THE CONSTRUCTION ENGINEER: FROM "DESKTOP MANAGER" TO COMPETENT PRACTITIONER OF HEALTH, SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENT WORK

Every year fatal accidents occur in the Norwegian construction industry. To combat this unfortunate situation, an increased focus on health, safety and environment (HSE) is necessary on all levels of the industry – including the educational level. Newly educated engineers quickly enter into management positions that include responsibility for HSE. Thus, it is important to examine how the education of construction engineers can be improved to provide students with the required competence on HSE.

Regional safety representatives are important HSE actors in the Norwegian construction industry. This paper examines:
1) the experiences of the regional safety representatives when interacting with engineers on HSE issues, and
2) their input on what competence on HSE construction engineers need in order to become good professionals capable of contributing to a safer and healthier industry. The investigation was conducted by using semi-structured in-depth interviews with 13 regional safety representatives from all parts of Norway.

The results show that a common view amongst regional safety representatives is that engineers have too little practical work experience in the construction industry. Hence, the regional safety representatives tend to regard engineers mainly as desktop managers with limited knowledge and understanding of practical HSE work. The regional safety representatives suggest that this gap between theoretical knowledge and working life practice can be diminished by strengthening the cooperation between the educational institutions and the industry. This can prove to be an important strategy both to improve HSE performance in the industry and to increase the employability of newly educated engineers.