HSE Professional Guide · Construction Safety (HSE) Coordination · Issue 9
The Future of the Construction Safety Coordinator Profession: What Challenges Lie Ahead, and What Needs to Change?
Introduction
In the previous issue, we examined where Hungary stands in international comparison through a specific document: the Health and Safety Plan (in Hungarian: Biztonsági és Egészségvédelmi Terv, BET). This issue approaches the topic from a different angle: rather than asking where we stand today, it asks where we should be heading.
The legal framework for the coordinator profession has remained essentially unchanged since 2002, with only minor amendments, while the technological environment of construction – BIM-based design, digital site documentation, sensor-based site monitoring – has undergone a fundamental transformation in recent years. This article examines where the greatest tension lies between the current regulatory framework and technological/market development, and what should change as a result.
ℹ️ About this issue
This issue is deliberately forward-looking and opinion-forming. It does not claim that every development direction described here is achievable in the short term, but rather that the profession should consciously prepare for them – before the market or the legislator imposes change instead.
1 · Future Development Trends – An International Outlook
The technological environment of coordination work in Western and Northern Europe already looks different from what current Hungarian practice requires. A few directions that are likely to reach the Hungarian market over the medium term:
1.1 Digital Twins and BIM-Based Safety Planning
On major UK and German projects, it is increasingly common for safety coordination to start not from a paper-based safety plan, but from the project's digital twin. Clashes between construction phases, site logistics areas, and simultaneous work activities become visible in modelled form already at the design stage – rather than being discovered on site once two subcontractors turn out to be working in the same area at the same time.
1.2 AI-Based Predictive Risk Analysis
In some Western European markets, systems have already emerged that attempt to forecast, from historical accident and near-miss data combined with the project's current schedule, which work phases carry elevated risk. This does not replace the coordinator's professional judgement, but is increasingly expected as a supporting tool.
1.3 Wearables and IoT Sensors
Location tracking in confined spaces or work at height, gas detection for groundworks, fatigue and heat-stress monitoring – these are not futuristic ideas but practices already introduced on several major international projects. This expands the coordinator's role: it is no longer enough to know the documentation; one must also understand what data such a system produces and what its alerts mean.
1.4 Drone-Based Site Audits
On large-scale projects (e.g. solar park construction, logistics warehouses), regular full-site walkthroughs are increasingly being supplemented by drone surveys, which can capture the site's condition faster and with better documentation than a traditional walking inspection.
This, however, is not simply a technical matter: under the EU's EASA regulatory framework, drone operations are subject to categories (open, specific, certified), and pilots are subject to registration and – typically for commercial/industrial flights – A1/A2/A3 or specific-category examinations, as well as mandatory liability insurance. Near industrial facilities or populated areas, ad hoc airspace authorisation and use of the relevant national airspace-notification application may also be required. If a coordinator wishes to operate this equipment personally in the future, they themselves will need to obtain the necessary qualifications, permits, and expertise.
ℹ️ The common thread
The common thread across these trends is not that technology "replaces" the coordinator – but that the coordinator's role is becoming increasingly data-driven. Anyone who today thinks exclusively in terms of paper-based documentation risks a competitive disadvantage within five years.
2 · Software Tools Supporting Coordinators' Work
Tools for this future already exist – the question is to what extent domestic practice actually uses them. A few typical categories:
- Digital risk assessment and compliance platforms – where the safety plan is not a static document but a version-controlled, continuously updatable system in which every change is recorded with a date and responsible party.
- BIM-based coordination tools – where elevated-risk work phases can be flagged directly in the model, and the system automatically flags when two work processes would clash in time or space.
- Mobile site audit and reporting apps – used to document near-miss reports and site walkthroughs via phone or tablet, with photos and GPS coordinates, instead of paper.
- KPI dashboards and reporting tools – which make near-miss, PPE-compliance, and CAPA-status metrics visible in real time at management level, rather than as a monthly spreadsheet summary.
These are not theoretical categories – solutions already exist on the market (in the form of platforms such as Autodesk Construction Cloud, Procore, and similar) that support this kind of digital, BIM-compatible coordination. The question is not whether the tools exist, but whether the domestic coordinator profession knows and applies them – and whether the current qualification system expects this at all.
⚠️ A regulatory blind spot
Today, a coordinator who works exclusively with a paper-based safety plan is just as legally compliant as one who works from a BIM model and maintains a digital KPI report. This regulatory blind spot is a medium-term competitive disadvantage for coordinators and firms seeking to work with digitally more mature clients (e.g. foreign-owned investors, EPC contractors).
3 · Gaps in Hungarian Practice
3.1 No Unified Coordinator Register or Qualification Database
The qualification requirement introduced in January 2026 was an important step, but on its own it does not solve a fundamental problem: there is no public, searchable register through which a client could verify that a coordinator genuinely holds the required qualification and active practical experience. This gap also hinders quality differentiation in the market.
3.2 No Digital/BIM-Compatible Content Standard for the Safety Plan
Decree 4/2002 (SzCsM-EüM), as amended by Decree 64/2023 (GFM), does not address whether the plan may be produced in a digital or BIM-compatible format, nor what content minimum this would entail. This is not a prohibition – it is simply not addressed. In practice, this means that coordinators and firms that do use digital tools apply their own, mutually inconsistent solutions, with no standardisation.
3.3 No Professional Advocacy Body
This is perhaps the deepest structural gap. The coordinator profession in Hungary has no chamber, association, or other professional body that could:
- establish unified professional standards (e.g. template documents, methodological guidance) – as the French coordonnateur SPS community did with its shared PGCSPS template,
- advocate for coordinators' legal and financial independence vis-à-vis clients,
- give the profession a unified voice toward the legislator, rather than leaving this to sporadic initiatives by individual firms or professionals,
- provide ongoing professional training and knowledge exchange, incorporating digital competencies.
In Germany, BG BAU fulfils this role; in France, the coordonnateur SPS professional community does. In Hungary, this function is simply absent – and this is one of the reasons why professional standards vary so widely.
3.4 Lack of Software Competency in the Qualification System
Current qualification requirements expect an occupational-safety and technical/construction professional background, but no digital or BIM competency. This is not necessarily a flaw – in 2002, it was not a relevant consideration – but by 2026, it is.
4 · Legal and Regulatory Issues That Need to Be Addressed
The gaps outlined above point fairly clearly to the areas where meaningful regulatory progress is needed:
- Introduction of a digital/BIM-compatible safety-plan standard, which would not replace but complement the current content minimum.
- Establishment of a coordinator registration system, with mandatory, regular continuing education that includes digital competencies.
- Clarification of client obligations regarding digital data provision and BIM-based collaboration.
- Legal grounding for a professional advocacy body, which could also play a role in developing and maintaining the points above.
ℹ️ Discussions already underway
These points are not isolated ideas – policy-level discussions on several related directions are currently underway with the relevant decision-makers. The details have been developed in a separate document aimed specifically at the legislative process; it is not the purpose of this article series to publish the specific proposals, only to present the underlying problem.
5 · BIM Models and Software Competency in Day-to-Day Coordinator Work
It is worth clarifying: the coordinator does not need to become a BIM modeller. The role is not to build the model, but to read and flag the model through a safety lens.
In practice, this means the coordinator:
- can review a clash detection report and identify where a modelled clash represents a genuine safety risk (e.g. two work phases being carried out simultaneously in the same space),
- understands the relationship between 4D scheduling (time + model) and the phases in which elevated-risk work activities are concentrated,
- can translate the information flagged in the model back into the language of the safety plan – meaning the professional content remains central, not the software itself.
This type of competency is currently not assessed anywhere in the qualification system, even as an increasing number of major projects – particularly those backed by foreign-owned investors – already treat it as a baseline requirement for every project participant, including the coordinator.
6 · What Needs to Change – and What Could Change – in the Profession
In summary, the key directions along which the profession should advance:
- Establishment of a professional chamber or association – this would provide the framework for all further development: standards, advocacy, and a unified professional voice.
- A public coordinator register, which would also support quality differentiation in the market.
- Training reform that builds digital/BIM competencies into qualification requirements – at an analytical level, not a modelling one.
- Development of industry template documents and methodological guidance that go beyond the statutory minimum, and against which the quality of a given safety plan could be measured.
- Consideration of a minimum software-competency requirement within the qualification system, over the medium term.
These are not minor, cosmetic adjustments – they would represent a genuine structural shift in how the market thinks about the coordinator role: not as a formal statutory requirement, but as a professional, continuously evolving vocation.
7 · Conclusion – Back to the Series' Central Thread
Earlier issues in this series showed that the coordinator's independence is legally well-founded, and that a properly maintained safety plan provides genuine protection – not merely a formal box to tick. This issue adds one further point: this will remain true in the future only if the profession does not stand still at its current level, but consciously advances toward digitalisation, professional self-organisation, and advocacy.
A direct consequence of this is that, in the client's eyes, a coordinator becomes a genuinely valued professional precisely to the extent that they keep pace with this development: the more qualified they are, and the more digital and BIM competencies they hold, the more the client will treat them as a partner – not merely as a mandatory line item required by law.
The next and final issue in the series examines how HSE coordination fits into an integrated security approach that combines it with physical asset protection – and what this means in practice for the overall security architecture of a construction or industrial project.