On September 23, the online conference “Legislative Regulation and Practice in field of Industrial Safety and Construction Industry” took place.

A ‘regulatory guillotine’ means largescale analysis and revision of the current regulatory legal acts. Implementation of the concept was presented by Alexander Agapkin, Chief Specialist of the State Health and Safety Department of the Committee of Labour and Employment of St. Petersburg.

A term ‘regulatory guillotine’ is widely used in the world. In particular, it was used by the authorities in Croatia, United Kingdom, Mexico, Vietnam and other countries.

"Two Federal Laws – “On Mandatory Requirements in the Russian Federation” (coming into effect on November 01, 2020) and “On Mandatory Control (Supervision) and Municipal Control in the Russian Federation” (coming into effect on July 01, 2021) – have been passed by the State Duma in July this year and signed by the President. They have the same basis that will control the entire regulatory framework, including a field of security, since 2021", – the speaker explained.

Alexander Agapkin emphasized the importance of changes: ‘For example, requirements have to be published not earlier than 90 days before the law comes into effect. The total validity period of requirements may not exceed 12 years from the date of coming into effect. A list of regulatory legal acts containing mandatory requirements is to be placed on official websites of bodies of state authority.’

The topic of ‘regulatory guillotine’ was resumed by Andrey Pervukhin, an expert in field of industrial safety for lifting equipment of the Lifting Machines Laboratory of the Central Marine Research and Design Institute of (CNIIMF).

He put special emphasis right on changes in field of industrial safety for lifting equipment by announcing a list of rescinded regulatory legal acts and individual provisions of regulatory legal acts of Federal agencies of executive authority that contained mandatory requirements compliance with which was estimated when taking control measures for federal government oversight in field of industrial safety and state mining supervision.

"Twenty five regulatory legal acts of the Government of the Russian Federation were rescinded, so were 155 documents of the Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear Supervision Service, specifically: 13 – of the Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear Supervision Service; 39 – of the State Committee for Industrial and Mining Safety Supervision; 25 – of the Government of the Russian Federation; 2 – of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment; 1 – of the Ministry of Energy. The ‘regulatory guillotine’ crushed many acts related to non-destructive control, welding works, expert examination of industrial safety and technical diagnosis, requirements to hazardous production facilities", – he shared as a professional of the industry.

The idea of internal regulation of the process for organization and performance of work at height, in confined and restricted spaces was addressed by Alexander Kopytin, President of Alandr Industrial Safety Centre, in his speech: "We are moving along the way of a risk-oriented approach, and it’s internal regulation we rely on, so that specialists could locally reveal the main problems and solve selected major tasks, such as safety of employees and working capacity of the enterprise".

Alexander Kopytin established five steps to a risk-oriented approach regarding high risk operations: analysis of any customer’s facility; organization of a workplace; local act development; personnel training; service.

"Issues we regulate in relation with internal local acts and standards of enterprises are as follows: PPE accountability and distribution and inspections; a permit-to-work system; guidelines for development of a manufacturing activity plan; organization of works and checklists for self-control.We focus on general systematization and assume that the main thing is people and their training – either on a training ground or at their workplaces immediately. We have a wide scale of training modules for work at the height, about 20 programs for work at the height that meet various requirements. There’s no common system, it always needs to be selected in accordance with needs of the company", – President of Alandr Industrial Safety Centre assured.

Vitaly Tsaplin, Chair of the Department of Technosphere Safety in Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, told about the Smart Labour ground –an innovative method to train people in labour safety in construction. The goal of the project is to reduce the injury rate at enterprises of the construction industry in St. Petersburg, the Leningrad Region and South-Eastern Finland. Four universities participated at the launch of the project: 2 from Russia and 2 from Finland. The Smart Labour ground is a tool to create safe behavioural model of workers, including modules of interactive behaviour by kinds of construction works. Beneficiaries of the project are construction companies that fight for their reputation, for safety of their workers.

"We started thinking about this project as early as in 2015, when the scheme of work was invented to instill the understanding of safety into specialists. Initially, we estimated risks at construction sites, there are approximately 65-70 of them, the major ones are falling from height, negligence toward the use of personal protection equipment and difficult work conditions", –  the speaker said.

To illustrate negligent attitude to safety Vitaly Tsaplin gave the example of a tragedy that took place on the territory of Peterburgsky Sports and Concert Complex, where a welder had died. The technology of dismantling should not imply the presence of people on the structures to be brought down. Works can be performed from a travelling cradle, while a welder had worked without safety equipment, and the cradle had been too far.

"The main idea of the project is to teach workers of the construction industry to observe rules of labour safety by involving them into working process imitated by the interactive media. Development of a psychological reaction that enables the correct behaviour in the context of a demonstration of dangerous situations forms a safe behaviour model. It results in the correct behaviour at the workplace", – Vitaly Tsaplin concluded.

The event is organized by EF-International, the Committee of Labour and Employment of St. Petersburg.

Sponsor: Gazprombank (Joint Stock Company).