The role of health and safety coordinator in Sweden and Italy construction industry

Despite rigorous efforts to improve the construction working environment in the European Union, the fatal accident rate is approximately 13 workers per 100,000 as against 5 per 100,000 for the all sectors average. Although the accident rates have declined steadily and steeply since 1994, it still remains unacceptably high. Thousands of construction workers still suffer severe injury and even death every year that otherwise may have been preventable. Hislop (1995) argued that one factor that provides the most effective and positive impact on a site is the definition of accountability and responsibility. Defining the line of accountability and responsibility on site is complex and often fuzzy. Debate on transferring the accountability and responsibility for safety to others are high on the main agenda. Therefore only by clearly defining the accountability and authorising responsibilities can injuries and other accident-related losses be controlled. One of the key players on site is the health and safety coordinator (HSC) whose duty is to coordinate and manage health and safety from the planning through to the completion stage. Since both Sweden and Italy are bounded by the European Union Framework Directive (89/391/EEC) and the Construction Site Directive (CSD) (92/57/EEC), therefore it would be beneficial to examine how both countries define and interpret the roles of HSC on site. Since the directive is legally binding, the members had transposed this directive into their national law. In Sweden the appointment of HSC is stipulated in the Working Environment Act (AML 1/1 2009) while in Italy is established in Dlgs 81/08. This paper will examine and compare the role of HSC on site according to the legislation from both Sweden and Italy while simultaneously defining the responsibilities and establishing accountabilities. Results demonstrate how these two countries had transposed the CSD 92/57/EEC diligently into the national law and provisions. Both countries defined the responsibilities of HSC for two stages of construction project: during the planning and project preparation stage and during project execution stage

Massive superfluid vortices and vortex necklaces on a planar annulus

We study a superfluid in a planar annulus hosting vortices with massive cores. An analytical point-vortex model shows that the massive vortices may perform radial oscillations on top of the usual uniform precession of their massless counterpart. This regular motion becomes unstable beyond a critical vortex mass. The analogy with the motion of a charged particle in a static electromagnetic field leads to the development of a plasma orbit theory that provides a description of the trajectories which remains accurate even beyond the regime of small radial oscillations. These results are confirmed by the numerical solution of coupled two-component Gross-Pitaevskii equations. The analysis is then extended to a necklace of vortices symmetrically arranged within the annulus.Comment: 32 pages, 12 figure

La riformulazione in inglese del discorso legale italiano come processo di 'ELFentextualization'

This paper introduces a new model defined ELFentextualization, devised for the English reformulation of the Italian legal discourse in the field of Migration. It is meant as a pedagogical and practical tool that can help intercultural linguistic mediators increase their competence at the time of analysing and reproducing source texts for an audience of non-native English speakers. In particular, our model is adopted here for the retextualization into English as a ‘lingua franca’ (ELF) of a number of extracts from the ‘Bossi-Fini’ law and ‘Testo unico sull’immigrazione’, which indicate the actions that migrants have to follow to request residence document. After illustrating the theoretical grounds of the ELFentextualization process, this paper will examine the selected corpus of English retextualizations of Italian legal discourse. The comparison between the original and ‘ELFentextualized’ versions will exemplify that the latter are elaborated after an initial phase of ‘text analysis’, which is meant to infer the gist of the message. The essential pieces of information are then reconstructed by resorting to lexical and syntactic simplification, as well as to the macrorules for text summarization. Finally, this paper enquires into the initial phases of a reception study of the examined reformulations, which will help discuss the lingua-franca connotation of the English uses in the texts under examination

Re‐shaping the construction industry

Re-shaping the Construction Industry: an International Consensus seems to be convergent in order to trigger some impressive game changers. Namely, the Digitization appears as the most disruptive agent, together with the Circularity. It sounds a little bit paradoxical to imagine a radical innovation as far as a reluctant industry is concerned. A transformational narrative makes the transformation so easy to be achieved: nevertheless, such a storytelling encounters a fierce and silent opposition. This is the reason why the Digital Transition plays a crucial role, more relevant than the final destination, indeed. The XXI Century's early decades have been featured by Building Information Modelling (BIM) which arose and surged as the gate key entrance to the digital brave new world. It does mean that, once entered within the digital environment, any stakeholder needs to behave and act according to a computational way. It is clear that the stakeholders must be persuaded to enter the digital ecosystem by means of promising them to become more effective and finally to recover the lost productivity rates. To be viable, this expectaction has to be nurtured by arguing that the traditional players won't be menaced, in spite of the uberised ambiance of the disintermediation. Nonetheless, could they really avoid any fear or concern about the digitization's transformational power? Digitization has been correctly assessed as unavoidable, but the industry's analogical attitude remains quite deeply rooted. ISTeA, as a scientifical society, retains an institutional duty to foster the ultimate questions dealing with the digitization of the strategic supply chain. Apart from having been the societal chairman over the last six years, I have been involved into the international standardization works (at ISO and CEN level), the European institutional body (EU Task Group), some national initiatives (in Italy, France, Switzerland, and elsewhere), an academic joint research programme (between Italy and Germany), and I got a first hand understanding of the UK BIM Saga. The European digital journey is just starting, in spite of its origins dating back to the UK BIM Mandate issued in 2011 or to the US BIM Implementation: nevertheless, it is really astonishing to acknowledge how long it did progress since then. Likewise, the stated targets look as quite far to be reached, because of the intimate nature of the industry. I was learned to adopt a humble mood, my feeling became more and more cautious, because the items are quite sensitive and the stakes extremely valuable. The challenge lies between a couple of different poles: the whole digitization of the lowest tiered practictioners or trade contractors and the unforeseeable dimensions stemming and sourcing from Smart Cities and 4.0 Paradigms. How long the former intent will last? How deep the latter ambition will be? It is unthinkable to seek at answering such final questions: however, they undoubtedly conceal or disclose (?) the promise or menace of changing, re-inveinting, the usual identities. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are stimulating notions which entail new and unprecedented soft skills, although they recall a lot of expertises' replacement and erasement. A critical thought obviously avoids to accept any (re)evolutionary vision and prediction as forced and unescapable: meanwhile, the change drivers are so powerful and threathening. They cannot be neglected nor ignored. How our vision is differing from the actual on going outcomes? How our transformational efforts will be fanciful and whimsical, anything but a wishful thinking? ISTeA is currently accomplishing the six-year term I chaired: we were accepting an analogical legacy. At this time, our seminal scholars did retire and provided us with some interesting outcomes, which left forcefully unsolved the untrivial assumptions of the «industrial» era, to be faced again over our own term of office. I am not able to evaluate how successfully we performed: anyway, we tried to cope with the unknown phenomena searching at realizing any pros and cons. Eventually, the pioneering stages of the digital evolution are ending: our achievements might be judged as unstable. However, nowadays, ISTeA has the tremendous chance to freeze the ingrained issues pertaining to the Circular and Digital Economy and Society. Provided that, as the incumbent chairman, I might succeed in conveying to the successors the correct questions, as a trend-setter, the Scientifical Society's perspectives deal with problem-solving. Unfortunately, the strong temptation of explaining the radical and stochastic innovations in terms of incremental and mechanistic agents might seriously compromise any attempt, because a consulatory and selfish attitude can be adopted. My suggestions are focused upon the digital transition: it would be a hard task to renounce to a two-speeded route: the more the most advanced early adopters will progress, the more the laggards will suffer a gap. An intertwined approach, far away from chasms, has to be envisaged