Scope and Applicability of the BOCW Act
A combined reading of the scope and applicability of the BOCW Act clearly indicates that consultancy work or design is outside the definition of 'building and construction work.' Therefore, the workers engaged in this activity would fall outside the category of 'building worker,' thereby rendering such activities outside its scope. The relevant sections are quoted below:
Section 1(4): The BOCW Act applies to every establishment which employs, or had employed on any day of the preceding twelve months, ten or more building workers in any building or other construction work.
Section 2(e): "Building worker" means a person who is employed to do any skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled manual, supervisory, technical, or clerical work for hire or reward, whether the terms of employment be expressed or implied, in connection with any building or other construction work but does not include any such person:
(i) who is employed mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity; or
(ii) who, being employed in a supervisory capacity, draws wages exceeding one thousand six hundred rupees per mensem or exercises, either by the nature of the duties attached to the office or by reason of the powers vested in him, functions mainly of a managerial nature.
Section 2(d): "Building or other construction work" means the construction, alteration, repairs, maintenance, or demolition of or in relation to buildings, streets, roads, railways, tramways, airfields, irrigation, drainage, embankment and navigation works, flood control works (including stormwater drainage works), generation, transmission, and distribution of power, water works (including channels for distribution of water), oil and gas installations, electric lines, wireless, radio, television, telephone, telegraph, and overseas communications, dams, canals, reservoirs, watercourses, tunnels, bridges, viaducts, aqueducts, pipelines, towers, cooling towers, transmission towers, and such other work as may be specified in this behalf by the appropriate Government, by notification but does not include any building or other construction work to which the provisions of the Factories Act, 1948 (63 of 1948), or the Mines Act, 1952 (35 of 1952), apply.