Accident analysis in the construction of buildings

doi:10.1016/0376-6349(83)90014-7

Journal of Occupational Accidents

Volume 5, Issue 2, June 1983, Pages 89-98

https://doi.org/10.1016/0376-6349(83)90014-7 Get rights and content

Abstract

The aim of this study was to establish the statistical differences in the frequency of accidents, compensation and the seriousness of accidents between different building projects. The building projects were classified in relation to the following factors: amount of work (manhours/unit); seasonal condition; work condition; type of building; production techniques; accident frequency; compensation; and the seriousness of the accidents. The accidents that occurred at the construction projects studied were classified according to the following: the worker's occupation; construction activity; work methods; work tasks; the part of the body injured; the injury; and the duration of disability.

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Vi lämnar 70-talets arbetsmiljö och kan med tillförsikt gå in i 80-talet
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There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (19)

Novel approach of the integrated work & risk breakdown structure for identifying the hierarchy of fatal incident in construction industry
2021, Journal of Building Engineering
Citation Excerpt :
Studies related to WBS and RBS to reduce or eliminate fatal incidents in the construction industry can be summarized as follows: (i) research related analysis of the fatal incident considering project type, and work type; (ii) research related establishment of WBS or RBS to prevent the fatal incident on construction industry; (iii) research related establishment of integrated WBS and RBS. First, fatal incidents considering the project type or the work type have been analyzed [10–13,18–26] [9,13]. Analyzed 2776 accidents involving electrical construction in Spain from 2003 to 2008.
Given that the accident rate in the construction industry has remained higher than those in other industries for decades, various techniques and tools have been proposed to control construction hazards. The concepts of the work breakdown structure (WBS) and risk breakdown structure (RBS) have been presented to identify hazard hierarchies. With these tools, it is possible to subdivide and find work and risk units easily. Accordingly, this study suggests a novel approach called integrated WBS and RBS (i-WRBS) to identify such hierarchies in the construction industry. The research process involves four steps: (i) collection of data, (ii) classification of data, (iii) development of the i-WRBS, and (iv) conduct of a statistical analysis. Through the research process, i-WRBS is constructed with five levels, combining WBS up to level 4 and RBS at level 5. The i-WRBS approach consists of facility types (nine cases), project types (35 cases), work types (41 cases), and accident types (20 cases) arranged in a hierarchy. This study analyzes 5732 fatal incident cases from 2007 to 2016 in the construction industry in South Korea, with these incidents subdivided according to project, work, and accident types. The proposed i-WRBS method can show different hazard hierarchies depending on the project and work types. While the categories of ‘Industrial facility’ (facility type), ‘Factory’ (project type), ‘Steel Work’ (work type), and ‘Fall’ (accident type) have the largest numbers of fatal incident cases, ‘Explosion’ is the most critical accident type during a ‘Plant installation’ in a ‘Warehouse’ project. In order to identity differences in the proposed types and groups, a chi-square test, Welch's test, and then a post-hoc test (Games-Howell test) were conducted. The proposed i-WRBS method can contribute to identifying significant construction hazards considering the types of projects, work and accidents.
Construction waste recycling robot for nails and screws: Computer vision technology and neural network approach
2019, Automation in Construction
Citation Excerpt :
Being hurt by construction materials can also result in workers having to take time off, medical costs, being maimed and suffering fractures [10]. Construction workers are also facing the risk of stepping on a nail or screw [11], which may cause such serious infection as tetanus. Therefore, recycling nails and screws can reduce the risks of injury on construction sites as well as saving money.
Waste management scene is in urgent need of robotic waste sorter. Nails and screws, as part of the construction waste scene, are hard to be found and can therefore, cause damage to the site's construction safety and increase the material loss. This paper presents a construction waste recycling robot. In order to complete the recycling tasks, robots are expected to inspect the entire working environment and identify the target objects. This research uses neural network technology to assist the robot patrol in an unknown work environment and to use faster R-CNN methods to find scattered nails and screws in real time, so that the robot can automatically recycle nails and screws. This study introduces computer vision technology and a full-coverage path-planning algorithm into the field of construction waste management and proposes a novel construction waste recycling approach. Based on this robot, we can continue our study of construction waste recycling robots that can automatically sort and recycle most construction waste in the future.
Using network theory to explore the complexit of subway construction accident network (SCAN) for promoting safety management
2014, Safety Science
Citation Excerpt :
The 658 incidents reported were analyzed to determine the general characteristics of incidents and the incident costs. Another study (Niskanen and Saarsalmi, 1983) was to establish the statistical differences in the frequency of accidents, compensation and the seriousness of accidents between different building projects. Pines et al. (1987) conducted the occupational accident statistics in the construction industry of Israel.
Accident case analysis has been widely adopted to promote construction safety. Learning from past accidents is effective to avoid similar dangerous situations or accidents. An accident is often the result of a sequence of previous accidents, or the cause of the next accidents. There is an accident chain or network in practice. Instead of analyzing a single accident, this study uses network theory to explore the complexity of the subway construction accident network (SCAN). Pajek was employed to identify SCAN and analyze corresponding topological characteristics. As a result, an unweighted directed network with 26 vertices and 49 edges was obtained. Five parameters were calculated for better capturing the structure of SCAN. The cumulative degree distribution obeys power-law distribution. This indicates that SCAN is resilience to random attacks. If some high-degree vertices are attacked at the same instant, SCAN is turned to be vulnerable and isolated. The characteristics of big clustering coefficient and short average path length denote that SCAN is a small-world network. This type of network demonstrates faster accident propagation than regular networks. Almost 60% of shortest paths contain collapse of soil, struck-by, explosion and collapse of machine. Effectively controlling these four types of accidents can increase average path length and diameter. As a result, accident propagation efficiency can lower, and chain reaction is dampened in this accident network. Topological parameters analysis is beneficial to understanding the mechanism and capturing the complexity of SCAN. It is helpful to restraint original accidents, and prevent secondary and derivative accidents, which can assist in improving safety management on subway construction sites.
Is it possible to influence safety in the building sector?. A literature review extending from 1980 until the present
2012, Safety Science
Citation Excerpt :
A differentiation was made between the types of factors affecting the accident process. Already in the 1980s research done in Finland correlated process disturbance and accidents (Niskanen and Saarsalmi, 1983). Process disturbances may be an indication of material flow or machinery disruptions during the construction process or of design adaptations that are only announced during construction.
The available literature on construction safety is not very optimistic about the chances of evidence-based safety in the construction industry exerting a positive influence. Many articles indicate that the structures and processes that are designed to ensure safety in the industry are poor. Safety management systems do not work, or are limited, the business processes executed are fragmentary, it is not clear who is responsible for safety and parties lower in the construction hierarchy tend to be saddled with the consequences. Safety detracts from the primary production process and is seen as a bureaucratic burden. But there are some positive developments as well. Lists of prevalent accident scenarios and central events are available and information is published on barrier failures. What is missing is a reliable exposure gauge of the relative importance of scenarios and the identification of pivotal events. The more clearly the cause-effect chains of accident processes can be recorded, the more specific the measures, solutions and interventions can be when it comes to avoiding or reducing the effects of accident scenarios. Audit methods have also been developed, such as the Safety Index, which can be used to not only negatively but also positively assess safety. Finally an approach that can best be described as ‘frappez toujours’ seems to yield noticeable results. In such cases it does not really matter what safety intitatives are taken. Simply highlighting the issue is a factor that can, in itself, have an effect.
An evaluation of manual materials handling in highway construction work
1999, International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics
Construction work is generally described as strenuous but few systematic characterizations of physical load have been published to date. PATH (Posture, Activities, Tools and Handling) is an ergonomic assessment method used to measure the frequency of exposure (as a proportion of observations) to manual materials handling (MMH) activities and other exposures for construction and other non-routinized work. Observations of loads handled, body postures, tools and materials handled and hand grasps are available for further description of MMH activities. PATH has been used to characterize manual handling by iron workers (in concrete reinforcement work), carpenters (in form construction) and laborers (in the construction of utilities pits) during highway construction operations. Of these trades, the iron workers were the most frequently observed in heavy MMH activities (involving at least 13.5 kg), and they often lifted in twisted or laterally bent trunk postures. Heavy MMH activities by laborers most frequently involved the handling of boards used to construct the pit walls. Little heavy MMH (at least 22.7 kg) was observed in the carpentry tasks. MMH requirements varied greatly among tasks within each construction operation, demonstrating the importance of a task-based assessment of MMH exposures. Analysis of subsets of data on the iron workers and the carpenters showed that, in some cases, task and worker were important sources of variance. For almost all variables, the error term (interpreted primarily as day-to-day differences in exposure) was the largest source of variance. Therefore, an evaluation of multiple workers over long time periods for specific tasks is necessary for a reliable characterization of MMH requirements and other ergonomic exposures in highway construction work.

Relevance to industry
The methods described in this paper allow the systematic evaluation of MMH activities in highway construction and other types of non-routinized work. These can be used to identify job tasks having potentially hazardous MMH exposures, and to provide information needed for the appropriate re-design of tasks or materials to reduce physical loading on the musculoskeletal system.
Safety hazards and motivation for safe work in the construction industry
1991, International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics
This paper analyzes statistics of fatalities and injuries in construction work. Construction work is much more hazardous than most other occupations. Most accidents involve falls of persons and occur during work on roofs, scaffolds and ladders. Collapse of structures and falling materials also account for many fatalities. Many of these accidents can be avoided by the establishment of procedures and regulations to enhance safety. Many of the safety hazards are specific to the different job classification, and typically construction workers underestimate the hazards in their own work. This affects the motivation for adopting safe work procedures. The cost of construction accidents amounts to about 6% of total building costs. There are hence forceful monetary incentives in construction safety. Hopefully, these will encourage the industry as well as agencies to invest in this area. There are several urgent needs for research.

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^☆: The following presentation, based on a study of accidents, was carried out at some building sites of a Finnish construction company. The study was performed in cooperation with the company's Technical Office and the company's Labour Protection Office.

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Accident analysis in the construction of buildings☆

Abstract

J. Occupational Accidents

Laskelma vuonna 1976 sattuneiden työpaikkatapaturmien aiheuttamista kustannuksista

Sosiaali-ja terveysministeriö

Problems of job-dissatisfaction and interpersonal relationships in construction work

Yrkesskador i byggnadsbranschen

Företagsekonomiska Institution vid Stockholms Universitet No. 132

Olycksfallsrisker och skyddsarbete. 4

Experiences of integrated prevention on designs concerning public, industrial and commercial construction

Eleventh International Colloquium on the Prevention of Occupational Risks in the Construction Industry, Lisboa, 21–23 September 1981

Vi lämnar 70-talets arbetsmiljö och kan med tillförsikt gå in i 80-talet

Byggnadskonst