The SITE SAFE '83 campaign was a special effort to reduce the toll of death and injury in the construction industry. There were posters and car stickers, decorated cups, competitions and conferences. Yet for all that, there were still 131 people killed on building sites during the year, by no means a reduction [1]. Despite all its efforts, the Health and Safety Executive predicted grimly and accurately that' there would be 'one accident every three minutes in the industry' [2]. Moreover the general pattern of accidents demonstrates a depressing stability; as the HSE point out 'it is possible to write in advance the epitaphs of the men who will be killed each year in falls through roofs, by falling objects, by contacts with overhead lines and in trenches'. Time after time the inspectorate has reported the same stories of carelessness and lack of control in maintenance work, of defective scaffolding, of missing toeboards and falling materials [3]. In 1980-1,54% of deaths were attributed to falls of persons and 16% to falling objects. This compares with a mere 6% of fatal accidents which can be attributed to contact with machinery. Construction remains four times as dangerous as manufacturing industry, and only marginally safer than mining. There are always difficulties in making comparisons in accident statistics over time and between industries because of variations in what they report and what they cover. However, it is possible to assert with some confidence that the numbers of fatal and serious accidents in construction have not been substantially reduced in recent years, and nearly all of the sort of accidents that occur are in principle avoidable. The statistics published by the Health and