The challenge of managing health and safety when conserving historic buildings

Last November the Palace of the Gladiators in Pompeii collapsed. It was 2,000 years old and had survived the eruption of Vesuvius and nearly 200 years of tourism. Neglect and unseasonably heavy rains were blamed for the loss of the building (despite its rather grand name it was only forty square metres in area). This is a dramatic example of loss of heritage. The difficulty facing conservation experts charged with salvaging damaged heritage like this is to balance the need to save heritage and the hazard to workers who will carry out the work. The example above is extreme but this dilemma is repeated every day as professionals attempt to look after our built heritage and at the same time be mindful of hazards inherent in the work. Structural collapse is one thing but there are other less obvious hazards in the conservation sector. Falls, health and the dangers from diseases are the less obvious hazards. The paper explores this dilemma, the concern for heritage and the risk to workers. Surprisingly, there is very little literature that examines this issue. Health and Safety literature, legislation and practice do not appear to take any account of the particular difficulties of working on heritage buildings. Likewise very little conservation literature takes account of Safety and Health issues. There are other pressures on heritage buildings. Legislation to do with energy conservation and access for the disabled has been introduced and often with very little reference to each other. This has made the task of ensuring safety in conservation works all the more difficult. It is this milieu that this research explores. In this paper these questions will be dealt with in the Irish context, in particular the conservation of Ireland’s capital, the Viking, Norman and Anglo-Irish city of Dublin. The question to be answered is complex and contains elements of history, culture, technology, law and safety in construction. It is; how can conservation works be safely completed and how appropriate are the standard documents and procedures in achieving this? To answer this question a review of literature was completed. Informed by this, research in the field was undertaken. This consisted of interviews with experts in health and safety, administration and conservation, contractors and their quantity surveyor. It would seem, on the balance of evidence from the literature review, that conservation works are part of the most risky sector of the construction industry, however the field research cast some doubt on that view. This research attempts to deal with a tricky part of the construction industry. The research challenges the ethos of the heath and safety project, equally it asks difficult questions of the heritage and conservation sector, it remains to be seen how all this is to be resolved