A wish list resulting from the Sofia inquiry

Public inquiries remain the pre-eminent mechanism for lesson learning after high-profile failures. A regular complaint is that their recommendations get ‘shelved’. The most common explanation for this lack of implementation tells us that elites mobilise bias to undermine lesson learning.

Inquiry recommendations do not get implemented when they do not respect the realities of policy transfer; are triaged into policy refinement mechanisms; and when they arrive at the street ‘level’ without consideration of local delivery capacities.

It is imperative, therefore, that central government departments triage and parcel out public inquiry recommendations that require further work ahead of implementation. These will often relate to thorny political issues, big-ticket expenditure items, or proposals that need to be implemented in more complex policy areas.

That would need to be followed by a subsequent round of policy analysis, conducted via reviews, taskforces and ‘mini-inquiries’ that should map out blueprints for implementation, take decisions about the viability of policy pathways, or even re-evaluate the merit of an inquiry’s recommendation in greater depth.

In the context of any public inquiry, the government can rhetorically claim that implementation is occurring if some form of enactment has taken place. This may mean recommendations being accepted ‘in principle’ or ticked off through descriptions of the implementation process as ‘continual’ or ‘ongoing’. Institutionalisation, however, denotes a more meaningful form of behavioural change that is established through a combination of technical reform and value adjustment.

Although the Sofia public inquiry conclusions shone a spotlight on construction safety (actually the total lack of it) in Malta, I heavily suspect that workers will still deem fear to be a factor in their silence on hazards that sometimes put their lives at risk.

Experience shows that, to date, it was a workplace culture in which tattletales were ostracised and whistleblowers blacklisted at a time when there was a conspicuous absence of construction industry compliance and enforcement of health and safety rules in the sector.

The construction industry was identified as being more concerned with the possibility of losing thousands of euros in contracts because of the insistence on multiple safety measures that would increase project costs than with the preservation of human life. The industry allowed a quiet practice of putting workers at risk for higher profit to flourish in the country.

Contractors and builders would wince at purchasing equipment that meets statutory health and safety standards. It was a grey area, and a lot of people involved in the construction sector took advantage of it too.

While unionised workers have more job security both on and off-site, it’s not unheard of elsewhere in the industry for workers to pay a price for insisting on safety. It has always been a risk in the construction industry. There is no seniority, there is no job security, and it is all project-based.

There were laws and remedies around that, but it was very difficult for a worker to do that. That would have been a friction point and a concern. If somebody felt that their job was at risk and their income was at risk if they reported something unsafe, that was an issue.

Most irregularly or unlawfully employed workers, mostly from third-world countries hardly able to read and write, let alone communicate in the English or Maltese language, were wont to decline to reveal the name of their employer or the developer who owned the building they were working on. Some didn’t know who the developer was, and in some cases, neither did the realtors taking leasing inquiries for the buildings online.

But it was not only fear that kept many workers quiet. In some cases, it was a historic cavalier attitude towards safety to begin with. The supposed project supervisors had an attitude or approach of not wanting to be the “sissy” on site. They were used to it and complacent. Many thought safety was completely silly and unneeded. The mentality was to just get the work done. “We’re a bunch of hard-working individuals that are tough around the edges.”

There was a “superman mentality,” particularly among experienced workers who would have gone incident-free for decades, largely because they were lucky. The way one looked at it, it was like the lottery. You’re not going to win every time, but it could potentially happen. It’s the same thing with a fall.

But that makes it difficult for those who are genuinely concerned about health and safety to insist on it and come out with careers unscathed.

From another aspect, one sincerely hopes that buyer confidence will return to the multi-residential market as certification is about to kick in.

There was a time not so long ago when the building industry was referred to as the Wild West. More than one residential apartment block had serious defects, and there was no way to tell the good developers from the bad, as buyers crossed their fingers and hoped for the best when choosing a new apartment. It is no exaggeration at all to state that people buying new apartments had less consumer protection than someone buying a toaster or washing machine.

It is time to allow consumers buying a new or off-the-plan apartment to check the credentials of the company or companies delivering the work.

The government must strive to bring new transparency and confidence to the multi-billion-euro industry. It must turn the Titanic around not only through positive changes to be brought to the industry but also with sufficient speed.

In a future building and construction market, trust, transparency and certainty are paramount for buyers and investors. It’s also an effective way for developers and builders to differentiate themselves from their peers when communicating with purchasers who are rightly seeking an additional layer of certainty and peace of mind.

We have to make the industry resilient going into the future.