Designing for health - guidance for designers

Our vision is to make construction the leading industry for occupational health and disease prevention by 2025.

With ICE's DfH initiative, we are pushing the health agenda among the design community, but not to the exclusion of safety and wellbeing.

The ICE Health Summit saw industry leaders join together to address the issue of health in construction earlier this year. It looked at the need for behavioural and cultural change in the industry’s approach to health. Professor Alastair Gibb of Loughborough University presented his ground breaking research on ill health. The Costs of occupational ill health in construction report evaluates the cost of occupational ill health in terms of societal, individual and company costs.

The ICE Health Summit hosted four interactive workshops examining different aspects of ill health. The results of Workshop B looked at the role of the Occupational Hygienist in two different practical scenarios and further workshop outputs will appear below.

• Workshop C
• Workshop D

The focus on early design decisions being key to better onsite construction safety, health and wellbeing practices is an excellent notion and should receive prominence across all of the design community. It is the key behind Prevention through Design (PtD) or Enhancement through Design (EtD), a central tenet of the Seoul Declaration on Safety and Health at Work and core to the requirements within the CDM regulations. Designers have a greater role to play as we advance the vision zero harm agenda and addressing health in construction concerns should be a critical aspect of the design outputs.

You can access our suite of guidance sheets, briefing notes and find out about other relevant ICE published material below.

Disclaimer: The Design for Health Guidance Sheets: While every effort has been made to ensure that the statements made and the opinions expressed provide a safe and accurate guide, no liability or responsibility can be accepted in this respect by the authors or publishers.

Download the briefing sheets below:

• Guidance for designers - an introduction
• Paving slabs
• Roof work
• Concrete & Mortar
• Tunnelling
• Steelwork
• Groundworks
• Buildings
• Internal drainage and building services
• Site set up and clearance
• Bridges
• Refurbishment
• Demolition