86. Key Parameters on Financial Loss of Construction Accidents in Hong Kong Construction Industry

Construction accidents happen all over the world. These cause construction progress delay, compensation and legal lability. This paper consists into two parts. The first part introduces a comprehensive structured interview study conducted from June to December 2013. The results included statistical findings of 949 construction accidents drawn from 117 construction projects in Hong Kong for the period from April 2007 to March 2012. The second part presents a regression model developed from the survey data together with validation. The paper summarized the research findings and analyzed the sampled research data by adopting the numerical model analysis. The numerical data including the main, standard derivation and majority of victim age, working trade, daily salary, day loss, hospitalization expense and medical expenses are presented for further research analysis. According to the research findings, most of the construction accidents happened to semi-skilled workers who are around 40 years old and their main daily salary is around HK$620. The main day loss and financial loss due to accidents are 17 days and HK$28,000 respectively. These findings implied that many accidents happened in middle age (40–56 year old) and semi-skilled labour (Salary below HK$1000). The paper then further analyzed the major factors influencing the financial loss due to accidents. The factors include but not limited to the salary loss, hospitalization expenses, idle loss, material loss, equipment loss, loss in salary of others and other costs (including investigation after accident, cleaning up site, bringing work up to standard etc.…). The paper concluded with presenting a regression model of financial loss in construction industry from accident cases with validated assessment. The regression model shows the significant parameters in numerical analysis which affect the financial loss. In addition, it predicts the estimated financial loss of construction accident. It is recommended to put more effort in accident prevention especially for general working trade labor and increasing the awareness and knowledge of working safety of the middle age worker and semi-skilled worker by providing more training or seminar etc.