Spot the deliberate mistake

It's not all clear sailing on building sites, more often than I would like you come across work as shoddy as shown inthese photos. It is unusual to see it on large sites, where a lot of money is being spent. Here however a lot of corners are being cut, in order to save some money, however this is going to backfire, much of the work that has already been undertaken here, will be condemned and will need to be rebuilt.

So what is wrong with this picture?

Let's take the photo of the ladder. Firstly, the ladder isn't adequately secured, one it's resting on a mound of excavated earth, which could collapse, (ok - you can't see it in this pic.) the top of the ladder isn't fixed, the angle of the ladder is too steep, the landing that the ladder goes up to, isn't protected by edge barriers. There's a second ladder, with a plank of wood laid on it, that spans the hole. This plank/ladder (with no barriers) is used as a walkway. The builders carry cement from the mixer on the ground floor, up the first ladder, then load up a wheelbarrow, and roll that over the plank/ladder.

The second picture - what looks like a forest of timber planks - is the temporary support for a cast-in-situ concrete staircase. The timber is wedged into place, any movement in this timber, will cause the formwork for the staircase to move, causing the concrete to settle unevenly - possibly not covering the steelwork adequately, leaving the stair either structurally unsound because of warping, or at risk of the steel rusting, and causing collapse later.

The top two pictures show two of the workmen cutting a hole in a reinforced concrete roof. Any other site I've been on, would have hired a concrete cutter, a large pincer, to remove the concrete, here the two guys are using a kango hammer, and an anglegrinder to cut the steel. Neither of the guys are adequately protected, no goggles, no hard hats, no boots, no ear protection, but worst of all, no safety harness. Working at any height, these guys should be tied onto something.

Health and safety issues on building sites are not the remit of local authority Building Control - ours is just to control the 'building', the physical construction. In order to take action on this site, I've had to notify the Health and Safety executive.