The Reasoning Behind Mandatory Safety Checks

There have been some enquiries as to the reasoning behind the decision we took to make safety checks mandatory.

To clarify, the safety check is part of a greater initiative that we call the Best Practice Model, which was adopted by the Executive Council around two years ago. The model arose out of two compelling needs that have been identified:

1. It is recognized that we are operating in an increasingly regulated market, with safety being one of the areas of focus by the authorities. Our industry had, and was maintaining, a bad reputation for safety and we also realized that our membership was non-compliant to an unacceptable degree (and this was at the level of supposedly the best, most professional end of the market). We (the Master Builders Movement) were being looked at by authorities and other stakeholders to take a leading role ensuring safe construction among builders. We concluded that we would be failing our members by turning a blind eye to this ignorance of the law.
2. We decided that the Association needed to be doing more to promote its members. With that, comes a responsibility to ensure that we are promoting contractors who adhere to the law and norms of best practice. Failure to do so would ultimately be disastrous for the brand and the collective reputation of members.

After extensive workshopping we agreed that linking membership categories to basic levels of proof of compliance created the right mix of “carrot and stick” to drive this issue of best practice, particularly on the safety side. The truth is that some members needed to be “prodded” to become legal in this regard.

We have been praised, especially by FEM, for the initiative.      

We are sure that you can appreciate that initiatives such as this need to be rolled out to the membership at large (much like all companies need to be independently audited, even though many are honest and shouldn’t strictly need it). The safety check is a simple and friendly mechanism, undertaken at no cost to you, which allow us to confirm that the member is indeed aware of safety and basically compliant.

We assure members that safety checks are undertaken in the best interest of members. The truth is that membership of Master Builders does lend credibility to the member, in the eyes of clients, and we have to proactively ensure that this remains the case going forward.

Brandon Abdinor | Executive Director