The five-year Prevention through Design (PtD) Initiative aims at engaging compelling stakeholders from agencies, industry, and academia in order to advance PtD. PtD holds the promise to substantially reduce exposure of construction workers to safety and health hazards and minimize the rate of accidents, morbidity, and fatalities. When properly implemented, PtD facilitates the identification and mitigation of exposure from early project stages, i.e. from conceptual design, in contrast with the prevalent practice of waiting for construction to start. However, to date, PtD knowledge and implementation are still scarce. Such lack of PtD awareness negatively impacts the wellbeing of construction workers. Safety records in Australia and the UK (where PtD is more widely practiced) point to a disparity between their results and the US, indicating that PtD may play a significant role in reducing fatalities in the US construction sector.

With a series of annual workshops starting in Spring of 2020, this NIOSH-funded effort aims at: 1) advancing PtD knowledge; 2) promoting the implementation of PtD through the engagement of agencies, industry, and academia; and, 3) promoting the instruction of PtD in construction management and construction engineering programs at US colleges and universities.