I think its a culture thing, however, we would all need more information to be able to give a positive answer, such as where did these deaths take place?
Large sites
Small sites
Inner city
Rural
Simply saying 51 people died doesn't really mean much, apart from the fact there are a whole heap of friends and family members mourning a good person.

I doubt that there will be any change from past events.
The construction intelligence reports from HSE give the stats, so extrapolation should not be hard.

www.hse.gov.uk/construction/pdf/conintreport.pdf

Hang on. Take care with the interpretation of these data and don't be tempted to speculate - or was it just daydreaming? - about various explanations such as economics and commercial downturns in the construction sector etc.

I recently dealt with the same issue in the waste & recycling sector - it will be published in August - to address a rise in fatalities compared to the previous year. Of course, the trade press, IWM and even HSE were shouting about the sector H&S standards were deteriorating, but the previous year had an exceptionally low number of fatalities so the rise and fall was little more than chance.

Simple trend analysis, and more detailed statistical analysis, confirmed a 5-year downward trend. Concerns about the individual number of fatalities this year was no more appropriate than are self-appointed pats on the back when next year it falls again.

Max

Too many of course, but the numbers are too small to do year on year statistical analysis.

it is unfortunate that all the commentary tends to use the fatals as the headline stats rather than looking at lower severity accidents where statistically significant trends can be identified in much shorter timeframe.

As I have said elsewhere I believe the drop was a glitch and that we are returning to the figures that reflect the way the sector is managed and trained wrt H&S. The construction culture is still one of "I can do anything" - the impossible just takes longer to complete. Management and operatives are constantly seekin g the "easiest" answer at least from their perspective and the game is to do it without the Safety Man spotting it before its done.

Culture, Culture, Culture and until we change it to what has been termed as interdependency then it will continue as it is. A much wiser man than I, Freire - a Brazilian Educator, described a number of methods of training with the "conscientised" individual able to take information and process it to obtain an answer - below this we have those who are taught by rote and have to be told what to do. These latter cannot assess answers to problems. This is the construction sector writ large. We need this to change so that we can, as practitioners have confidence that solutions will account for the H&S needs without constant input from ourselves.

Whenever we do training does our assessment require use of the information or simply a regurgitation of facts? Most courses stick with information remembrance not use of that information - and how often is the student re-assessed post training? Very rarely in my experience as this actually means having systems in place to manage the competence of all levels of personnel.

Bob