Laing O'Rourke > Fatal & Severe Risks (FSRs) > Engineered Safety Principles

ENGINEERED SAFETY PRINCIPLES

At Laing O’Rourke, Engineered Safety is our commitment to designing risk out of our work, and designing health, efficiency, and control in, at every stage of the construction lifecycle. This philosophy underpins our approach to managing the most serious risks in our industry: the Fatal and Severe Risks that have the potential to cause life-altering harm.

We believe that the best risk control is one that is cognisant of human factors, doesn’t rely on individual behaviour, checklists, or procedural compliance, but is instead embedded into how a job is designed, planned, procured, and delivered.

By working closely with our clients, designers, suppliers and delivery teams, and applying modern methods of construction, we can prevent exposure to, or significantly minimise potential impacts of fatal and severe risks.

1. Eliminate Risk at the Source

  • Act during concept and early design stages to identify opportunities to remove hazardous work entirely.
  • Choose design alternatives and construction methodologies that remove human exposure (e.g. offsite manufacture, remote-operated demolition equipment).
  • Challenge default assumptions; if a task is inherently unsafe, question whether it needs to exist.

2. Embed Safety into Design

  • Integrate safety objectives within the design brief and collaborate with designers to fully integrate Engineered Safety.
  • Design for safe assembly, access, operation, and maintenance.
  • Conduct structured design and constructability reviews that explicitly address sequencing, temporary works, and interfaces.

3. Design for Recovery and Containment

  • Accept that not all failures can be prevented, but consequences can be controlled.
  • Engineer systems that fail safely; default-to-safe equipment, passive fall prevention or energy isolation that reverts to a safe state.
  • Build resilience into processes and physical systems so errors do not escalate to harm.

4. Use Offsite and Modular Construction Wherever   Possible

  • Apply Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) and other modern methods of construction to relocate high-risk activities to controlled factory environments.
  • Use partial prefabrication to reduce manual handling, work at height, or exposure to live environments.
  • Adopt a manufacturing mindset; standardise, simplify, and repeat proven safe assemblies.

5. Engineer Controls, Not Paperwork

  • Prioritise engineered and physical controls over administrative controls.
  • Design systems to separate people from hazards, such as fixed barriers, exclusion zones, automation, or interlocks.
  • Integrate lock-out systems and fail-safes within electrical and mechanical systems.

6. Collaborate Across the Supply Chain

  • Engage clients, designers, suppliers, and subcontractors early to identify and solve safety challenges collaboratively.
  • Select materials, plant, and systems based on their capacity to eliminate or control risk, not just cost or productivity.
  • Ensure procurement aligns with Engineered Safety principles.

7. Verify Risk Has Been Designed Out

  • Use formal design risk reviews at key project stages to verify that fatal and severe risks are eliminated or controlled to an acceptable level.
  • Treat unresolved fatal and severe risks as non-compliances requiring redesign or escalation.
  • Use digital models, simulations, and visualisation tools to test safety assumptions before construction begins.
  • Apply systemic learning to understand where Engineered Safety efforts enabled success, or their absence contributed to risks materialising.

Stuck? Ask Us For Help.

For more info check out or support page, or contact a member of our team, we’re happy to assist.

Help & Support