Construction sites must manage language gaps as a safety risk

Employers on construction sites must treat language and communication gaps as a safety risk inside their systematic health, safety and environment (HSE) workArbeidstilsynet, and the client (byggherre) shares responsibility for seeing that communication worksArbeidstilsynet. Arbeidstilsynet's new English-language guidance page on language and communication on construction sites restates the operative duties: the employer must prevent language and communication problems from becoming a safety risk in both the planning and the execution phaseArbeidstilsynet, must map each worker's language proficiencyArbeidstilsynet and which tasks each worker can performArbeidstilsynet, and must then deliver written documentation and information in a form each worker understandsArbeidstilsynet — for example by translating it into the worker's own language. Every worker on site must be able to understand verbal informationArbeidstilsynet, and all day-to-day communication in a work team must be understood by everyone in itArbeidstilsynet.

The guidance anchors these duties in three instruments. Under the Construction Client Regulations (byggherreforskriften) §§ 19 and 19a, the employer must inform workers and safety representatives in a clear and easily understood manner about all site safety, health and working-environment measuresArbeidstilsynet, written documentation must be presented so that each worker readily understands it, and at least one person in every work team must, where safety requires it, be able to understand and make themselves understood in a language the rest of the team understandArbeidstilsynet. Under the Working Environment Act, employers run systematic HSE work with employees and their representatives, and workers who do not understand Norwegian must receive safety-critical instructions in a language they understandArbeidstilsynet. Under the Workplace Regulations, training is repeated as needed in a language the workers understand, daily risk information is shaped so each worker easily understands it — in several languages where needed — and equipment markings, user manuals, chemical-container labels and the chemical inventory carry Norwegian text with additions in another language where needed; where risks cannot be eliminated otherwise the employer must ensure proper safety signage and signals, and where safe performance requires verbal signals only workers who understand the instructions may be usedArbeidstilsynet.

For the planning phase, the principal prepares the SHA plan with specific measures against communication riskArbeidstilsynet and may require tenderers to describe countermeasures in the bidding documents; employers plan staffing including foreign labour, map proficiencies, secure training for hired-in workers and consider Norwegian training, mixed-language teams, mentor schemes or separating activities so only workers who understand each other work together. For the execution phase, the principal monitors and updates the SHA plan as communication risks changeArbeidstilsynet, while each employer keeps safe work independent of language differences — translating procedures, setting language requirements when hiring in, using interpreters including for safe job analysesArbeidstilsynet — and for activities with a risk of serious incidents, such as suspended loads, crane and machine communication, blast hazards and hazardous chemicals, everyone involved must share enough language to give and understand verbal instructions and to recognise danger signs and actArbeidstilsynet. Duties extend to hired-in and self-employed workers at the siteArbeidstilsynet, supervisors who cannot communicate with their team must have all important information translatedArbeidstilsynet, and the coordinating enterprise must alert enterprises whose mutual communication is not good enoughArbeidstilsynet.

Legal basis: byggherreforskriften §§ 19 and 19a, the Working Environment Act systematic-HSE and information provisions, and the Workplace Regulations training, information, signage, marking and chemical-inventory provisions, as summarised in Arbeidstilsynet's guidance on language and communication on construction sites.