Safety Innovation and Integration in High-Performance Designs: Benefits, Motivations, and Obstacles

Abstract

Design plays a vital role in the building process. As the demand for design creativity and innovation continues to grow, high-performance designs have received significant attention in the built environment. In the ideal world, high-performance designs address customer demands with regard to the physical performance of the design while ensuring technical feasibility as well as economic and social viability. Among social viability goals, a design should respond in a practical and creative manner to the needs of field personnel by employing innovation in a way that minimizes safety risks in the workplace. However, in reality, high-performance design thinking does not explicitly account for worker health and safety. Therefore, such design elements can be associated with substantial safety risks to those who assemble, operate, and maintain a facility, in part because of the complexity of the design resulting from the high demand for innovation. Innovation is defined as the process of integrating new, effective systems and techniques into a process. With regard to design, this integration can be problematic because of the complexities and risks introduced to construction and maintenance operations. The purpose of the present paper is to support the premise that worker health and safety should be integrated into the design process as an integral part of innovation. This process can be facilitated by the implementation of a new design approach, referred to as prevention through design (PtD), an effective and practical method of addressing worker health and safety early in the design process. This paper provides examples of PtD-incorporated practices in the design process and discussion that highlights motivations and enablers of integrating worker health and safety in high-performance project designs. Discussion and information provided in this paper are expected to benefit design professionals and practitioners who are interested in pursuing designs that yield innovative, yet safe, outcomes.