We are all familiar with living alongside renovation works in our surroundings, whether in our own home or in the workplace. Many of these renovations involve buildings and shared properties within homeowners’ associations, which are made up of the group of owners of the different flats and commercial premises in a building under the Horizontal Property regime.
High accident rate in construction
According to the annual report of the National Institute for Safety and Hygiene at Work (INSHT), construction is the sector with the highest accident rate. In Figure 1 we can see the comparison with other sectors.
Accidents in the sector and other work-related health damage may occur, among other reasons, due to causes such as the following:
- Limited commitment to Occupational Risk Prevention by some companies that cut the Health and Safety budget to reduce costs.
- Lack of oversight in Occupational Risk Prevention by owners, who in many cases are unaware of their responsibilities in this area.
Therefore, it is vital to be familiar with the current legislation on Occupational Risk Prevention, including Royal Decree 1627/97, which establishes minimum health and safety requirements for construction works.
Legal responsibilities of homeowners’ associations
This royal decree sets out the obligations and responsibilities of developers, including:
- Appointment of the health and safety coordinators.
- Appoint the competent technician to prepare the health and safety study or basic health and safety study, as applicable.
Homeowners’ associations must pay special attention to the above obligations, as the legal text itself defines the developer as “any natural or legal person on whose behalf a construction project is carried out”.
However, it should be borne in mind that these are not the only responsibilities that homeowners’ associations must pay attention to, since, according to the aforementioned royal decree, “when the developer directly hires self-employed workers to carry out the work or certain tasks within it, they shall be considered the contractor in respect of those workers”. In this regard, some of the contractor’s responsibilities will be:
- Prepare the health and safety plan at work
- Apply the principles of preventive action (…)
- Comply with and ensure that their staff comply with what is set out in the health and safety plan
- Comply with occupational risk prevention regulations
- Inform and provide appropriate instructions to self-employed workers on all measures to be adopted with regard to their health and safety on site.
- They will be responsible for the correct implementation of preventive measures in relation to the obligations that correspond to them directly or, where applicable, to the self-employed workers they have hired.
- In addition, they will be jointly and severally liable for the consequences arising from non-compliance with the measures set out in the plan and in the Law.
The importance of contacting specialists
For all these reasons, it is vital that these everyday works carried out on behalf of homeowners’ associations, which we are so used to, are left in the hands of responsible people, seeking advice from technical staff, responsible property managers, and Health and Safety specialists such as GespreObra, when contracting the health and safety coordination services.
