eLCOSH : Safety Behaviour in the Construction Industry

Safety Behaviour in the Construction Industry

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Nick McDonald, Victor Hrymak

The primary goal of this research was to investigate the factors that influence safety behavior and compliance with safety requirements on construction sites. This goal was realized through the following objectives:

The first objective was to examine compliance with safety requirements in the construction industry.
The second was to investigate the behavior, perceptions and attitudes associated with safety in construction.
The third was to investigate management practices and associated documentation relating to safety.
The final objective was to seek to establish what factors are significantly associated with safe behaviors or safety compliance.
Furthermore the high incidence of falling from heights in construction accident statistics led to a focus, particularly in the site observations and operatives' questionnaire, on factors associated with falling from heights.

In particular, the research strategy adopted was to investigate the following aspects:

Observation of compliance with a range of standard safety requirements.
Perception of risk associated with certain target behaviors and situations, estimation of prevalence of these situations on this site and elsewhere, and most likely response in those situations.
Attitudes to safety and safety climate (perception of the organization's commitment to and involvement in safety)
The role and activities of management and other persons with a specific safety role, and of organizational activities related to safety.
Review of available company documentation relevant to the management of safety. The design adopted was a cross-sectional one based on a comparison of a sample of sites in Ireland, employing measures of these dimensions.

Site Sampling

Because the goal of the research was to investigate factors influencing compliance, this required that the sample contained a variety of contrasting sites, giving sufficient variance in the factors being studied to investigate their influence. To achieve this it was not necessary to have an exactly representative sample. It was however considered desirable for the sample to be broadly representative of important parameters of the industry. In order to gain our sample of construction sites the following aspects were taken into consideration:

Comparison of sites in Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland
Comparison of sites in Dublin and other urban areas in the Republic
Comparison of small and larger building sites
Comparison of House Building work with General Contracting work

Because the absence of a comprehensive database of the number and location of the construction sites in Ireland and the current stage of their projects, it was impossible to construct a probabilistic random sample. As a consequence, the sample was stratified according to the following criteria: from site-lists from CIS reports (dating from October 1999 to May 2000) and other sources. Sites that did not have a start date or price and any valued at less than one million Irish pounds were discarded in the selection process. The remaining sites were classified as using above criteria. Upon this classification, a sample of sites per each category was selected following a random selection and site managers were asked for participation in the research. This process was carried out until completing the preselected number of sites per category. In a few cases, as for Dublin, the objective site categories could not be filled accordingly to above procedure and then sites were selected on a convenience basis (mainly approaching visually located sites). The HSE in Northern Ireland were contacted and they provided the names of a number of Contractors who were carrying out work in the Belfast area.

Because of the possibility of biases in the final composition of the sample, the question of sampling will be considered again in the discussion section of this document.

Analysis of the fatality statistics allowed those sites to be chosen that most closely matched the type of contractor and the trade of recorded fatalities that most represented the characteristics of the fatalities. However due to practical limitations the sample did not represent very small sites or sites in purely rural areas.

A total of eighteen construction sites took part in this research project. Table below provides a breakdown of sites across the different areas. For the purpose of the study small sites were defined as being worth between one and five million Irish punts in the Republic of Ireland and one and five million pounds sterling in Northern Ireland. Large sites were defined as being worth over five million Irish punts in the Republic of Ireland and over five million pounds sterling in Northern Ireland.

Table 6 provides a breakdown of sites in the sample and table 7 provides a detailed description of each of the sites visited.

	Large General Contracting	Small General Contracting	Large Housing	Small Housing	Total
*Dublin*	4	1	2	1	8
RoI Urban	3			1	4
*Belfast*	3			1	4
NI Urban	1				1
NI Rural				1	1

Table 6: Breakdown of sites by type and size

SITE DESCRIPTION
Site	Project type	Location	Number of workers	Size m² *	Build Type	Main structures and activities
01	Social Infrastructure	Dublin	80	30,000	New build	Substructure External walls to first floor level Internal walls to first floor level
02	Social Infrastructure	Dublin	80	>250,000	New build	Substructure External wall and cladding in Roof deck
03	Social Infrastructure	Dublin	200	>250,000	New build	Substructure , external walls Steel framework Roof and roof covering
04	Social Infrastructure	Dublin	30	20,000	New build	Substructure Internal fixtures and fittings Roof and roof covering,
05	Housing	Dublin	40	50 units	New build	Substructure External & Internal walls Floor slabs in place Services in part
06	Housing	Dublin	50	250 units	New build	Substructure in part Roof and roof covering in part Internal fixtures and fittings in part
07	Housing	Dublin	60	150 units	New build	Substructure in part Roof and roof covering in part Internal fixtures and fittings in part
08	Social Infrastructure	Dublin	50	1,000	Renovation refurbishment	Internal fixtures and fittings Internal partitions Finishes
09	Social Infrastructure	Republic of Ireland	40	15,000	New build	Ground floor First floor slab Roof deck
10	Housing	Republic of Ireland	20	50 units	New build	Substructures in part Roof and roof covering in part Internal fixtures and fittings in part
11	Housing	Republic of Ireland	160	450 units	New build	Substructure External walls part Roof and covering part
12	Social Infrastructure	Republic of Ireland	150	10,000	Renovation of existing / expansion	Topped out Internal partitions fixtures and fittings Services
13	Social Infrastructure	Belfast	100	12,000	New build	Substructure Steel framework External walls, roof and covering part
14	Social Infrastructure	Belfast	50	15,000	New build	Substructure Steel framework External walls part
15	Social Infrastructure	Belfast	60	15,000	New build	Nearly complete Internal fixtures and fittings Services
16	Housing	Northern Ireland	20	50 units	New build	<10 units incomplete External walls Internal partitions and floors.
17	Housing	Northern Ireland	30	50 units	Refurbishment & development of existing structure	Groundworks Internal partitions Basement and ground floor slabs
18	Housing	Northern Ireland	20	30 units	New build	<10 units incomplete Roof and roof covering in part Internal fixtures and fittings in part
Housing could consist of residential units ranging from one bed apartments to five bed detached houses. Social Infrastructure: small less than 5000m 2 / Large over 5000m 2 . Housing: small Less than 100 units/ Large Over 100 units

Table 7: Description of the characteristics of the sites in the sample.

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