Accidents construction industry

CII. 1993. Source Document 86, Zero Accident Techniques. Prepared for CII by Roger W. Liska, David Goodlowe, and Rana Sen. Austin, Tex. Construction Industry Institute. 

Large-scale construction industry often creates risk of accidents and health hazards. 

Often accidents happen because of changes to planned work, something pretty much inevitable in the construction industry. 

And construction operatives do take risks, as evidenced in industry-specific accident models. For example, two of the three root causes of accidents under the construction industry-specific Accident Root Cause Tracing Model (ARCTM) developed by Abdelhamid and Everett (2000) are assigned to deliberate risk taking on the part of operatives. Whether they decided to proceed with work activities once an existing unsafe condition had been identified, or decided to act unsafely regardless of the initial conditions of the work environment, either approach requires the identification of the risk - and its subsequent acceptance on behalf of the workforce. 

These ideas of causality also imply that accidents can be used for learning and improvements around safety. At their simplest level, statistics provide focus for interventions that 45% of workers killed in the construction industry during 2013/14 fell from height (Health and Safety Executive 2014) justifiably suggests this is still an area worthy of directed management efforts. 

Construction Safety Management and Engineering by Hill (2003), Construction Safety Manual by Heberle (1998), among others. A recently published book titled Construction Equipment and Methods-Planning, Iimovation, Safety by Bemold (2013) provides an overview of how to prevent accidents with used equipment in the construction industry. The book also presents methods for the safe design of trenches, formwork, and temporary stmctures. 

Kartam, N. A., Bouz, R. G. (1998). Fatalities and injuries in the Kuwaiti construction industry. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 30, 805-814. 

Liska, R. W., Goodloe, D., Sen, R. (1993). Zero accident techniques. Construction Industry Institute, Source Document No. 86, The Univ. of Texas at Austin, Austin, Tex. 

Poorly defined feedback can lead to a decrease in safety. As an incentive to reduce the number of accidents in the California construction industry, for example, workers with the best safety records—as measured by fewest reported incidents— were rewarded [126]. The reward created an incentive to withhold information about small accidents and near misses, and they could not therefore be investigated and the causes eliminated. Under-reporting of incidents created the illusion that the system was becoming safer, when instead risk had merely been muted. The inaccurate risk perception by management led to not taking the necessary control actions to reduce risk. Instead, the reporting of accidents should have been rewarded. 

Interestingly, on the question of who or what was to blame for the accident, the authors of another article on the case, Piotr Moncarz and Robert Taylor, did not focus on the deeds of Gillum and Duncan, or on those of the fabricators and their subcontractors. Instead, they focused on a flaw in the design process control within the A E [architecture and engineering] group as well as the construction industry. ... 

So many variables are involved that it is not possible to provide a single multiplier for all construction industry accidents. 

The review of accidents started with the perception from many stakeholders that coastal and maritime engineering presents a particularly hazardous environment for the construction industry. Simm and Cruickshank (1998) identified many of the commercial and technical hazards experienced by key stakeholders within the industry. However, this earlier review did not focus on health and safety issues. The current review seeks to examine what safety statistics exist and answer the following ... 

Chapter 3 reviews general health and safety hazards and the risks of accidents in construction work, including some accident statistics and a case description of a fatal accident. The results gained by the recent focus on improving safety performance by the Finnish construction industry itself and by its stakeholders are reviewed. 

Chapter 10 identifies an urgent need for a new kind of safety training in the construction industry. This training requires new methods and procedures if it is to effectively reduce the currently high incidence of accidents in Finland. A fiiU-scale model of the industry s real work situations aims to utilize the HSEQ Training Park as a safety training innovation that enables learning via practical demonstrations and active participation. 

Accident Sources and Prevention in the Construction Industry—Some Recent Developments in Finland... 

In the construction industry, the frequency of accidents is higher than in most other industries, and a major share of serious and fatal accidents is every year registered to construction work. 

Fig. 1 The trends in accident frequency rates in the construction industry of Finland during the years 2005-2012, presented for all compensated accidents and for of the accidents leading to more than 4 days absence from work (The data are issued by the Federation of Accident Insurance Institutions in Finland)...

Fig. 2 a All notified accidents in the constmction industry by work operation of the injured person leading to the injury, b Injured part of the body in serious accidents leading to pension in the construction industry (Source The national statistical database issued by the Finnish Federation of Accident Insurance Institutions, including all notified work accidents in Finland during the years 2005-2009)... 

The construction industry covers about 7 % of the employed labour in Finland (in 2012, 175 000 employees), and is male-dominated, as approximately 90 % of the workforce are men (Oksa et al. 2013). According to the statistics of the Federation of Accident Insurance Instimtions (FAIl), the construction industry has the second highest accident figures in the comparison between the absolute accident numbers of different branches. The amount of accidents at work has remained quite stable in recent years, at approximately 14 000 accidents/year. Accident frequency is over 60 accidents/miUion working hours. 

Many of the causes of these accidents are reflected in the detailed requirements of the relevant Regulations which lay down the preventative measures to be taken. This chapter looks at the safety legislation for the construction industry and some of the techniques for meeting the required safety standards. 

Each year, the HSE publishes a report in which data are given on the number of fatal accidents and the incidence rate for reportable non-fatal accidents. In the period 1981-1985 the figures for fatal accidents in the construction industry compared with the manufacturing industries were ... 

---