Safety constructability improvement adding spatial dimension and workers' safety in the Critical Path Method

In this contribution, at first an approach to analyse safety in the construction process is proposed. This approach includes Building Design for Safety (BDS), a specific method to check both constructability and workers’ safety of the critical phases in construction process. Safety management in design and construction phases is one of the essential components that can influence the actual achievement of the constructability goal. Compliance with costs and time, necessarily passes through the risk mitigation of the critical activities, this must be done in order to safeguard the quality of the building. Prefiguring the construction process from the design phase, allows us to manage both safety and constructability. We operate within a framework that has to be used in design phase. In the framework, making use of the construction management instruments, we can identify critical activities for the workers’ safety during the future construction process. For critical activities characterized by overlapping of time and physical space of construction, the BDS tool is proposed. BDS makes a check both of constructability and safety of the critical construction activities in order to suggest technical and management solutions to mitigate risks. The tool allows the user to identify measures and procedures for risk prevention and protection, with respect to the constructability. BDS has to be performed during the design phase, in order to prefigure the construction process. This way, risk mitigation can be performed according to the constructability goal, safeguarding the building correspondence to the needs of the design. So far, the results achieved concern the BDS application in many real case studies. Future issue are related to the development of the instrument in BIM technology.