Abstract:
Traditional measures of safety are after-the-fact measures; namely, that safety is measured after injuries have already occurred. These measures are labeled reactive, trailing, downstream, or lagging indicators because they rely on retrospective data. Focusing on these measures e.g., accident rates and compensation costs often means that the success of safety is measured by the levels of system failure. In recent years, there has been a movement away from safety measures purely based on retrospective data or ‘‘lagging indicators,’’ such as accident rates, toward so-called ‘‘leading indicators’’ such as measurements of safety climate. In this paper, safety performance measurement of various construction firms as well as the overall construction industry of Pakistan based on an investigative site survey has been done. Salient findings of the study are as follows. The top three safety non-performance practices at building construction work sites are (1) ear defenders not worn (while using noisy equipment); (2) protective footwear not worn; and (3) face masks not worn (in dusty conditions). Most of the safety nonperformance issues belong to self protection category. This shows that the site workers themselves are either unaware of the importance of personnel safety practices or they do not want to wear protective gears and kits as they consider it as a hindrance in their work productivity. Also, it was observed that the site management seemed non-interested in emphasizing the need of personnel safety practices among their workers. Overall, most of the companies lie in the range of extremely unsafe to moderately unsafe range. This shows that the overall level of the industry as regard to site safety needs drastic improvement. Safety seems to be on the less priority on the agenda even during the execution phase which is not a healthy trend. A mean value of Safety Performance Index of 0.52 was assessed for the building construction sites, which indicates that even the basic practices required for safety are not present at most construction sites. Also, the scattered safety performance level of firms indicates lack of standard safety management systems. The major recommendations of the study are as follows. At the industry level, safety rules and regulations need to be defined, documented and enforced. Hence the need for an administrative body for occupational safety and health implementation is evident; however, the integrity and effectiveness of such an organization is a major concern in relation to the existing adversarial business environment in the construction industry of Pakistan, which also need to be addressed. A major need of the industry is to develop the attitude of project owners towards an active safety management implementation; for the same, awareness programs need to be developed and implemented. It would also be appropriate to arrange formal and informal education and training in safety in the form of graduate education and career development programs.
Page(s):
74-87
DOI:
DOI not available
Published:
Journal: Proceedings of International Conference on Construction in Developing Countries , Volume: 4, Issue: 5, Year: 2008