Case study 4 (150-300 employees). The interviews took place during the early preparation and administration stage of a 12-month green-field site-laying 27 km of a gas pipeline with the client on-site.

The individual pipes were 18 x 1.5 meters and weighed 14 tonnes. The site safety manager (with responsibility for health) was interviewed. There was no plan to employ an occupational health nurse or to install a treatment room at the site base. As the work on this site was distributed along the pipeline, and continually changing location, efforts were being made to ensure trained first aiders and medical kits were available to each team of workers. Pre-employment questionnaires, medicals, or health surveillance would not be undertaken for workers on this site.

This manager felt that the specialist group of 'high risk' workers involved in pipe-laying took a greater interest in their health than those in general engineering construction, with regard to wearing sun protection, clothing, ear protection and gloves. How- ever, it was considered unlikely that workers would organize medicals or health monitoring for themselves.

Once again there was a fear that the management of health in the transient workforce would be difficult and expensive, such that the UK may lose its competitive edge with companies/countries not requiring or achieving such high standards in health management.

It was established that these pipelayers were mostly a stable workforce, as the same team moved from site to site for employment. Consequently, the management of health in this group of workers and similar groups (e.g., tunnellers) was perceived to be less complicated.

a. Details of Health Hazards b. Effects of Health Hazards to the employees c. Recommendation on controlling the identified Health Hazard