for detailed inspections and sign-off to verify the works’ execution according to the Issued For Construction files.
All users need to have access to guidance and training that supports the development of knowledge and capability, so it’s not just the TWC asking the construction team pertinent questions.
Consistent procedural control
Establishing consistent and high-performance procedural control across an organisation requires all users to access each mechanism consistently. Each is relatively low cost to host through existing construction management platforms, team sites and shared folder drives. However, they’re difficult for an organisation to establish and maintain administratively because investment in disparate systems is lost as users move on and knowledge goes with them.
Working Load has created a web-based platform where each mechanism is centralised. The company is a NZ-based startup aiming to make the implementation of procedural control consistent, effective and operationally sustainable.
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