Duties of Designers, Manufacturers and Architects

In one line

The person who designs, makes, imports or supplies a machine, and the architect who draws a building, owe safety duties to workers they will never employ.

In exam wording: section 8 of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code 2020 imposes duties on every person who designs, manufactures, imports or supplies any article or substance for use in an establishment, and section 9 imposes duties on the architect, project engineer and designer responsible for a building or other construction work.

Why the law has these at all

Because by the time a dangerous machine reaches a workplace it is too late. The employer can guard it, train people on it and inspect it, but he cannot undo a design which was unsafe from the drawing board.

So the Code reaches back up the chain to the people who make the risk, and it does so at two points.

Section 8 catches the supply chain of things: the designer, manufacturer, importer and supplier of an article or substance. It also does something quietly important about imports, requiring an imported article to meet Indian standards, or the higher foreign standard where there is one, or the exporting country's national standard where India has none. Without that, importing would be a way of buying round Indian safety law.

Section 9 catches the design of places: the architect, project engineer and designer of a building or construction project. Construction kills more Indian workers than any other industry, and much of that risk is decided at the planning stage by somebody who will never visit the site.

Some words this chapter uses

Article by the Explanation to section 8 includes plant and machinery. Substance means any natural or artificial substance, solid, liquid, gas or vapour. Erect means to put up or assemble; install means to fix in position ready for use. Project engineer is the engineer responsible for a construction project. Upkeep is maintenance in good condition. So far as is reasonably practicable weighs the risk against the trouble and cost of averting it.

Section 8(1): the four duties of the supply chain

Every person who designs, manufactures, imports or supplies any article for use in any establishment shall:

• (a) ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the article is so designed and constructed as to be safe and without risk to the health of the workers when properly used;
• (b) carry out or arrange the tests and examination considered necessary for the effective implementation of clause (a);
• (c) take steps to ensure that adequate information will be available:
• (i) in connection with the use of the article in any establishment;
• (ii) about the use for which it is designed and tested; and
• (iii) about any conditions necessary to ensure that it is safe and without risk to health when put to that use.