The evolution of legislation on Health and Safety on construction site in Italy

Starting in 2007, with the approval of law 123, the Italian government has proceeded to reorganize the law summary in the matter of health and safety in the workplace, highlighting important observations in respect to previous regulatory framework. The first regards the reunification of set standards, ending the existing distinction between the construction site and other workplaces. The second regards the complete abandonment of logic of the 1950’s norms based on prescriptions and prohibitions, in favor of evaluative logic introduced in the EU Directives in the 1990’s. The paper examines in detail the path taken by Italy starting from the first legislation in the end of the 19th century until today highlighting the following stages: damage preventions, risk preventions, safety planning and safety management. The differences found in the law summary highlight the difficulties of this route that is due to the particular situation that the construction industry is experiencing in Italy. An element of no lesser importance, for example, is given by the excessive fragmentation of productive infrastructure of construction sector.