IN Brief:
- CITB and industry partners are developing construction-specific deaf awareness and hearing-loss training.
- At least 500 people will participate across major contractors and their supply chains.
- Eight free modules will combine e-learning, subtitled and BSL-supported video, practical communication guidance, and knowledge checks.
CITB is supporting the development of construction-specific deaf awareness and hearing-loss training, with an initial pilot expected to reach at least 500 people across major contractors and their supply chains.
The Construction Industry Training Board is working with Bovis, RNID, Unseen Aware, Safety in Design, and Heathrow on the programme, supported through CITB’s Industry Impact Fund. The project combines health and safety expertise, lived experience, behavioural science, and construction-sector input.
Eight free training modules are planned for workers, managers, employers, and construction organisations. The material will include interactive e-learning, subtitled and British Sign Language-supported video supplied by ITV, and knowledge checks intended to make the programme usable across different roles and levels of responsibility.
The pilot includes Bovis, Sir Robert McAlpine, GRAHAM, Kier, Wates, Ferrovial Construction, VolkerFitzpatrick, Mace, and Costain. Participating companies have committed to deliver the training at site level and through supply-chain partners, extending the exercise beyond corporate management and central health and safety teams.
CITB estimates that 328,000 construction workers live with hearing impairment or tinnitus, while three in four are exposed to hazardous noise levels. Its research also suggests that around 26% of the manual construction workforce experiences some form of hearing-related condition.
Vanessa Freeman, Head of Grant and Funding Products at CITB, said: “We need to ensure deaf awareness training becomes more widely available.” The programme is intended to address both the health consequences of occupational noise and the practical communication barriers experienced by workers who already have hearing loss.
Those are related problems, but they require different controls. The Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 require employers to assess risk and provide information and training where daily or weekly average exposure reaches 80dB(A). Hearing protection and hearing-protection zones are required at 85dB(A), while the exposure limit is 87dB(A) after accounting for the attenuation provided by hearing protection.
HSE guidance is equally clear that hearing protection cannot be the sole method of controlling noisy work. Employers are expected to reduce exposure through measures such as removing noisy tasks where possible, using quieter processes and equipment, maintaining machinery, increasing distance, and limiting the time people spend in noisy areas before relying on personal protection for the remaining risk.
Construction complicates that hierarchy because exposure changes continuously. Workers can move between breaking, drilling, cutting, compacting, lifting, and quieter tasks within the same shift, while subcontractors may introduce additional equipment into areas where the original noise assessment was based on a different sequence of work.
Hearing loss also affects more than exposure monitoring. Site activity depends heavily on verbal instructions, alarms, reversing warnings, briefings, radios, and conversations between people who may have limited sight of one another. Communication therefore becomes a safety control in its own right when a worker cannot reliably hear information that others assume has been received.
Excessive attenuation can create another difficulty. HSE cautions against hearing protection that isolates workers to the point that communication and warning signals become harder to hear, reinforcing the need to match protection to exposure rather than applying the highest available rating regardless of the task.
The proposed CITB modules are designed to address the workplace side of that equation. Planned subjects include the causes and effects of hearing loss, the everyday experiences of deaf and hard-of-hearing colleagues, practical communication techniques, recruitment and onboarding, and ways of creating working environments in which employees can disclose hearing difficulties.
Testing the material through contractors and their supply chains should expose it to the fragmented employment structure common on major projects. Direct employees, subcontractors, agency workers, specialists, supervisors, and visitors can all operate under different induction and training systems even though they share the same work areas and safety-critical communications.
CITB also places the initiative within construction’s wider recruitment requirement, estimating that the sector needs 41,200 additional workers each year for the next five years. Deaf awareness will not resolve that labour demand, but avoidable communication and inclusion barriers make little sense in an industry already trying to expand its available workforce.
The training remains under development and is due to enter pilot delivery next year before becoming available free of charge through CITB. Its effectiveness will depend on whether the modules alter behaviour on live sites, where occupational noise, hearing protection, communication, and supervision have to work together rather than as separate items on a training matrix.
