EGURIDAD Sy Medio Ambiente€¦ · Regardless of their activity or size, all firms hold one thing in common: they are consubstantial with risk; they have to live with risks of all

Year 28 Nº 110 Second quarter 2008SEGURIDAD

Assertive leadership for persuasive prevention● Coordination of the Preventive Duty ● Green Chemistry ● Voltage control

y Medio Ambiente

Assertive leadership for persuasive prevention ERGONOMICS AND PSYCHOSOCIOLOGY

Efficient management calls for leadership, and the prevention of occupational risks calls for those risks to be managed. This paper analyses the main aspects bound up with preventive management and the type of leadership needed for carrying it out. Stress is laid on the importance of vision, the mission of creating and believing in preventive values to ensure that the preventive advantage is a competitive advantage in companies and management styles. The paper ends by calling for assertiveness training as a compendium of the social skills based on communication, negotiation and persuasion.

By JOSÉ NIÑO ESCALANTE. Prevention Area of FREMAP. [email protected]

Risks are one of the things we know we don’t know about; leadership is one of the things we don’t know we do know, but both are well worth knowing in their own right.

Regardless of their activity or size, all firms hold one thing in common: they are consubstantial with risk; they have to live with risks of all types – financial, technological and occupational – and their long-term viability depends on proper management of these risks. The bosses of the firm are therefore, or should be, first and foremost managers of risk control.

Risks are best controlled by preventing them in the first place. And if there is one thing needed for management of any type in the firm, including risk management, it is a leadership capacity.

Leadership is the spirit, or inspiration, of management and is one of the most important entrepreneurial aspects, especially in areas that are becoming more critical by the day such as Occupational Risk Prevention (ORP).

This article deals especially with leadership in the management of occupational risks prevention, albeit stressing the aspects held in common with managing the rest of the company’s risks.

Occupational risk prevention is often broken down into four disciplines: health and safety at work, industrial hygiene, occupational medicine and ergonomics and applied psychosociology. Of these four it the last that best lends itself to an across-the-board prevention, especially in relation to the company’s technical, human and organisational factors.

Risks are one of the things we know we don’t know about but we do know that it is worth

knowing about.

Assertive leadership for persuasive prevention

What is to be expected of a leader?

Year 28 Nº 110 second quarter 2008

Página 1 de 12Seguridad y Medio Ambiente - Nº 110

LEADERSHIP FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF RISK PREVENTION

Leadership, the mass noun from the verb “lead”, is a person or group’s social skill or quality for directing others, drawing on their capacity, knowledge and experience. If leading is not to be confused with commanding or giving orders, or styles of leadership with styles of commanding, it is usually associated with a person or group’s capacity of generating and channelling skills and enthusiasm in a project, industry or undertaking. In the words of Fred Kofman: “Leading enthusiasm is much more productive than managing obedience” 1.

Today we have to deal with a whole range of semantic nuances, ranging from “nowadays giving orders is called leadership” to “nowadays giving orders is called mobbing”2.

The stereotype view of leadership is charismatic leadership, the sort that is capable even of changing the scale of values, the attitudes and beliefs of followers. And the fact is that charismatic leadership does not generate subordinates so much as followers, over whom the leader casts a sort of spell. Rather than strong-arming them, therefore, this sort of leader can harness and channel the impulses of others and coax them towards shared objectives.

“Leaders of leaders” of this type are obviously becoming thinner on the ground. Furthermore, the management of such matters as prevention calls more for “leaders of everyday activities” who know how to get across and promote basic ideas in the process of assuming responsibilities within the firm, such as: “Nowadays, the person responsible for work safety is not so much responsible for safety as responsible for the work itself”. The ultimate responsibility for work safety is therefore held by the person holding the ultimate responsibility for the work itself, i.e., line management right to the top, whether this be supervisory liability or managerial liability.

Or as the former head of the French National Institute for Research and Safety3 P.L. Thibaut once put it "Nowadays any work accident should be considered a managerial failure"

Today we have to deal with a whole range of semantic nuances, ranging from “nowadays giving orders is called leadership” to “nowadays giving

orders is called mobbing”

What is to be expected of a leader? The psychological profile of a prevention leader was summed up in a manual, somewhat old but still valid, on human relations in accident prevention published by the Ibero-American Safety Board (Consejo Iberoamericano de Seguridad: CIAS). This manual laid it down that a safety officer should meet some minimum standards in the following aspects:

Self confidence

Education

Energy

Enthusiasm

Intelligence

Emotional maturity

Adaptability


Presence

Sociability

More than charismatic leaders, prevention needs “leaders of everyday activity” who know how to

get across and promote something as basic as the company’s preventive responsibilities.

These traits, brought to bear on a certain body of professional knowledge, should enable leaders to implement properly the following capacities:

1. Managerial capacity

2. An overall “vision”

3. Create and believe in a “mission”

4. Practice a given style

1. MANAGERIAL CAPACITY There are many definitions of management, ranging from a necessary “policy” or approach right through to the definition of execution procedures or criteria and the checking and fine-tuning of results.

MANAGEMENT (of risks) is hence defined as the process of planning, organising and decision-taking, including "the decision not to do anything" in light of the various alternatives and responsibilities posed, plus preparation of the analyses, reports and communication procedures thereof.

Strictly speaking there is no such thing as “doing nothing”, just as there is no such thing as “saying nothing”, insofar as the leader, the manager can also communicate something even in silence, by gestures. Management should never be allowed to degenerate into a passive strategy with dummies waiting to be pushed about. The idea, therefore, is that things should always be kept on the move.

We sum up below the most important aspects of preventive procedures:

a. In an organisation or company “doing things” is, above all, dealing with decisions and behaviour, including the manager’s own. In a company “doing things” should consist of encouraging and demanding “good professional conduct” and leadership involves “making the working procedures more professional” in everything that is done, starting with risk prevention.

b. In a company there are always risks (“probabilities”) but above all there are always “realities” (problems, damage, accidents, etc.). It is logical that events that have actually happened should take priority over what may eventually come about. In other words, it is reasonable for us to become bogged down in the more urgent affairs of repairing damage rather than preventing future occurrences of the same or similar damage. But this is a vicious circle we need to break out of.

c. The type of prevention posed by the Occupational Risks Prevention Act (Ley de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales) is fundamentally primary4 or primordial prevention, working on the causes or the search for the prime cause in the whole causal chain of occupational diseases or accidents. This takes preference over secondary or palliative prevention or tertiary or merely curative action, working on


the damage and the consequences of the lack of prevention.

d. The management of prevention implies finding out as much as possible about the relations between risks and the actual damage (Risk indicators and factors. Confusion is often sewn, even at official level, by use of the term “emerging risk”, when what they really detect as “emerging” is the damage) to be able to establish the objective causal relationship between them. It should be pointed out here that the relations between risks and damage are blurred by several important factors, such as:

In accidents, by the first and second moments of the Poisson distributions: accidents tend to happen in clusters or good or bad “streaks”, and each accident is in turn a cluster of coincidences. There must be a good technical management of the “probabilistic” and “causal” properties of the “rare events” and of accidental events, which Mario Bunge conceives as a fourth dimension of reality5.

In occupational diseases, by latency periods, the time running from the risk exposure to the appearance of damage. Here due heed must be paid to the role of the sub-clinical and pre-clinical indicators, dealt with by secondary prevention from the viewpoint of “health surveillance”.

In the “psychosocial syndromes”, which basically look into the different facets of occupational stress (acute / chronic, occupational / professional, pre traumatic / situational / post traumatic, occupational / non occupational, endogenous / exogenous, etc.,) and their relations with the secondary effects:

Compensation neurosis6

“Secondary gains”

Somatisation: Damage transfer

Psychosocial “Meta-risks”: Risk transfer (from stress risks to risk stress7)

e. Risk prevention stems basically from the risk assessment. As repeatedly pointed out, a (primary) risk assessment is an evaluation of the working conditions likely to harm health and also an evaluation of the firm’s existing preventive procedures for control of these risks. Managing risk prevention is managing the preventive risk-limitation measures.

Prevention management relies on the best possible knowledge of the relations between risks

and the appearance of damage.

2. THE VISION OF THE LEADER We will not get bogged down here in the difference between having a vision and having visions, akin to the difference in science between one solid hypothesis and many pie-in-the-skyconjectures. It is clear here that “one is more than many”

The leadership vision has to be a global, holistic, strategic and interrelated vision. “The final message for politicians and health and safety experts is that we cannot go on treating individual risks separately. What we need is a holistic approach to risk


prevention”8

This new holistic or systematic vision is regarded today as part of the new way of understanding reality. Leaders usually call it strategic vision. It is not easy to pinpoint exactly what a strategic vision of reality consists of; if it were easy and within reach of all, the most strategic option would perhaps be to hush it up. We will try to sum it up with three examples:

For example, understanding the initially unconnected relations that have progressed more or less from antinomy to harmony and which, paradoxically enough, are etymologically identical. Take the case of Economy and Ecology, which, oddly enough, mean the same, (oikos nomos and oikos logos. (“oikos”, “house”, “environment” in Greek). By way of mutual influence the basic “ecologist” idea comes out on top, whereby global visions should correspond to local action. This convergence of economy and ecology could be dubbed “economology”

Another example of an entrepreneurial “strategic vision” would be the following view of competition, which, by the by, might help to cut down managerial stress: “A zebra does not have to run faster than a lioness, only faster than other zebras”9 And, lastly, a sector such as the funerary sector might need a strategic vision to counter the suggestion that it should support wars, since death serves its interest, coming up instead with the idea of boosting the birth rate. More seriously, we might cite the vision so graphically summed up by Javier Bustamante under the “archipelago paradox”, where the water that seems prima facie to separate the individual islands in fact gives shape and sense to the whole set. In a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) these examples would be tantamount to a switch in mental schemes, changing weaknesses into strengths and threats into opportunities: The strategic vision of prevention in a company is making the preventive advantage a competitive advantage.

3. CREATING AND BELIEVING IN A MISSION It has sometimes been mooted that prevention might be a “mission impossible”, falling somewhere between Sisyphean and trivial.

And it is clear that this negative view is sometimes fuelled by the lack of faith of those responsible for creating this mission, and not so much faith in the classic sense but more akin to Mark Twain’s definition “Faith is believing what you know ain't so”. This approach of seeming to “believe” in what we believe cannot be so, or apparently accepting what we do not believe in, runs through much of the managerial way of thinking in company risk prevention.

And the fact is that this sense of believing in prevention, as the first step to creating it, is not based so much on the various senses of faith as on convictions. And conviction comes from study, cross checks and experience.

To forge the preventive commitment, therefore, we need to be clear that the management’s commitment sets the upper limit (no underling will go further than ordered from above) and we need to come up with an answer to this management question: Are we committed to prevention? The stock answer is “Of course”. But it is by no means de trop to insist on asking : But of course we are or of course we aren’t?

To forge the preventive commitment a clear answer must be forthcoming to this management


question: Are we committed to prevention? “Of course”. But it is by no means de trop to insist on

asking : But of course we are or of course we aren’t?

The integration of prevention in company management should go

“From management commitment to commitment management”

And above all we need to ensure that the “declared preventive commitment” is the “perceived and practised preventive commitment”

4. MAINTAINING A STYLE Leadership should be based on forms or style and underpinned by communicative, negotiative social skills that we could sum up as “assertive”. This would avoid the situation often summed up by the bullfighting critic Joaquín Vidal in the following words: “The bullfighter wielded the cape in his own style, i.e. without any style whatsoever”. There must be a style of management and a management with style.

In fact, the individual psychological profile of the leader, as already pointed out, should be rounded out by these other social skills bound up more closely with group relations:

Empathy (putting yourself in the other’s shoes, active listening...)

Coherence (tending to do as you say)

Respect for the group (recognising others’ merits)

Authenticity

Properly oriented self judgement and criterion

Collaboration

Feeling of group membership

The leader and managers should be aware that the right to manage and demand obedience should never flirt with the abuse of power. Authority should never be confused with authoritarianism.

It is true that the main factors related to leadership and management are “hygiene factors” in Herzberg’s famous two-factor theory. And it was Herzberg himself who insisted that “In any organisational changes we should never lose sight of the fact that resurrections are more difficult than births”, and these factors, such as “company policy”, the “style of management”, the “forms of supervising and controlling” can never serve, no matter how well they might be done, to motivate a workforce; conversely they are very likely, if done at all badly, to demotivate the workforce and spark off conflicts in the professional and personal relationships. Hence the importance of establishing and keeping to a “hygiene” level that ensures no worsening of the situation.

Hygiene Factors: Motivator Factors:

Company policy

Style of management

Supervision and control

Work time

Remuneration.

Job security

Recognition

Promotion

Work itself

Responsibility

Type of company

Personal realisation


It is difficult if not impossible for any given leader to match such a perfect leadership profile. This leaves many company bosses and leaders in the real world open to lampooning at their obviousshortfalls, often in terms of the following archetypes:

The sailing-master type leader (in the style of a model captain or cox of a rowing crew), begging the question: “Should there be one steering and nine rowing or one rowing and nine steering?”

The orchestra-conductor type leader, begging the question: “Do you realise that a baton is not club to beat people with?”

The epistemological style leader, who is said to “rely on technical reports like a drunkard on a lamppost: more for support than for lighting his way”.

The night-watchman type leader who suffers, even without knowing it, from the “night-watchman syndrome”, doing justice to the shrewd insight of Eugenio D`Ors when he said: “How weird is the job of a night watchman; the worse he does it the more he is applauded”

And lastly the leader with a naturalist bent, who sees himself at the head of a migrating V of geese and is urged on by the honking flock behind to make their own task easier.

This last model is especially to the liking of the entrepreneurialworld, perhaps because it summons up an idea of: 1) labour harmony, 2) the V of victory and the lofty elevation of a birds-eye view and 3) the sight of his/her subordinates ostensibly workingto offset and repay the leader’s effort10

In any case it should not be forgotten that all this tongue-in-cheek irony is itself proof positive of just how hard it is to strikethe right balance as a leader, win widespread acceptance and sidestep chance.

STYLES OF MANAGEMENT AND THE LIMITS OF LAISSEZ FAIRE IN SAFETY: Prescribed work versus actual work versus forbidden work

Different styles of management, of giving orders, are usually broken down into four main patterns or models: The “authoritarian or autocratic”, the “paternalist”, the “laissez faire” and the “democratic or participative”.

It is also common knowledge that there is often a glaring difference between “prescribed work” and “actual work”, with important consequences for the organisations involved. Everyoneknows that working “to rule” often threatens to bring the whole system grinding to a halt.

One of the sine qua nons for those in charge of work and safety, i.e., senior and middle

management, is to be clear about the limits between “prescribed work” and “actual work”, but above all between the latter and “forbidden work”

or work that can be countenanced under no circumstances whatsoever.

Safety and working conditions


It is also known that, to avoid this predicament, people adopt ad hoc solutions and initiatives that mean the work gets done without actually doing it by the book. This is the “actual work”.

But it is also known that this “actual work”, over and above the ad hoc inputs, also leads to many improper practices, especiallyin safety terms, but a blind eye is turned on them as long they produce no accidents. This is clearly not at all conducive toprevention.

Conversely, it is often the case, paradoxically, that many bosses, as the parties directly responsible for safety, tend to practice two contradictory management styles, the exigent or autocratic as far as work goes and the complaisant or laissez faire as far as safety goes. In fact, if any such hybrid style is ever countenanced, it should be exactly the opposite: the maximum strictness should be observed in safety matters.

These in vigilando or supervisory safety liabilities and obligations are overlooked at the management’s peril, leading to moreserious consequences by the day.

One of the most important requirements of those responsible for work and safety, i.e. senior and middle management, is to be quite clear about the limits between “prescribed work” and “actual work” and, above all, between the latter and “forbidden work” or work that should not be countenanced under any circumstances.

It should be borne in mind here that the main personal or operational factors usually cited as causes of accidents, such as distraction, imprudence, ignorance, unskilfulness, haste, fall under the direct responsibility of the firm, either as part of their supervisory liability, based on the management’s punishment powers, or their organisational liability, under the organisational powers that are always incumbent on company management.

In fact article 15.4. of the Spanish Occupational Risks Prevention Act stipulates that “the preventive measures, to be truly effective, shall make due allowance for any non-reckless imprudence or distraction that workers might be prone to”.

What this all boils down to is that, without downplaying the individual liability of each person’s own professional performance, most of the abovementioned factors (ignorance, unskilfulness,haste, fatigue, etc). also fall within the senior and middle management’s organisational liability: selecting, training, supervising, sizing and suitably adjusting workloads.

Prevention leadership involves avoiding any shoddy ill-thought out delegation onto “individual

liability” leading to a shirking of managerial liability.

Prevention leadership consists principally of implementing therecommendation of the security expert Trevor Kletz when he said “Try to change situations not people” and above all avoiding any shoddy ill-thought out delegation onto “individual liability” leading to a shirking of managerial liability.

CONCLUSIONS

This nutshell account of leadership in the context of the prevention of occupational risks makes it fairly obvious that efficient occupational prevention has to work its way towards a sort of “persuasive prevention”, using “persuasive” here in the


sense defined by Ortega y Gasset as “the exquisite mix of obliging and convincing”. In this case the persuasion needs to be brought to bear on a change of values and attitudes and behaviour both of workers and, above all, of management.

The bases of a “risk society”, according to Beck, are to be found throughout all the individuals and organisations of that society. To deal with this we need to set up a “preventive society” based on the quality of work and the quality of life.

An in-company culture prevention should be based on the will to know, of wanting to know under a leadership that knows it does know.

In the most direct preventive aspects of companies we need to change from an after-the-event “condolence culture” to a true, before-the-event “preventive culture”. This calls for leadership.

Preventive leadership in firms should have the following characteristics in pursuit of these objectives:

Work towards an across-the-board model

Base leadership more on the group than individuals

Nurture the necessary social skills to underpin this leadership, especially assertiveness. Or what comes to the same thing, become an assertive leader to set up an across-the-board leadership.

Assertiveness11 is one of the most powerful social skills for exercising leadership with the fewest side effects. Assertiveness pools all the main social skills such as empathy, or the ability to put oneself in others’ shoes, communication, flexibility and tolerance.

Preventive leadership should be part of a managerial capacity, the “vision” of creating and

believing in a mission and practising a given managerial style imbued throughout with a

preventive intent.

The honing and practicing of these assertiveness-related social skills ensures the best preventive leadership.

Although it might be claimed that all leadership is exercised from an almost inevitable Nietzschean “will to power”, true leadership, as the driving force behind changes to introduce a prevention culture in any company, should be based on the will to know, to want to know. In short, to know that you know how to run the company and manage the risks.

(1) EL PAIS Business Section 23/09/2007 Interview: Management and Training. Fred Kofman, expert in coaching and leadership. He is author of a new version of the Smithian economic liberalism approach, claiming that "the capital system is the only one that transforms greed into service".

(2) MAPFRE Seguridad nº 95: El “mobbing” y las evaluaciones de riesgos laborales. Pg- 9-17. 2004

(3) INRS Institut National de la Recherche et de la Sécurité

(4) Not to be confused with this concept as used for healthcare


purposes

(5) Mario Bunge, winner of the Príncipe de Asturias prize, sees prevention as a fifth dimension of reality insofar as the accident constitutes a fourth. “Probability is no cloak for ignorance: it is a real property of some things though not of all. Tychism has only a grain of truth: the cosmos is not a Great Casino. Chance is a an objective mode of change, but so is causation”. “Some aspects of the world are causal, others random and yet others more chaotic still. And the world satisfies laws that combine two or three of these categories. As if this were not complex enough, a fourth category has to be tagged on, namely, the accidental. We always have to deal with chance, chaos and the accident. But we can also fall back on causality to counter chance, chaos and accident or at least to diminish their undesirable effects.”. Crisis y reconstrucción de la filosofía. Ed. Gedisa. Barcelona 2002

(6) Conversely, moving up from the individual to the collective plane, many firms suffer from the “broken glass syndrome”. Accidents, illnesses, absenteeism, poor quality, etc. which feed on each other in a vicious circle.

(7) MAPFRE Seguridad Nº 106. “Fiabilidad humana y metarriesgos psicosociales

(8) European Agency for Safety and Health at Work. Report October 2005 «Expert forecasts on emerging physical risks related to occupational safety and health»)

(9) Wagensberg, Jorge. Si la naturaleza es la respuesta, ¿cuál era la pregunta? Col. Metatemas. Ed. Tusquets. Barcelona 2003

(10) This fable or leadership model, on the hardness of being a leader, is usually badly told, leaving out some of the salient elements. These accounts normally omit the fact that the “leaders” themselves are periodically relieved so that they don’t rebel.

(11) ASSERTIVENESS consists in the direct expression of one’s own feelings, rights, desires and opinions without threatening or punishing the rest and without violating the rights of these people. It is a social skill in managing the conflicts in these new situations. The assertive being does not guarantee the absence of conflicts but works towards the favourable outcome thereof)


Coordination of the Preventive Duty LEGISLATION

In recent years regulations on occupational risks prevention (ORP) have come thick and fast, laying down the guidelines to follow in this field. This study analyses the recent regulation on the preventive duty in terms of coordinating business activities when different employers coincide in one work centre, as well as the problems posed by subcontracting in the construction world.

By JOSÉ RICARDO PARDO GATO. Lawyer. Higher ORP officer. Legal head of Imaga Proyectos y Construcciones, S.A. Legal advisor of the Association of Occupational Health and Safety Professionals of Galicia (Asociación de Profesionales de Seguridad y Salud Laboral de Galicia: APROSAL).

The main principles underpinning the Occupational Risks Prevention Act 31/1995 of 8 November (Ley de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales: LPRL) include the necessary cooperation and coordination measures in this field. Although this text heralded the new regime, it was really the subsequent regulations that laid down the patterns and guidelines to follow.

Most firms in the industrial sector pose special coordination and cooperation problems, in view of their complexity and function. The problems of how to design, apply and promote this cooperation and coordination are difficult both in general business activities and in the construction sector in particular. But they become especially acute when dealing with the frequent subcontracting arrangements that have to be made in this sector, driven by the general globalisation of markets and the economy in today’s world.

The first regulation to deal with these aspects, albeit somewhat obliquely, was the Royal Decree (Real Decreto) 1627/1997 of 24 October laying down minimum health and safety provisions in construction work. RD 1627/19971 therefore referred solely to this sphere. The first real direct legislation on this matter came with Real Decreto 171/2004 of 30 January, developing article 24 of the LPRL on business coordination activities. RD171/2004 2 therefore has the object of establishing the obligations to be met by the various employers coinciding in a single work centre to head off occupational risks deriving from the concurrence of several activities in the same place. The most recent legislation on the prevention of risks in construction was the Construction Sector Subcontracting Act 32/2006 of 18 October (Ley reguladora de la subcontracting en el Sector de la Construcción: LSC)3, subsequently developed by Real Decreto 1109/2007 of 24 August (RD 1109/2007)4 (See Table 1).

Table 1: Legislation

Real Decreto 1627/1997 of 24 October

Minimum health and safety provisions in construction work

Coordination of the Preventive Duty

The first real direct legislation on cooperation and coordination within ORP came with Real Decreto 171/2004 and Ley 32/2006



The first real direct legislation on cooperation and coordination within ORP came with Real Decreto

171/2004 and Ley 32/2006

First of all we will look at the legal aspects involved in occupational risks prevention when dealing with the coordination of business activities in a general sense, including construction as part thereof, before homing in on the particular problems posed by subcontracting in the complex world of construction, in terms of conformity thereof with the safety postulates vis-à-vis these risks.

THE NECESSARY BUSINESS COORDINATION

Article 24 of the LPRL foreshadowed a whole set of obligations incumbent on companies for coordinating preventive activity 5, but its wording was somewhat ambiguous and vague. The need was therefore mooted for further legislation to clarify, specify and top up its contents clearly.

To this end RD 171/2004 was based on criteria previously agreed by the social stakeholders, particularly as recorded in the Agreement of the Panel of Social Dialogue on Occupational Risk

Real Decreto 171/2004 of 30 January

Develops article 24 of the LPRL in terms of the coordination of business activities

Ley 32/2006 of 18 October

Regulating subcontracting in the construction sector

Real Decreto 1109/2007 of 24 August

Develops Ley 32/2006 of 18 October

Prevention (Acuerdo de la Mesa de Diálogo Social sobre Prevención de Riesgos Laborales) dated 30 December 2002.

As we have already pointed out, construction work is still ruled by its own specific legislation and coordination measures in its own right, albeit still bound by ruling obligations (health and safety at work study during the design project phase drawn up at the behest of the promoter, obligatory on-site health and safety coordinator, health and safety plan drawn up by the contractor and the more recently imposed obligations of surveillance, accreditation and registration, plus the obligation to keep a subcontracting book, among others). The truth is, however, that this specific legislation has been enriched and even reinforced by the provisions laid down in this Real Decreto in terms of the preventive information that now has to be exchanged between the employers coinciding on the same site and clarification of the measures to be adopted by the various agents intervening therein.

Ley 32/2006 lays down the guarantees to ensure that lack of control in subcontracting within

construction work does not cause risks for the worker

1. Work centre, tenure-holding employer and main employer. Three concepts bound up with contracting and subcontracting The correct application of coordination legislation, for the

Work centre

Cases of concurrence of workers from different firms in the same workplace


purposes also of business subcontracting, calls for the prior clarification of three concepts commonly used and crucial for proper demarcation of the liabilities involved. These expressionsare «work centre», « work-centre tenure-holding employer» and «main employer», as defined in article 2 of RD 171/2004.

Unlike the definition laid down in the Statute of Workers’ Rights (Estatuto de los Trabajadores: (ET), “work centre”, for the purposes of business coordination, should be understood as an area, built up or otherwise, in which workers have to remain or have access to for their work purposes; this therefore extends the term to cover not only traditional work centres but also autonomous productive units and, in general, any workplace evenwithout functional autonomy.

In fact, when we speak of subcontracting, one of the main problems that might crop up is determining the extension of theliability depending on whether the accident occurred in the work centre of the contractor company or in the work centre of contract-winning company. It should be made clear here, first and foremost, that, pursuant to legal theory and practice 6, and now also the legislation, the strict concept of «work centre» aslaid down in article 1.5 of the ET is tantamount to «workplace». This in practice means that if a company has been awarded a construction-work contract and decides freely to contract it out toanother firm or other firms, then this workplace is no longer outside that company’s jurisdiction but falls directly or indirectly within its sphere of liabilities taken on thereunder, just as thevarious employers involved on the site share out the profits.

Coordination in construction work, which was governed by a specific precept, has been enriched

and reinforced by Real Decreto 171/2004

As for the concept of the work-centre tenure-holding employer,this is expressly referred to as «the person with the capacity ofrunning the work centre and making it available to others», regardless, therefore, of whether it is the actual owner thereof.

For its part the main employer is identified, basically, as the employer who contracts or subcontracts out to others the work or services corresponding to its own rightful activity and carried out in its own work centre. (See table 2)

2. Cases of concurrence of workers from different firms in the same workplace The common denominator of the coordination of business activities for occupational risk prevention purposes is the consistent and plausible application of the preventive action principles, the working methods to be implemented, control of

Table 2: Definitions

Work centre Any area, built up or otherwise, in which workers have to remain or have access to for their work purposes

Tenure-holding employer

Person with the capacity of running the work centre and making it available to others

Main employer

Identified with the contracting or subcontracting of work or services providing that these correspond to the contracting employer’s rightful activity and are carried out in its own work centre


the interactions deriving from the concurrence of different firmsand bringing risk-prevention methods into line with existing risks. In this light chapters II, III and IV of RD 171/2004 provide for three different cases of application, to which it also assignsdifferent obligations in increasing order of importance 7:

a) When none of the concurrent firms is tenure holder of the work centre.In this case the cooperation duty will be applicable to all the companies and self-employed workers concurrent in thework centre, whether or not there are any legal relations between them. All are therefore bound to take due coordination measures for occupational risk prevention. To this end this cooperation duty is broken down in turn into the following compulsory duties:

The concurrent firms shall inform each other mutually of the specific risks in their own activities as carried out in the work centre and which might affect the workers of the other firms present, especially such risks as may be aggravated or modified precisely by the coincidence of different activities.

Immediate communication of any emergency situation likely to affect the health and safety of workers of the companies involved in the work or service.

Consequently, risk-evaluation and preventive-planning shall take into account the abovementioned information.

Lastly, within the same communication duties, each employer will be bound to inform its own workers of the risks deriving from said concurrence.

Pursuant to Royal Legislative Decree (Real DecretoLegislativo) 5/2000 of 4 August approving the revised text of the Social Penalties and Infractions Act (Ley sobreInfracciones y Sanciones en el Orden Social: LISOS 8), any breaches of these obligations are classed as grave or very grave infractions of occupational risk prevention obligations (articles 12.13 and 13.7, respectively).

b) When one of the companies is tenure holder of the work centre. As well as the above-mentioned obligations, it also incumbent on the tenure-holding employer, in relation tothe other concurrent employers, to perform two additional compulsory measures: firstly to inform the other employers of the risks intrinsic to the work centre that might affect the activities carried out therein, as well as the duty to inform them of the preventive measures to deal with these risks and emergency measures to be adopted, if need be; secondly, once this information has been received and when its own workers are carrying out activities in the work centre, to give instructions to the rest of the concurrent employers for prevention of the risks existing therein that might affect the workers of these employers and also the measures that would have to be adopted in the event of any emergency situation.

Both the abovementioned information and the instructions shall be sufficient and appropriate for the risks present in the work centre. They have to be given before the work starts and whenever there is any change in the risks obtaining in the centre, insofar as they are significant for preventive purposes.

Furthermore, both the information and the instructions have to be given in writing whenever the work centre risks


are classed as grave or very grave. As in the previous case, any breaches of these obligations are deemed to beinfractions of ORP obligations, the blame falling exclusively on the tenure holder of the work centre (articles 12.14 and 13.8 LISOS 9).

The following obligations are incumbent on employers that are not tenure holders of the work centre: they are bound to take into account the risk-assessment and preventive-activity-planning information received from the tenure holder; to obey the instructions given by the work-centre tenure-holding employer; and to pass on to their own workers the information and instructions received from the tenure-holding employer.

c) When there is a main employer and also a concurrence of several firms in a single work centre: case of contractors of subcontractors of work or services. For these cases, as well as compliance with the measures laid down in the two abovementioned cases, the main employer shall abide by the following specific obligations:

Watch out in all cases for compliance with prevention legislation by contracted or subcontracted firms carrying out work or services that form part of the main employer’s rightful activity and are carried out in its work centre. This is basically the case dealt with in article 42 ET.

Before going ahead with the work the main employer shall require from contractor and subcontractor firms written proof of having carried out risk assessment and planning of its preventive activity for the contracted work and services, as well as proof of having met its information and training obligations with respect to workers who are going to render their services in the work centre. Logically, all this proof has to be required and obtained by the contractor firm before passing it on to the main employer, whenever part of a work or service is subcontracted out to another company.

In the interests of ensuring effective due diligence, the main employer shall also check that concurrent firms in its work centre, contractors and subcontractors, have also made the necessary coordination arrangements between them.

As regards the coordination measures laid down in RD 171/2004, for the case of both contractors and subcontractors and for the rest of the possibilities set forththerein, a non-exhaustive, open-numbered list is drawn up, including enumeration of the presence in the work centre of preventive resources 10, without forgetting the designation of one or more persons to take express charge of ORP coordination arrangements.

Without any doubt whatsoever, the various coordinationmeasures laid down under this legislation aim to increase job safety whilst also making this compatible with the essential flexibility that always has to be part and parcel of any business activity (See Table 3).

Table 3: Different Cases of the Concurrence on the Same Site of Workers from Different Firms

Cases Obligations


None of the concurrent companies is tenure holder of the work centre

Reciprocal information on the specific activities to be carried out in the centre

Immediate communication of any emergency situation

Risk assessment and preventive planning has to take into account the above

Each employer will be bound to inform its own workers of the risks posed by the concurrence of different workers

One of the concurrent companies is tenure holder of the work centre

a) Of the tenure-holding employer Inform the other employers of the risks intrinsic to the work centre and of the preventive and emergency measures to be adopted

Give instructions to the rest of the concurrent employers for prevention of existing risks and measures to be taken in the event of an emergency

b) Of the non-tenure-holding employers

Take into account the risk assessment and preventive planning furnished by the tenure holder

Observe the instructions of the tenure-holding employer

Pass on to its own workers the information and instructions received from the tenure-holding employer

Contractors or subcontractors of work or services

Besides complying with the measures laid down for the above cases, the main employer shall also abide by the following specific obligations:

Watch out in all cases for compliance with prevention legislation by contracted or subcontracted firms carrying out work or services that form part of the main employer’s rightful activity and are carried out in its work centre

Require from contractor and subcontractor firms prior proof in writing of having carried out risk assessment and planning of its preventive activity for the contracted work and services, as well as proof of having met its information and training obligations

Check that concurrent firms in its work centre, contractors and


In all construction work the contractor is bound to keep a Subcontracting Book reflecting all practical

arrangements made for this work

SUBCONTRACTING IN THE CONSTRUCTION SECTOR

Subcontracting in the construction sector, given its enormous importance, is dealt with in its own right, but also as part of the last case of business concurrence as described above. Directly applicable thereto will be the ORP specifications laid down in RD 1627/1997 (first additional provision of RD 171/2004) and, above all, the rules and guidelines laid down in the more recent LSC.

This latter text takes on the task of laying down, on a sector basis, the legal subcontracting system of Spain 11, determining aseries of guarantees designed to prevent any lack of control in this widespread form of productive organisation and anyconcomitant situations of risk to the health and safety of workers.

Specifically, the caveats or safeguards laid down in the LSC havea threefold purport:

Firstly, to require compliance with certain conditions to ensure that subcontracting as from the third level is justified on objective grounds, precisely with the aim of preventing practices that might lead to risks to health and safety at work.

Secondly to require a series of safety and solvency requisites from firms that are going to carry out their activity in this sector, as well as reinforcing these guarantees in relation to the accreditation of ORP training within their own human resources. This is to be done by accreditation of the firm’s specific preventive organisation and, in employment quality terms, by establishing minimum conditions of labour stability.

Thirdly, by the introduction of suitable transparency mechanisms in construction work on the basis of specific document systems and reinforcement of worker participation measures in the various firms participating in the work in question (See table 4).

1. Requisites incumbent on contractors and subcontractors As well as the general duty of surveillance, and without any

subcontractors, have also made the necessary coordination arrangements between them

Table 4: Guarantees for Subcontracting in Construction Work

Compliance with given conditions showing that subcontracting arrangements from the third level are justified on objective grounds

Enforcement of safety and solvency requisites on all intervening firms that carry out their activity in the construction sector

Mechanisms of transparency in the construction sector, based on documents and participation


detriment to the provisions laid down in article 11 of RD 1627/1997 (entitled «Obligations of contractors and subcontractors»), the minimum eligibility requisites laid down by article 4 LSC for a company to intervene in the subcontracting process within the construction sector, as contractor orsubcontractor, include the following:

Be in possession of its own productive organisation and the necessary material and human resources and direct the use and employment thereof in pursuit of the contracted activity.

Assume any risks and also such obligations and liabilities as may properly derive from the business activity.

Directly see to the organisation and management of its wage-earning workers and, in the case of self-employed workers, carry out the work with autonomy and on their own responsibility.

Furthermore, firms that aim to be contracted or subcontracted forconstruction work shall be able to accredit the availability of human resources, with necessary training in occupational risk prevention. They must also have a suitable preventive organisation and be enrolled in the new Register of Accredited Firms (Registro de Empresas Acreditadas: REA), as laid down for the first time in the LSC, wherein they shall confirm compliance with the abovementioned requisites (See Table 5).

a). The Registro de Empresas Acreditadas Subsequent development of the LSC by RD 1109/2007 determines that companies habitually contracted orsubcontracted for carrying out construction work shall have, in the terms laid down in said regulation (chapter III), at least thirty per cent of its staff on indefinite-term contracts (article 11.1). This precept has then served as the basis for drawing up and regulating the REA (chapter II), to help inaccreditation of the abovementioned requirements, including data and documents on the solvency of the contractor and subcontractor firms carrying outconstruction work, with the exception of self-employed workers (barring those who employ workers on site), orthose acting only as promoters. Nonetheless it does also apply, albeit with certain idiosyncrasies, to those firms that,falling within the application scope of LSC, send workers abroad on transnational work.

The REA’s ascribed functions include the following:

Deal with all arrangements to do with entry applications, renewal, variation of data and cancellation.

Issue certificates vouching for current register entries.

Table 5: Requisites of Contractors and Subcontractors

Have their own productive organisation

Have the necessary human and material resources

Run the productive organisation and the available resources for carrying out the activity

Assume risks, liabilities and obligations

Exercise the powers of organising and managing the wage-earning workers

In the case of self-employed workers, carry out the work with autonomy and under their own responsibility

Entry in the Registro de Empresas Acreditadas


Facilitate public access to its information by any person or entity.

Custody and conservation of the documentation furnished in each case.

Depending on the competent cultural authority (corresponding to the region containing the registered head office of the company in question), entry in this register will be valid for the whole national territory. If not set up in the relevant Comunidad Autónoma (region) no entry application can be made therein. In any case this entry or enrolment will not be enforceable until twelve months after the coming into force of RD 1109/2007, i.e. until 27 August 2008 (the REA business declaration forms are contained in annex I ofthe RD). Once this entry application has been made it will be valid for three years, renewable for equal terms with six months’ notice before it has run its current term.

b) Subcontracting System in Construction Work. As regards the subcontracting system in construction work (article 5 LSC), this is based on the general principle that firms are fully within their rights to do so; this right cannot be limited except for the conditions and cases explicitly laid down by the LSC. Promoters and contractors are thereforefree to contract at their own discretion and with few limits (the contractors, obviously, with those subcontractor firms or self-employed workers for execution of the work contracted with the promoter). The third subcontractor and self-employed workers, however, will not be entitled to subcontract work that has been contracted to them, neither to other subcontractor firms nor to other self-employed workers. Furthermore, neither will there be any subcontracting right for subcontractors (whether the third, second or first) when their productive organisation applied to the work in question consists primarily of the input of labour power 12. As an exception, however (not extendible, except in the case of force majeure, to the last case mentioned nor the case of subcontracting by a self-employed worker), when dealing with particular, one-off circumstances that can be duly accounted for (specifically, the requirement of highly specialised work, production complications of a technical type or specific circumstances of force majeure incumbent on the agents participating in the work), and the architectural supervision team deems it necessary to contract part of the work out to third parties, the final subcontracting chain may be extended to anadditional level, providing this be duly approved by the architectural supervision team and this approval be recorded together with the grounds for this extra subcontracting in the Subcontracting Book.

Likewise, therefore, it would be beholden on the contractorto bring this exception to the notice of the health and safety coordinator 13 and the worker representatives of the different firms involved in the work. This stipulation does not exonerate the same contractor from its obligation to inform the competent labour authority of the aforementioned exceptional subcontracting arrangement, doing so by means of a report sent within five working days of approval of the exceptional subcontracting arrangement. This report will set forth the special circumstances justifying the need for the subcontracting, together with a copy of the entry made in the Subcontracting Book. (See Table 6).

Table 6: Subcontracting System in Construction Work


2. The Subcontracting Book In all subcontracting work each contractor is bound to keep aSubcontracting Book, which is to remain on site at all times.

This book shall record the following items and circumstances, in chronological order from the beginning of the work:

each and every one of the subcontracting arrangements made on a given site with subcontracting firms and self-employed workers;

the level of subcontracting in each case and the main firm;

object of the contract;

identification of the person responsible for organising and managing each subcontractor and, where applicable, the legal representatives of its workers;

the respective dates of handing over the part of the health and safety plan pertaining to each subcontractor firm and

Promoter Will be entitled to contract directly with as many contractors as it deems fitting, whether individuals or companies

Contractor (will be entitled to contract out to subcontractors firms or self-employed workers the work it has contracted to do with the promoter)

First subcontractor Will be entitled to subcontract out the work it has contracted to perform unless its subcontractor input is primarily labour power.

Second subcontractor Will be entitled to subcontract out the work it has contracted to perform unless its subcontractor input is primarily labour power

Third subcontractor Will not be entitled to subcontract the work to another subcontractor or self-employed worker

Fourth subcontracting level (Exceptional – justified one-off cases)

Prior approval by the architectural supervision team

Placed on record in the Subcontracting Book

Required due to specialisation of the work

To deal with technical production complications

Due to circumstances of force majeure incumbent on the agents intervening in the work

Self-employed worker Will not be entitled to subcontract the work to another subcontractor or self-employed worker


self-employed worker;

the instructions drawn up by the health and safety coordinator for specific implementation of the predetermined coordination procedure;

and, finally, the specific entry made by the architectural supervision team of each subcontracting arrangement classed as exceptional (See table 7).

Pursuant to the aforementioned development regulation RD 1109/2007 (chapter IV, articles 13 to 16), the following partieswill be entitled to see the Subcontracting Book: the promoter, the architectural supervision team, the health and safety coordinatorin work execution phase, self-employed workers and firms intervening therein, prevention delegates and officers, the corresponding labour authority, and also the workerrepresentatives of the various firms taking part in the work.

3. Liabilities, Infractions and Penalties In light of the provisions on the subcontracting requisites incumbent on contractors and subcontractors, these will not be applicable to construction work that began before the coming intoforce of the LSC. Work that began before 19 April 2007 14, therefore, will logically be subject to the LPRL and itsdevelopment regulations only in terms of the other liabilities laid down in the rest of its content (including the surveillance duty and the employer’s legal duty to watch out for, guarantee andaccredit the preventive training of its workers).

Leaving aside the moment of its application, however, the specialsignificance of the requisites and liabilities laid down in the LSC has led to the subsequent need to amend the LISOS (first additional provision of the LSC; non-exhaustive list)15, in many of its articles 16, with the aim of establishing specific cases of breach of these precepts (see Table 8). This will in the end serve to endow the LSC with the required effectiveness and enforceability in pursuit of its goals.

Table 7: Content of the Subcontracting Book

Subcontracting arrangements made

Level of subcontracting and firm

Object of the contract

Person empowered to organise and run each subcontractor and, where applicable, the legal representatives of the workers

Handover date for the part of the health and safety plan that affects each subcontractor company and self-employed worker

Recorded instructions of the health and safety coordinator

Date of approval of the exceptional subcontracting arrangement by the architectural supervision team, duly signed by same

Table 8: Punishable Breaches

Breach of the legislation establishing the minimum percentage of staff to be hired on indefinite-term contracts

Failure by the contractor to keep the Subcontracting Book properly up to date

Failure to communicate the information allowing the contractor to keep the Subcontracting Book properly up


Table 9: Subcontracting Chart

(1) BOE (Official State Journal) 256 of 25 October 1997. Special heed should be paid to articles 3 («Designation of safety coordinators »), 9 («Obligations of the health and safety coordinator during execution of the work ») and 11 («Obligations of contractors and subcontractors»).

(2) BOE 27 of 31 January 2004; correction of errata in BOE 60 of 10 March 2004, whose publication, in general, was due to merely formal defects. For more information on this Real Decreto,without detriment to what is said here, see the work of MARTÍNEZ LUCAS, J.A.: «Nuevas normas de prevención de riesgos laborales en materia de coordinación de actividades empresariales», La Ley, 2004-2, D-55, pp. 1521-1523.

(3) BOE 250 of 19 October 2006.

(4) BOE 204 of 25 August 2007; correction of errata BOE 219 of 12 September 2007.

(5) Article 24 of LPRL is worded as follows: «Article 24. Coordination of business activities.

1. When workers from two or more firms are working on the

to date

Failure by contractor or subcontractor to obtain and keep the documentation accrediting possession of the machinery it uses, and as much documentation as may be legally required

Overstepping of subcontracting levels by the subcontractor or failure by contractor to enforce these limits or allowing other subcontractors or self-employed workers to do likewise within the sphere of the subcontracting arrangement

Breach of the duty to prove (in the form laid down by law or regulation) that it has the human resources at both production and executive level, that this staff has been duly trained in occupational risk prevention and that it has set up a suitable prevention system or entry in the corresponding register or the duty of checking that its subcontractors have made such accreditation and registration arrangements


same work centre, these shall cooperate in the application of the occupational risk prevention legislation. To this end they will establish such coordination and liaison arrangements as may be necessary in terms of the prevention of occupational risks and the information thereon and on their respective workers in the terms laid down in article 18 hereof.

2. The work-centre tenure-holding employer will take such measures as may be necessary to ensure that those other employers carrying out activities in its work centre receive suitable information and instructions in relation to risks existing in the work centre and the corresponding protection and prevention measures as well as the emergency measures to apply, then passing on this information to its workers.

3. Firms that contract or subcontract out to others work or services pertaining to their own rightful activity and carried out in their own work centres shall watch out for compliance by said contractors and subcontractors with occupational risks prevention legislation.

4. The obligations laid down in the last paragraph of article 41 hereof will also be applicable, with regard to the contracted operations, in such cases where the workers of the contractor or subcontractor firm do not work in the work centres of the main company, providing that such workers have to work with machinery, equipment products, raw materials or utensils furnished by the main company.

5. The cooperation, information and instruction duties laid down in sections 1 and 2 will also be applicable to self-employed workers carrying out activities in said work centres».

(6) Among others, the aforementioned work by MARTÍNEZ LUCAS, J.A.: «Nuevas normas de prevención...», op. cit., p. 1521.

(7) Witness the judgements of the Tribunal Supremo (Supreme Court) Chamber 4 of 11 May 2005 (La Ley, 6339 of 14 October 2005) and 26 May 2005 (La Ley. 6331 of 3 October 2005). In this latter finding the liability of the main firm stemmed from the lack of information and control that it should have exerted over the workers of the subcontractor firm; for its part the supreme court judgment of 11 May 2005 believes that the accident suffered by the worker of a contractor for maintenance of power lines implies the liability of the main employer. Conversely, however, there areother findings such as the supreme court judgment 18 July 2005 ascribing civil liability to the first subcontractor who subcontracted work out to the firm that defaulted on its safety commitments required in risky work, therefore finding the main contractor and the owner of the work not to be civilly liable forthe omissions of said subcontractor. For similar case law see BUSTO LAGO, J.M.: «Responsabilidad civil del employer en elcaso de infracción de las normas de prevención de riesgos laborales y su seguro», Revista Práctica de Derecho de Daños, 43, November 2006; an article coinciding with a paper given by the author in a conference on liability in occupational risk prevention led by José Ricardo PARDO GATO and held in theProfessional Association of the Lawyers of A Coruña (Colegio de Abogados de A Coruña) on 26 April 2006.

(8) For which reason no mention is made of the obligation to swap information with manufacturers, importers and suppliers, asreferred to in articles 24.4 and 41.1 of the LPRL.

(9) Correction of errata, BOE 228 of 22 September 2000. Consideration should also be given here to Real Decreto 306/2007 of 2 March, updating the fines laid down in LISOS (BOE 67 of 19 March 2007).


(10) Precepts amended by Ley 54/2003 of 12 Decemberreforming the legislative framework of occupational risk prevention (BOE 298 of 13 December 2003).

(11) Article 32 bis LPRL deals with the legal framework of preventive resources, finally introduced under the aegis of Ley 54/2003 of 12 December.

(12) Labour power, according to article 5.1.f) LSC is to beunderstood as «that which, for carrying out the contracted work, uses no more of its own equipment than manual tools, including portable motorized tools, albeit working with the support of other working equipment different from those mentioned, providing these belong to other contractor or subcontractor firms of the construction work».

(13) The designation of health and safety coordinators is largely legislated for in article 3 of RD 1627/1997, while their obligations are laid down in article 9 thereof.

(14) The LSC came into force six months after its publication in the BOE (third final provision).

(15) See also the updates of the fines laid down in LISOS brought in by Real Decreto 306/2007 of 2 March.

(16) In view of the fact that breaches of LSC provisions will be punished under the LISOS (article 11 LSC), the first additionalprovision of the LSC takes care to amend the text of the former in articles 8, 11, 12 and 13, introducing sections with far-reaching modifications.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LEGISLATION MENTIONED

1. Ley 31/1995, de 8 de noviembre, de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales.

2. Real Decreto 1627/1997, de 24 de octubre, por el que se establecen disposiciones mínimas de seguridad y salud en las obras de construcción.

3. Real Decreto Legislativo 5/2000, de 4 de agosto, por el que se aprueba el texto refundido de la Ley sobre Infracciones y Sanciones del Orden Social.

4. Ley 54/2003, de 12 de diciembre, de reforma del marco normativo de la prevención de riesgos laborales.

5. Real Decreto 171/2004, de 30 de enero, por el que se desarrolla el artículo 24 de la LPRL en materia de coordinación de actividades empresariales.

6. Ley 32/2006, de 18 de octubre, reguladora de la subcontratación en el sector de la construcción.

7. Real Decreto 306/2007, de 2 de marzo, por el que se actualizan las cuantías de las sanciones establecidas en el texto refundido de la Ley sobre Infracciones y Sanciones del Orden Social, aprobado por el Real Decreto Legislativo 5/2000, de 4 de agosto.

BIBLIOGRAPHY USED

1. Busto Lago, J.M.: «Responsabilidad civil del employer en el caso de infracción de las normas de prevención de riesgos laborales y su seguro», Revista Práctica de Derecho de Daños, núm. 43, noviembre 2006; article coinciding with a paper given by the author in a conference on liability in occupational risk prevention led by José Ricardo PARDO


GATO and held in the Professional Association of the Lawyers of A Coruña (Colegio de Abogados de A Coruña) on 26 April 2006.

2. Martínez Lucas, J.A.: «Nuevas normas de prevención de riesgos laborales en materia de coordinación de actividades empresariales», La Ley, 2004-2, D-55, pp. 1521-1523.


Green chemistry. Chemistry geared towards the twenty first century ENVIRONMENT

Chemistry impinges on every single facet of our daily lives and on each and every one of the objects around us. Chemistry comes into contact with us on an everyday basis; it is a science that helps us to feed ourselves, dress ourselves, move ourselves, cure ourselves, house ourselves and even enjoy ourselves (CDs, music and video tapes are made from chemical products).

By ANTONIO DE LA HOZ AYUSO. PhD in Chemistry. Professor of Organic Chemistry. [email protected] and ÁNGEL DÍAZ ORTIZ. PhD in Chemistry. Senior Lecturer in Organic Chemistry. [email protected]. School of Chemistry. Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. Ciudad Real (Spain).

Importance of Chemistry

Chemistry takes part directly and inevitably in each stage of obtaining a given product or material, from its initial design to its final purchase by the consumer. Chemistry is a relatively recent science. As a systematic pursuit it was born in Europe about 200 years ago as the joint brainchild of many great scientists like Avogadro, Lavoisier, Faraday and Liebig. Since then it has grown into a science that looks inward to the microscopic world of atoms and outward to the macroscopic world of materials.

Chemistry is a central science that creates its own objectives. Some materials such as plastics, which changed the face of our world in the twentieth century and will continue to do so in the twenty first, did not exist until a chemist prepared them for the first time.

The chemical industry now generates more added value than any other industry in Europe. Europe can also be considered the world leader in this sense, since six of the world’s ten biggest chemical companies are European. According to the figures of the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) and the EU itself (Eurostat) the sales of chemical products by European companies add up to 600 trillion euros, clearly outstripping the sales of the United States (a little over 400 trillion euros) and Asia (just over 500 trillion). The European chemical industry inputs over 30 trillion euros to the trade balance of the European Union. The current contribution of the chemical industry to the EU’s Gross Domestic Product is practically identical to the input of the farming sector (about 2.5% of the GDP). The chemical industry is also the sector that ploughs back the highest percentage of its profits into R&D. The fine chemical industry invests about 5% and the pharmaceutical companies about 22%.

The European chemical industry is made up by about 30,000 companies, about 98% of which are SMEs employing fewer than 500 people. Taken as a whole the European chemical industry

Green chemistry.

Bhopal (India)

Lines of Research and Activities



directly employs about 1.65 million people, this figure then multiplied threefold by knock-on employment.

The repercussion of chemistry on the daily life of Europeancitizens is huge. As we have already pointed out, looking about us we find that many of the compounds and materials intervening in our everyday lives have been prepared through industrial processes based on chemistry. For decades these processes have been carried out without any heed to their repercussion on the environment, even though they are often highly pollutive.

Nearly all chemical reactions stand in need of a catalyst to speed up the reaction and make it profitable, but in general chemical catalysts are toxic. Once the reaction is over they need to be treated in diverse ways to forestall their pollution as waste products. Moreover, chemical reactions normally call for high temperatures and this entails an expenditure of energy that is unfavourable to the environment and the global sustainability of these processes. This suggests that we need urgently to change our working philosophy. There is no doubt about the benefits of chemistry in furnishing us with these products that are so vital to the comfort and convenience of our daily lives. But we can no longer continue to reap these benefits at the expense of theenvironment. Now we have to take on the challenge of preparing these products through non-pollutive processes, following the principles of Green Chemistry, as its has come to be called in the English-speaking world.

Introduction to Green Chemistry

Green Chemistry is the design of chemical products andprocesses that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. The term Green Chemistry was coined by Anastas (Anastas, 1998) and reflects chemists’ efforts to develop processes and products that prevent pollution and are harmless to human health and the environment.

Other fitting definitions for green chemistry are:

Green chemistry is the utilization of a set of principles that reduces or eliminates the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture and application of chemical products, promoting the prevention of pollution and industrial ecology (Anastas and Warner).

Green chemistry efficiently utilises (preferably renewable) raw materials, eliminates waste and avoids the use of toxic and/or hazardous reagents and solvents in the manufacture and application of chemical products (Sheldon).

Green chemistry is therefore directly bound up with the principle of sustainability. The goal of sustainability will be obtained with new technologies that furnish society with the products we depend on in a more environmentally friendly way.

12 principles of Green Chemistry

1. Prevention: It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it has been created.

2. Atom Economy: Synthetic methods should be designed to maximize the incorporation of all materials used in the process into the final product.

3. Less Hazardous Chemical Syntheses: Wherever practicable, synthetic methods should be designed to use and generate substances that possess little or no toxicity to human health and the environment.

4. Designing Safer Chemicals: Chemical products should

Figure 7. Some microwave equipment of application in chemistry

Figure 8. Subjects taught in the Green Chemistry Doctorate and Master


Souces of Pollution in North America en 2001

be designed to effect their desired function while minimizing their toxicity.

5. Safer Solvents and Auxiliaries: The use of auxiliary substances (e.g., solvents, separation agents, etc.) should be made unnecessary wherever possible and innocuous when used.

6. Design for Energy Efficiency: Energy requirements of chemical processes should be recognized for their environmental and economic impacts and should be minimized. If possible, synthetic methods should be conducted at ambient temperature and pressure.

7. Use of Renewable Feedstocks: A raw material or feedstock should be renewable rather than depleting whenever technically and economically practicable.

8. Reduce Derivatives: Unnecessary derivatization (use of blocking groups, protection/ deprotection, temporary modification of physical/chemical processes) should be minimized or avoided if possible, because such steps require additional reagents and can generate waste

9. Catalysis: Catalytic reagents (as selective as possible) are superior to stoichiometric reagents.

10. Design for Degradation: Chemical products should be designed so that at the end of their function they break down into innocuous degradation products and do not persist in the environment.

11. Real-time analysis for Pollution Prevention: Analytical methodologies need to be further developed to allow for real-time, in-process monitoring and control prior to the formation of hazardous substances.

12. Inherently Safer Chemistry for Accident Prevention: Substances and the form of a substance used in a chemical process should be chosen to minimize the potential for chemical accidents, including releases, explosions, and fires


Many polluting agents are synthetic and are continually discharged into the environment by the chemical industries; fluidleakage, waste materials discharged into the natural aqueous media. A large proportion of chemical products discharged intothe environment do not come directly from the chemical industry itself but from the other activities using these chemicals, such as farming, the textile industry, construction, the automobile industry, cleaning, pharmaceutics, etc.

The worst accident in history occurred in December 1984, withuncontrolled leakage of gas from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal (India). The gas spread throughout the city of Bhopal killing hundreds of thousands of people (Figure 4). This harrowingnight and its aftermath marked the public image of the chemical industry as a threat to human health and the environment. Italso served as a wake-up call to the industry, convincing it of theneed to change this public perception and introduce a new brand image based on the concept of “Responsible Care”.

In the United States the 1990 Pollution Prevention Act laid downthe reduction of discharges as top priority for dealing with environmental problems. On the strength of this act there was a shift in thinking from the “control” of environmental problems towards the “prevention” thereof as the most effective strategy, i.e., an approach based on preventing waste at source.

The number of environmental laws, especially dealing with waste treatment and handling, has soared, producing a notable increase in production costs. In Europe the new REACH regulation came into force in June 2007 and aims to regulate chemical productsand ensure their safer use. REACH stands for the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances.

In 1991 the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched the first initiative of the Green Chemistry Program as research intoalternative synthesis methods. Since then the Green Chemistry Program in the United States, together with the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards and the annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference, have served as beacon and benchmark of green chemistry activities.

From the second half of the nineties onwards institutes andcentres were set up around the world for green chemistry research- and teaching-purposes and to bring it to wider notice: in the US, the Green Chemistry Institute; in the UK, the Green Chemistry Network, which pools many universities and institutions; in Italy the INCA, an interuniversity consortium; in Australia the Centre for Green Chemistry of Monash University; in


Japan the Green and Sustainable Network (GSCN). In Europe theEuropean Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry SusChem tries to bring together a wide spectrum of organisations and individuals interested in green chemistry. In Spain thePETEQUS platform was set up, now called SusChem-España. Finally, in November 2002 the Spanish Green Chemistry Network(Red Española de Química Sostenible) was created as a group of researchers from universities and research centres with the aim of promoting and boosting the future development of green chemistry.

The first books, scientific articles and congresses on green chemistry made their appearance in the nineties. Finally, in 1999 the Green Chemistry scientific journal came out, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. In the last 10 years its impact factorhas soared to 4.192, far outscoring most of the other chemistryjournals. In 2008 two new specialist journals on the subject have come out, ChemSusChem and Green Chemistry Reviews and Letters, the first published by Wiley and the second by the Taylor & Francis group.

Lines of Research and Activities

Green chemistry should not be considered as a new speciality within chemistry but rather as a set of principles for tackling sustainable development, cutting out pollution at source. In this sense it is a multidisciplinary subject taking in the variousspecialities of chemistry, biochemistry, chemical engineering, toxicology and legislation.

It also addresses the whole process of making a chemicalproduct, from the raw materials or feedstocks, right through the design, research, production, consumption and recycling or elimination (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Process of making a chemical product

The fossil fuels currently serving as the raw materials of chemistry are now beginning to run out and this poses a sterlingchallenge for the future. Although the jury is still out on how long reserves will last, there is no doubt that prices will continue torise in the future. This will goad us to use renewable rawmaterials and hence design technologies to harness them, i.e., to design processes for extracting products from these raw materials and transforming them into products of industrial use.

Consideration also has to be given here to the possible impact of the mass development of a given renewable raw material on society as a whole. For example, the mass development of biofuels might produce deforestation in some countries or an increase in farming prices in others.

In relation to lines of research, the SusChem report on “Reaction and Process Design” lays down seven top priority lines (SusChem, 2005).

Novel Synthetic Concepts These look at new pathways with higher energy efficiency, lower raw materials consumption and avoidance of by-products and waste.

Catalytic Transformations Chemical processes need to be carried out in a cost-, energy-, and eco-efficient way. Catalysis has a key role to play in the clean production of fuel, the rational use of raw materials, sustainable energy (fuel cells, use of solar


power) and environmental protection (purification of air and water, reuse of waste, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and recovery of water and soil).

Biotechnical Processing This involves, for example, the combination of genetic engineering methods and analytical high-throughput processes to speed up biocatalyst and process development. This will usher in more economical processes that enable existing products to be complemented or replaced or completely new ones to be brought out.

Process Intensification This aims at reducing process steps and using novel and more eco–efficient synthesis routes. This secures a higher output with cheaper material and lower energy consumption. Solvents are reduced or even eliminated. All this means fewer risks, lower environmental impact and better selectivity with similar or higher reagent conversions.

In-silico Techniques Accelerating developments in high performance computing, chemical sensing technology and distributed process control call for the design of new catalytic and/or multifunctional materials with enhanced operational efficiency in industrial processes. This will be conducive to the development of flexible processes suited to a wide range of products in a single unit.

Research in purification and formulation Processes carried out in zero-emission plants producing purer products. This will cut down the impact of the chemical industry and its products on the environment and human health. Groundbreaking technologies have to allow for the purification of substantial amounts of products cheaply, thereby reducing energy consumption by at least 25% and producing 20% less waste than current technologies.

Plant Control and Supply Chain Management This examines a production and business paradigm shift towards knowledge-based, model-centric manufacturing, greatly increasing the efficacy and flexibility of the European chemical industry. Advanced plant control, process performance monitoring and supply chain management result in flexible, inherently safe production plants that can respond in the best way to market demand. Space fails us here to enumerate all the research being carried out along these priority lines and it does not fall within the remit of this article. Nonetheless, I would like to draw attention to a few of them (Anastas, 2002).

Polymers Polymers are the material that most transformed our lives in the twentieth century and they will continue to be important in the twenty first. Their production and elimination pose environmental risks that have to be taken on board and dealt with. Research into renewable raw materials and biotransformations, structural design and biodegradability design are all promising areas here. For example, materials such as carbon dioxide, soya, maize and glucose have all been used as raw materials.

Solvents The design of environmentally friendly solvents and solvent-free systems are areas of great interest, with an upsurge of research in recent years. Organic solvents are now used in many processes for the synthesis, separation and purification of chemical products. The great majority of them are considered to be volatile organic compounds (VOCs) or hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) and are flammable, toxic or carcinogenic. The use of supercritical fluids like carbon dioxide has been very successful in research work and in the industry.


Carbon dioxide has a number of advantages: it is not toxic, it is not flammable and it is cheap; it can also be separated from the product by depressurisation. Its critical temperature and critical pressure are both within easily workable limits (Tc = 31.1ºC, Pc = 74 bar). Water is intrinsically the most environmentally friendly solvent. A great number of organic reactions currently carried out with organic solvents could be carried out in water. Water has been used at temperatures of less than 100ºC to harness its hydrophobic effect, while it has also been used at temperatures close to its critical point (Tc = 374ºC) as a pseudo-organic solvent and for breakdown purposes. At 300ºC water’s dielectric constant (�’ = 20) is similar to acetone’s at ambient temperature; this makes it a pseudo-organic solvent. Moreover, water’s ionic product changes from 10-14 at 20ºC to 10-10 at 300ºC; this makes it a strong base and acid and it could be used as such instead of highly pollutive mineral acids and bases. Ionic liquids are a very attractive research area. They are highly polar solvents giving rise to hitherto unknown reactions. They can be specifically designed to vary their properties or as functional solvents that participate in the reaction. Their main environmental characteristic is their negligible vapour pressure; i.e. they are non volatile. The main drawback is their unknown toxicity, and this is a factor to be borne in mind. Fluorinated solvents are particularly attractive systems. At high temperatures they are miscible with organic solvents but at ambient temperature they are immiscible with water and organic solvents. Two- or three-phase reactions can therefore be carried out with the product in one phase and the catalyst in another. This eliminates the need for chromatographic- or distillation-separation, both of which are costly processes in terms of solvent use and energy consumption. Catalysis Catalysis is considered as the mainstay of green chemistry. Catalytic reactions cut down energy consumption and reduce separation needs as a result of the increase in yield and selectivity. They also reduce the amount of reagents and allow the use of renewable raw materials. Finally, catalysis allows the use of less toxic reagents, for example, the possibility of using hydrogen peroxide as oxidising agent instead of highly toxic mineral oxidants.

Biocatalysis Biocatalysis is another of the most highly developed areas with the best future prospects. The possibility of using enzymes in organic solvents and hence catalysing organic reactions has opened up a brand new field that has been quickly developed for research and production purposes. Green chemistry draws heavily on many aspects in this field, such as the use of micro-organisms, yeast, monoclonal antibodies, cells, genetically modified organisms and recombining systems. There is also the possibility of using biocatalysis in extreme conditions, for example under pressure.

More efficient synthetic methods New, more environmentally friendly synthetic methods with greater atom economy are currently being developed in universities and in the industry. These new methods have to eliminate waste, improve safety and enhance the yield in the synthesis of chemical products. An important aspect here is atom economy as defined by Trost in 1991 and enshrined as principle 2 of green chemistry: “Synthetic methods should be designed to maximize the incorporation of all materials used in the process into the final product”.


The most important factor in the design of organic synthesis over the last 100 years has been the reaction yield to “obtain the product at any price”. Any improvement in a synthetic sequence was measured in terms of the improvement in synthesis yield. Nonetheless a complete analysis should be made of the synthesis efficacy. If we compare a 75% yield reaction producing little waste with a new reaction that significantly increases the yield while reducing atom economy by an even greater amount, then the first synthesis will be more efficient. Figure 6 shows the synthesis of Ibuprofen, one of the most widely used anti-inflammatory drugs. In 1997 the company BHC won the Green Chemistry Challenge Award for the development of a more efficient and environmentally friendly ibuprofen synthesis method. The process uses fewer products, has a higher atom economy and produces practically no waste since 99% of the acetic acid formed as a by-product is recovered. One alternative is the use of non-conventional or alternative reaction methods, which activate at last one of the reagents above the energy of the transition state. Examples of such techniques are photochemical or electrochemical processes, activation by sonochemistry or, more recently, activation by microwaves. In the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha our group of “Microwaves in organic synthesis and green chemistry” (Microondas en síntesis orgánica y Química verde) has been carrying out research since 1993 into the application of environmentally friendly methods in organic synthesis and the use of microwave radiation and its synergy with “solvent free” reactions and heterogeneous catalysis. These methods chime in with three of the twelve principles of green chemistry: Design for Energy Efficiency, Catalysis and Safer Solvents and Auxiliaries. Microwave radiation has been successfully applied in chemistry since 1975 and a great number of organic-synthesis applications have now been described and recorded. Microwave Assisted Organic Synthesis (MAOS) is characterised by a spectacular acceleration of numerous reactions as a result of the heating rate, which can seldom be matched by classic heating methods (Figure 7). The effect of microwave radiation on chemical reactions is a combination of thermal effects (e.g. superheating, hot points and selective heating) and non-thermal effects of highly polarizing radiation. This makes it possible to obtain results beyond the scope of conventional heating; there may even be modifications of selectivity (chemo-, regio- and stereoselectivity). It is these possibilities that make this technique especially attractive as an alternative to conventional heating. Many of our group’s results show selectivity modifications under microwave radiation. We have published some reviews on these modifications and on thermal and non-thermal microwave effects and we have also developed a predictive model. Our method is also based on the use of “solvent-free” conditions, heterogeneous catalysis and ionic liquids as catalysts and susceptors. The combination of emerging organic synthesis methods has led to the design of new technology platforms for performing single-stage or multi-stage transformations. “Solvent-free” conditions are especially suited to microwave use; the radiation is absorbed directly by the reagents and not by the solvent, thus enhancing the radiation effects. Heterogeneous catalysis has been successfully applied in microwave assisted chemistry. The thermal effects could be highly important in these conditions, since a polar catalyst can be heated selectively; if the reagents and/or products are thermally unstable, the “cooling while heating” method avoids their breakdown in the solvent, which is kept at a lower temperature than the catalyst. This situation is


almost impossible in classic conditions. Ionic liquids absorb microwave radiation very efficiently and have been used for superheating non-polar solvents with microwaves. For example the addition of a tiny amount of ionic liquid to a hexane solution enables this apolar solvent to be heated to 215ºC in 10 s. Again, this situation is very difficult to obtain with conventional heating methods.

Figure 6. Synthesis of Ibuprofen

Education

Most organic chemistry textbooks do not deal with the concepts of green chemistry. Atom economy, for example is not regarded as necessary for understanding chemical reactions.

The next generation of scientists, however, will have to be trained up in the methods, techniques and general principles of green chemistry.

Several chemical societies have risen to the challenge and are now leading educational projects in this field, producing textbooks (Lancaster, 2003), case studies, lab experiments (NOP Project, Leadbeater, 2007), summer school, teaching and laboratory tools, educational symposia, etc.

In recent years the first green chemistry degree syllabi have been drawn up and the first masters in green chemistry, especially in the United Kingdom.

In Spain the Spanish Green Chemistry Network (Red Española de Química Sostenible: REQS) was set up in 2002 as a thinktank of researchers from various universities and research centres. It has


set itself the following objectives:

Promote knowledge, education and research within green chemistry and also its industrial application and use.

Foster cooperation between its members, promoting joint initiatives, the swapping of experiences and knowledge for the development and industrial application of green chemistry and bringing it to wider notice.

Set up liaison with other scientific institutions and organisations as well as departments, agencies and government authorities.

Present cooperative research projects to the various public programmes at state, European and international level.

Bring its members’ research and innovation capacity to the notice of the scientific community by participation in and organisation of conferences, courses and summer schools.

Promote technology transfer by holding meetings between R&D centres and companies (brokerage events).

Since then several joint research projects have been set up and the REQS is taking an active part in the SusChem Españaplatform.

Green chemistry is also being spread further afield through theGreen Chemistry Conference (Jornadas de Química Verde).

As for teaching activities, summer schools have been held in twouniversities: the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo(UIMP) and the Universidad Internacional de Andalucía.

Finally REQS organises the interuniversity green chemistry doctorate syllabus, which obtained the quality endorsement of ANECA (Spanish Accreditation and Quality Assessment Agency) for the courses 2003-04 to 2007-08, one of the first doctorate syllabi to obtain this quality accreditation. As a development of the doctorate syllabus, the REQS also organises the Master in Green Chemistry, which has obtained the quality accreditation in the courses 2006-07 and 2007-08.

The teaching objectives sought with the green chemistry post-graduate syllabi are the following:

Define green chemistry and give an account of its historical developments and other associated discoveries.

Establish the principles of green chemistry and define their implementation in the actual processes of the chemical industry.

Define the tools and general working areas of green chemistry. This is broken down into the following areas: i) Use of renewable starting material, ii) Atom economy, iii) Use of cleaner solvents (solvents in supercritical conditions, chemistry in water, solvent-free reagents, etc.), iv) Alternative reaction conditions (microwave, electrochemical), v) Catalysis: acid-base catalysts, redox catalysts, imprinting of solid catalysts, etc., vi) Biocatalysis: processes catalysed by enzymes or whole cells, use of genetically modified organisms, vii) Photochemistry and photocatalysis, viii) Biodegradable polymers and their use in chemical processes.

Recognise toxicity/hazardousness as a physical /structural property than can be worked on and manipulated from the design stage.

Present examples of industrial processes that fulfil the principles of green chemistry.

Keep abreast of the current trends in green chemistry in the interests of making a critical analysis of the "degree of


compliance” of any given industrial process with the postulates of green chemistry.

In accordance with these objectives the minimum professional skills to be picked up by students are: an advanced knowledge of the abovementioned general principles of green chemistry and the main techniques and methods involved. Although students may specialise in one of said techniques and methods, it is to be hoped by the end of their studies they will have at least asufficient knowledge of most of them.

Likewise, students completing the post-graduate course shall have picked up at least the following skills and aptitudes:

Evaluate the degree of sustainability of a chemical process or chemical reaction

Evaluate the degree of risk of a chemical process/reaction and the toxicity of the compounds involved

Be capable of working experimentally with one or several of the following techniques:

Biotransformations

Work with non-conventional solvents (ionic liquids, supercritical fluids...)

Catalytic transformations.

Use of alternative techniques for energy supply in chemical processes (electrochemical, photochemical, microwave radiation, ultrasound...)

Design the modification of an existing chemical process with the object of improving its sustainability and lowering its environmental impact.

Design new products in terms of sustainability, not only of the manufacturing process but also the processes using the product

Design new chemical processes of optimised sustainability for preparing a given compound.

The subjects taught are shown in Figure 8. These postgraduatesyllabi currently involve the participation of professors from over 15 universities and research centres.

From the viewpoint of creating the European Higher Education Area, the initiatives have to represent a step towards creating a consistent system of Green Chemistry training at European level. The central goal of our endeavours must be to achieve a European Green Chemistry Doctorate and Master Syllabus.

TO FIND OUT MORE

1. Anastas, P.T. and Warner, J.C. (1998). Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice. Ed. Oxford.

2. Anastas, P.T. and Kirchhoff, M.M. (2002). Origin, Current Status, and Challenges of Green Chemistry. Acc. Chem. Res. 35: 686-694.

3. Warner, J.C., Cannon, A.S. and Dye, K.M. (2004). Green Chemistry. Environmental Impact Assessment Review 24: 755-799.

4. Mestres, R. (2004). A brief structured view of green chemistry issues. Green Chem. G10-G12.

5. REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances). Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2.


http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/reach/reach_intro.htm

6. Green Chemistry Institute http://www.chemistry.org/greenchemistryinstitute

7. Green Chemistry Network. http://www.chemsoc.org/networks/gnc/

8. INCA. http://helios.unive.it/inca/

9. Green and Sustainable Network. http://www.gscn.net/indexE.html

10. ] SusChem España http://www.pte-quimicasostenible.org/

11. Red Española de Química Sostenible http://noema2bis.unizar.es:8080/redqs/

12. SusChem. Reaction & Process Design Report (2005). http://www.suschem.org/

13. Loupy, A. (2006) Microwaves in Organic Synthesis. 2nd edition. Ed. Wiley.

14. Díaz-Ortiz, A., de la Hoz, A., Moreno, A. (2004) Selectivity in Organic Synthesis under Microwave Irradiation. Current Organic Chemistry. 8: 903-918.

15. Díaz-Ortiz, A., de la Hoz, A., Moreno, A. (2005) Microwaves in Organic Synthesis. Thermal and Non Thermal Microwave Effects. Chem. Soc. Rev. 164-178.

16. de la Hoz, A., Prieto, M. P., Díaz-Ortiz, A., Moreno, A., Sánchez Migallón, A., Vázquez, E., Carrilllo. J.R. (2007) Microwave-Assisted Reactions in Heterocyclic Compounds with Applications in Medicinal and Supramolecular Chemistry. Comb. Chem. High Throughput Screening. 10: 877-902.

17. Lancaster, M. (2002) Green Chemistry an Introductory Text. Ed. Royal Society of Chemistry

18. Sustainability in the organic chemistry lab course. NOP. http://www.oc-practikum.de/

19. Leadbeater, N. and McGowan, C. (2007). Clean, Fast Organic Chemistry. Ed. CEM.

20. Masters Course in Green Chemistry & Sustainable Industrial Technology. University of York. http://www.york.ac.uk/res/gcg/Mres/home.htm

21. Green Chemistry Doctorate. Coordinating university, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. http://www.uclm.es/organos/vic_estudios/doctorado/20072009/cienciasES/quimicaSostenible

22. Master in Green Chemistry. Coordinating university, Universidad Jaume I. http://www.uji.es/ES/infoest/estudis/postgrau/oficial/0708/quimsos.html


Voltage Control ENVIRONMENT

Voltage control is a new type of solution that is currently catching on widely as a way of cutting down energy consumption considerably while maintaining comfort levels. Power Electronic Systems has developed a compact technology that makes these energy-saving solutions affordable and practicable for all sectors, regardless of their energy consumption. It also offers a very quick return on investment.

By ERNESTO GOÑI. Graduate in Exact Sciences and Diploma holder in IT. Productos y Soluciones Aplicadas S.L.

Energy is a scarce good. To make matters worse energy sources are likely to run out in the short term. Society, however, is locked into an increasingly high-consumption model for carrying out all its activities. The welfare state leads to a constantly increasing demand for this good.

Power Electronics Systems (PES) is an Israeli company whose products and solutions are distributed in Spain by PRODUSOL (Productos y Soluciones Aplicadas S.L.). It boasts a 20 year track record in making energy saving equipment and also invests heavily in R&D to provide different consumption sectors with a continual stream of different energy economising alternatives.

The solutions presented herein are based on three fundamental business principles:

1. Energy saving is immediate.

2. This energy saving is achieved without having to make any infrastructure changes in the current electrical installation either for lighting or for electric motors.

3. . A very short payback (ROI) time of about 2.5 years. These solutions also help to achieve a cleaner environment by cutting down the amount of CO2 emissions, in keeping with commitments taken on by the signatory governments of the Kyoto Protocol.

MARKET TRENDS

Energy is a scarce good that is increasingly costly to produce. Moreover, this price is perceived to be very high when in fact much higher prices are paid for items that are far less necessary. The difference lies in the fact that energy is nowadays regarded as an essential good.

The following points mark out a clear market trend:

1. Increase in electricity demand is constant; most consumers consider it to be an increasingly vital and indispensable item of their lives.

Voltage Control



2. It is becoming evermore costly to meet demand peaks. These peaks are seasonal and place a very heavy burden on the power supply system.

3. There is an increasing gap between production and consumption in the regions of highest demand.

4. This gap forces energy producers to make very high investments.

5. Prices are controlled at government level but rising prices are set to make an increasingly big impact on energy bills.

6. The constantly increasing demand and concomitant rise in cost force user and consumer markets to take:

a. Compensatory measures.

b. Energy saving measures. The market is seeking quick energy-saving-solutions to control its investments.

7. Moreover, the environment (global warming) is a top priority today, prompting a quest for solutions to eliminate CO2 emissions.

8. Efforts are being made worldwide to achieve an efficient use of energy.

Governments are working on initiatives of all types in an effort to change consumption habits, set up energy-saving measures and transform the generation systems.

Along these lines:

1. Central and regional governments are stepping up their programmes to promote efficient energy use, harness renewable energy sources and set up consumption-reduction and -control measures, etc. In this endeavour the following facilities are being offered:

a. Infrastructure conversion programmes.

b. Discounts.

c. Grants for studies on energy consultancy, infrastructure transformation, implementation of energy saving equipment, etc., for both indoor and outdoor use.

2. Support is being given to the implementation of green- and clean-technology energy production systems.

3. Environmental legislation is being drawn up to force consumers to take specific measures within an obligatory period.

4. Deregulation of markets to open up the field for new opportunities.

All this has been conducive to the setting up of new infrastructure and has created problems of converting existing systems. Theseoften pose subsequent maintenance problems for users. For example, the new energy-saving legislation in construction workentails the setting up of low-consumption systems. Afterwards,however, they may not in fact be used because of their high cost. Here is where quick-saving measures come into their own, as applied to existing infrastructure. They help the market trend towards lower consumption without calling for huge outlays bymajor users with up-and-running infrastructure. In other words they allow the infrastructure-modification work to be put back in time, complying with energy-saving legislation from the first day.

The technology of the equipment described herein is based onvoltage control (flux optimisation). As such it can be quickly andeasily phased in to existing infrastructure; it is also applicable to

Electric motors

Motor Energy Controller


various levels of energy demand, opening it up to users whohitherto had no access to such technology.

Sectors such as town councils, street- and road-lighting, the hotel trade, car parks, shopping malls, logistics centres, small and medium-sized shops, large supermarkets, distribution chains,service stations, industry, outside lighting of parks and venues, etc., now have access to this new technology and can tackle significant energy-saving measures while keeping their present infrastructure. In fact the world’s greatest economic powers are now setting up solutions of this type in these sectors. In Europe and the United States this trend is now becoming widespread.

The world’s great economic powers are now setting up voltage control technologies in various

activity sectors

Bloomberg hosted a summit on energy saving in these sectors of society, stressing the capacity for applying voltage controlsystems. The discussion turned on two fundamental questions:

1. Is energy being used inefficiently?

2. Haven’t we got the capacity of controlling voltage for economising energy within reasonable comfort levels?

These two ideas came to the fore when all the summit members focused on today’s capacity of voltage control to achievecomfortable production environments. The meeting stressed that the implementation of voltage control measures was the quickest and easiest way of controlling consumption and saving energy in the short term.

Electric-motor power consumption is one of the most promising fields for energy saving and control measures.

The market itself has favoured the efficient energy use of electricmotors, producing solutions that harness the different load needs, tailoring the motor’s running mode to its load. But several important factors call for global solutions to be introduced forexisting infrastructure:

1. The sheer number of electric motors being used.

2. 40 to 60% surplus in the motor life cycle.

3. Impossibility of short-term change.

4. Indispensable use.

Moreover, there are some important energy saving objectives in the consumption of electric motors:

In the electricity world the EMF (electromotive force or voltage) is the initial parameter. All the other parameters, such as output, torque, PF (power factor), current, etc. stem from this parameter.

There is a direct relation between «suitable voltage» and load efficiency. The «suitable voltage» can never be obtained across the board for every user, due to voltage drops, depending on the infrastructure.

The objective is to have a sinusoidal voltage controller that is RFI/EMI-free, harmonic free and economically efficient.

Electric-motor power consumption is one of the most promising fields for energy saving and


control measures

Power Electronic Systems has developed the MEC technology(Motor Energy Controller); this ensures that only the requiredvoltage is delivered to the controlled motor.

LEC and MEC technologies can be easily set up at different energy-demand levels by users from

many different sectors that were hitherto unable to use them.

The start-up of three-phase induction motors has been a long-standing challenge ever since they first came into use:

Three-phase induction motors need a start-up current ranging from 6 to 8 times the nominal. Obviously, for the motor itself, the best start-up method is Direct on Line (DOL).

Nonetheless, the various motor loads call for a torque reduction to avoid mechanical stress and an additional power input set-up (generators, distribution transformers, cables), which in turn calls for the current limit to be as low as possible.

Star/ Delta and Auto Trafo have been the obvious motor start-up methods for almost 100 years.

In the eighties of last century the soft starter appeared on the scene, using thyristors to control the RMS voltage supplied to the motors during the start-up phase.

Phase control poses many problems, the most prominent of whichare:

The overall power factor (controller and motor) is not improved.

Voltage and current interference generate higher losses.

Harmonics generate higher rotor losses. Some counter clockwise CCW harmonics bring down the torque.

RFI/EMI (radio-frequency and electromagnetic interference) is continually produced during phase control.

The presence of RFI/EMI and harmonics call for very costly filters.

The controller was practically unprotected from short circuits and voltage surges.

PES’s systems are based on a voltage control method bymaintaining the sinusoidal waveform.

This technology has been put through its paces during the last 7years. The MEC (Motor Energy Controller) systems are based onthe principle of «inducing only the non-required voltage to theload» (fig. 1).


Figure 1. Voltage reduction by wave demodulation.

There are great differential advantages in the technology of this MEC equipment:

No harmonic distortion–THD < 1%.

The power factor PF condensers can be connected up in parallel with the motor.

The motor start-up current is reduced to 2x the nominal.

The line start-up current is reduced to 1-1.5 x the nominal.

Complete short-circuit protection.

Maintains the transient voltage system.

RFI/ EMI free.

Meets EMC standards even during start-up.

The power transfer ratio is 15 (ratio between the load power and the control device power).

The Motor Energy Controller is based on the idea that «reducing the voltage applied to partially loaded induction motors can makethem run more efficiently». The systems developed since the eighties of the twentieth century did not perform as hoped. These new systems, however, attain optimum efficiency based on thefollowing principles:

At nominal horsepower induction motors have a relatively high power factor, PF. Voltage reduction in this case would not improve the motor’s efficiency or power factor.

As the load drops, however, the power factor and the efficiency both fall in line.

This occurs initially because the magnetised current losses do not depend on the load. These loads, moreover, are almost constant.

The reduction of the voltage delivered to the motor, at reduced load, will result in the following:

Lower magnetised current.

Reduction of iron losses.

Increase in the power factor.

VOLTAGE CONTROL

Sometimes there are environmental and safety standards that impose minimum lighting criteria. On other occasions there maybe a recommended lighting level in shopping areas to provide a comfortable setting for the shoppers. All too often there are lighting schemes that live on by simple inertia without anyoneproposing their change. In most of these cases the real comfort


needs are oversized. The difference becomes glaring when some of the consumer centres in Spain are compared with other countries that have taken the fore in setting up voltage control solutions.

The best and most modern infrastructure in Spain (especially systems set up from scratch or created recently) has been set up with full consideration given to the importance of saving energy in the lighting system, by such means as using low-consumption lamps or energy economising measures. The energy optimising systems in these installations greatly raises the initial outlay, as part of the overall construction costs; maintenance costs are also increased. Furthermore, these installations based on voltage control also include control of lighting.

Whenever these cheap and overall voltage control measures are mooted, with concomitant reduction of consumption and cost,they often meet with mistrust due to the reduced lighting levels. The truth is, however, that such measures as ballast and bulb changes produce the same percentage lighting loss, which in all cases is almost inappreciable to the naked eye.

PES’s Lighting Energy Controllers (LEC) cut down consumption byover 20%, while the lighting level loss is imperceptible to the naked eye. In other words the human eye cannot perceive the lux reduction produced by a 10% reduction of the input voltage.

PES’s Lighting Energy Controllers (LEC) achieve consumption saving rates of over 20%, with a

negligible lighting-level loss, imperceptible to the naked eye

Furthermore, all establishments have an excess lighting level, sothese voltage reduction measures can be applied to save energy without forfeiting the required ambient comfort. Spain is a deficit company in terms of energy production but it still consumesmuch more than is necessary in many places.

Moreover, lighting systems and induction motors both work moreefficiently when the input voltage is reduced and controlled, maintaining their lighting level and performance. In the case of motors there is a need for a technology more complex than mere voltage reduction, since it is necessary to control the motor’s working capacity and performance levels in each of its time units (fig. 2).

Figure 2. LEC systems are based on harnessing surplus capacity

Technological Lighting Principles

The idea is very simple; it is more difficult to apply thetechnology in practice and make it applicable in all sorts of settings. As it is, not all sectors have suitable installation and operating conditions for setting up the solution with a reasonably quick payback on the initial outlay. To solve this problem,


equipment has to meet the needs of a wide range ofinfrastructure, from 2 amperes right up to 250 amperes.

There are different ways of flux optimisation by voltage reduction. All systems work on the curve of the famous cosine FI.

Some solutions cut off the curve at its peaks and troughs, producing mini lighting cuts in the bulbs that, except in critical conditions, are not perceptible to the naked eye. This new LECtechnology generates a negative modulation of the voltage curve; this new, continuous modulation curve brings down the voltage tothe necessary and desired level. The wave is thus continuous and controlled, with no functional discontinuity and hence keeps the lighting at a constant level.

The principles are clearly depicted in figure 3, showing the flux-control technology by negative modulation as against the curve cut-off method.

Figure 3. Transformation maintaining wave continuity by demodulation.

This technology, easy to understand in theory, calls for theimplementation of highly technical systems that, in turn, facilitate another type of voltage control, with an even greater reduction of consumptions and costs.

Voltage control technology can be applied in sectors such as street- and road-lighting, town

councils, the hotel trade, shopping malls, logistics centres, etc.

Technological Principles in Solutions for Motors

We have already mentioned the technological principles for cutting down energy consumption in variable-load steady-state motors.

MEC works on the following principles:

MEC is an integrated energy controller to improve motor performance.

All-in-one solution.

Energy saving.

Starter with voltage reduction (including the soft starter).

Inherited power factor correction – PF Correction.

Very simple installation.

Requires no changes in current infrastructure.

Harmonic free.

Helps to lengthen motor life.


Reduces the motor cost cycle.

Saving due to fewer motor shutdowns for problems or maintenance.

Voltage control equipment can attain direct energy saving of upto 30% and indirect saving levels of about 15%

This technology is applicable to electric motors of all outputs, thus providing solutions to meet the needs of large, small and medium-sized users.

Voltage control equipment achieves these saving levels achieved without having to make any

change in the existing infrastructure

The abovementioned energy saving and control system for motors is shown in figure 4.

Figure 4. Technological design of the MEC line. «Three-in-one solution: Soft Starter, Energy Saving and Continuous Control».

The motors that are eligible for MEC-based energy control and saving are those that work continuously at variable load. In otherwords, those in which the power demand can be varied in terms of the work to be carried out at each particular moment:

Conveyor belts.

Hydraulic pumps.

HVAC: heating, ventilation, air conditioning...

Motors used in the steel industry.

Motors for haulage in quarries.

Escalators

Mechanical loaders.

Simple Implementation Principle

One of the fundamental characteristics of these products is that they can be implemented in accordance with the basic principlesof:

Simplicity

Maintenance of existing infrastructure.


Easy installation.

Immediate energy saving.

Very short payback time (ROI).

On the strength of these principles solutions of this type are nowcatching on widely in various settings with different needs of use, time and operation. The benefits are:

Client confidence in the solutions.

Protection of investments.

Compatibility with the development of existing infrastructure.

Differential saving by time windows

An especially important feature of the market solutions is thatthey can offer energy consumers the chance of managing their lighting needs differentially throughout a 24-hour period. Depending on the activity involved and the ability to take power-flow decisions, business activities or lighting needs might differ from one time window to another. Examples might be hotels,railway stations, street lighting, offices, etc. All of them may have different lighting needs at different times.

The described solutions are designed for saving energy by voltage control, allowing for energy-saving time windows in which light intensity may be lowered without forfeiting desired comfort levels. In other words consumption flows can be controlled andsavings achieved in light of pre-set comfort needs.

Compatibility Principle

These products and voltage control solutions have one fundamental advantage, as already pointed out, but it is worth stressing here:

They produce energy savings in a quick, simple way and can be phased into existing systems and installations; the older these are, the higher the potential savings. This fundamental principle, based on respect for existing infrastructure, means that changes can be tackled with great flexibility. All the following might be considered:

Achieve direct and indirect savings quickly by phasing the products into existing infrastructure and thus protecting past investments.

Comply quickly with government energy-saving legislation.

Take a more considered and long-term approach to the change and modernisation of infrastructure. The main benefits here are:

Outlays can be put back in time.

Maintenance of savings.

Fundamental Principle

One of the complications that usually crop up in implementingpower-reduction systems and equipment is the appearance of «electromagnetic interference», at great detriment to existing installations and infrastructure.

Progress has been made in dealing with problems of this type, allowing voltage control equipment to be implemented without modifying existing infrastructure or producing «electromagnetic


interference». This is a sine qua non for selecting a power-control and consumption- and cost-reduction system.

DIFFERENT FLUX CONTROL SOLUTIONS Each particular installation calls for a solution to meet its needs and characteristics. Some solutions base their input on an astronomical clock for controlling operations in terms of different time windows. Others include output voltage stabilizers to ensure constant voltage flow, to the benefit of the infrastructure (fig. 5).Other equipment controls the saving time windows throughout all the input voltage variations and passes on the wave variations tothe output voltage (fig. 6).

Figure 5. Voltage stabilisation transformation model.

Figure 6. Transformation model without stabilisation.

It is worth stressing here that the different sorts of installations call for voltage control systems to meet their particular needs, with three-phase and/or single-phase equipment.

This is a fundamental factor that has enabled this technology tobe set up in all activity sectors: industrial, commercial andtransformation. In the very near future there are expected to be solutions for widespread implementation in the residential market (fig. 7).


Figure 7. Technologies developed for voltage control.

DIRECT AND INDIRECT SAVINGS

The savings produced by voltage control equipment can be broken down into two types:

Direct energy saving, in some cases up to 30%. These are achieved by keeping the voltage to the necessary level for maintaining the desired lighting level, thereby reducing the energy consumption with the associated cost saving.

Indirect saving, which may be up to 15%. These are knock-on cost savings due to lower maintenance and replacement rate of the lighting elements (wear and tear of lamps; according to manufacturer’s figures their life may be lengthened by 300% if the voltage is reduced from 230 to 205 volts) (figs. 8 and 9).


Figure 8 y 9. Relation between voltage and bulb lifetime:Maintenance saving.

Depending on the type of infrastructure involved, and lumping together all types of saving, these new voltage control systems can obtain a TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) reduction of up to 50% (fig. 10).

Figure 10. Savings may add up to as much as 50%.

It is important to stress, once more, that these saving rates areachieved without having to modify the infrastructure and regardless of the different energy needs of each client.

Electric motor energy savings Among other objectives the MEC line aims to bring about a savingin electric motors. Direct savings in motor consumption by


applying the three functions in one of PES’s MEC lines may be as much as 18%.

Indirect savings, stemming from the longer useful life of the motors and the reduction in the motor’s lifecycle cost might match or even outstrip direct savings. The greatest benefits to users are likely to be protection of their investments and the service level of installed motors (fewer shutdowns and longer useful life).

Savings are also produced in the «reactive power» (VAR), which,together with the power level we pay for, makes up the use vector governed by the famous cosine FI. This saving may top40% in MEC’s market solutions (fig. 11).

Figure 11. Real saving results of a conveyor belt.

The example shows the energy consumption reduction of a conveyor belt in a cement works, with a direct power saving of18% and a reactive power saving (VAR) of 58%.

In other cases, such as the illustrated example of air conditioning towers, the direct savings were 14% and the reactive power saving (VAR) was 20% (fig. 12).

Figure 12. Real saving results of an air conditioning system.

CONCLUSIONS

The energy saving solutions developed by the company PES bringthis new technology within reach of infrastructure of all type. Previously they were affordable and practicable only for majorsystems (fig. 13).

Figure 13. Adaptation to different types of infrastructure.


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