Identifying elements of poor construction safety management in China

Construction is one of the most hazardous industries due to its unique nature. Measured by international standards, construction site safety records in China are poor. This paper aims to examine the status of safety management in the Chinese construction industry, explore the risk-prone activities on construction sites, and identify factors affecting construction site safety. The findings reveal that the behavior of contractors on safety management are of grave concern, including the lack of provision of personal protection equipment, regular safety meetings, and safety training. The main factors affecting safety performance include ‘poor safety awareness of top management’, ‘lack of training’, ‘poor safety awareness of project managers’, ‘reluctance to input resources to safety’ and ‘reckless operations’. The study also proposes that the government should play a more critical role in stricter legal enforcement and organizing safety training programs.     

Construction safety in Kuwait: issues, procedures, problems, and recommendations

The building construction industry plays a major role in the economy of the state of Kuwait. This paper evaluates existing safety regulations, describes safety procedures adopted by owners, designers, contractors and insurance companies, and assesses the suitability of these regulations and procedures for Kuwait's environment and workforce. It also discusses problems associated with enforcing safety regulations at construction sites. Furthermore, the study identifies the role played by different construction parties in safety programs and policies, taking into consideration cost and time effectiveness. Management in government, owners, and contractors are all aware of the importance of safety in construction, but do not actively pursue effective ways to maximize the achievement of the safety goal. It was observed that the problems arise due to: (1) disorganized labor; (2) poor accident record keeping and reporting system; (3) extensive use of foreign labors; (4) extensive use of subcontractors; (5) lack of safety regulations and legislation; (6) the low priority given to safety; (7) the small size of most construction firms; (8) competitive tendering; and (9) severe weather conditions during summer.     

The association between subcontractor safety management programs and worker perceived safety climate in commercial construction projects

Problem: Safety management programs (SMPs) are designed to mitigate risk of workplace injuries and create a safe working climate. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the relationship between contractors’ SMPs and workers’ perceived safety climate and safety behaviors among small and medium-sized construction subcontractors. Methods: Subcontractor SMP scores on 18 organizational and project-level safety items were coded from subcontractors’ written safety programs and interviews. Workers completed surveys to report perceptions of their contractor’s safety climate and the safety behaviors of coworkers, crews, and themselves. The associations between SMP scores and safety climate and behavior scales were examined using Spearman correlation and hierarchical linear regression models (HLM). Results: Among 78 subcontractors working on large commercial construction projects, we found striking differences in SMP scores between small, medium, and large subcontractors (p < 0.001), related to a number of specific safety management practices. We observed only weak relationships between SMP scales and safety climate scores reported by 746 workers of these subcontractors (β = 0.09, p = 0.04 by HLM). We saw no differences in worker reported safety climate and safety behaviors by contractor size. Discussion: SMP only weakly predicted safety climate scales of subcontractors, yet there were large differences in the quality and content of SMPs by size of employers. Summary: Future work should determine the best way to measure safety performance of construction companies and determine the factors that can lead to improved safety performance of construction firms. Practical applications: Our simple assessment of common elements of safety management programs used document review and interviews with knowledgeable representatives. These methods identified specific safety management practices that differed between large and small employers. In order to improve construction safety, it is important to understand how best to measure safety performance in construction companies to gain knowledge for creating safer work environments.     

Decision-making in controlling development of driving/piloting situations

This paper introduces the presentation of several works carried out, in France, in the field of transport ergonomics and psychology. It aims at pointing out the original features of the French ergonomics approach of dynamic situations; these features are related to the method used (the analysis of an activity in actual working conditions is emphasized) and the specific definitions of several concepts such as the concepts of ‘work activity’, ‘task’ and ‘situation’. This introductory paper proposes to define these notions and to show their relevance to an analysis of driving activities.     

OSH star enterprise pilot scheme——a partnership approach to improve the safety performance of construction industry in Hong Kong SAR

Background: The Occupational Safety and Health Council(OSHC) is committed to improve the safety performance of the high risk construction industry.In the past three years,about 40% of the fatal accidents in the construction industry were related to Renovation,Maintenance,Alteration and Addition(RMAA).Due to the poor safety record,some of the RMAA contractors have difficulty in obtaining the Employees’ Compensation Insurance(ECI) cover in the market,or if they could obtain the ECI,the premium rate would be exceedingly high.In view of this,the OSHC,the Labour Department jointly launched"OSH Star Enterprise-Pilot Scheme on Safety Accreditation for the RMAA Industry",which prompts the industry to take practicable safety measures to improve the safety of working environment and reduce occupational injuries.The program also helps the stakeholders and insurers to identify safety-conscious contractors and thereby provide them with a favourable premium rate under the Employees’ Compensation Insurance Residual Scheme(ECIRS).Objectives: The OSHC launches the Pilot Scheme to improve the safety performance of the RMAA industry through providing safety training,subsidizing enterprise to purchase safety equipment and providing safety audit.We also use financial incentive to encourage RMAA enterprises to join the Pilot Scheme-for those who are accredited as "OSH Star Enterprise"could receive a premium discount from the ERIRS when obtaining the ECI.The scheme also differentiates those safety-conscious and law-abiding enterprises from the poor performers,which helps the industry and public identifying the RMAA contractors who pay attention to work safety.Methods: The Pilot Scheme targets RMAA enterprises that employ less than 50 employees in Hong Kong.A three-pronged approach is used to improve the safety performance of the RMAA industry: the Pilot Scheme provides(1) financial support for the RMAA contractors to buy a transportable temporary anchor device and full body safety harness and its anchor system;(2) safety training     

Learning from the Bhopal disaster to improve process safety management in Singapore

The Singapore process industry is mainly made up of chemical and energy companies such as Mitsui Chemicals, Clariant, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Sumitomo, Petrochemical Corporation of Singapore and Infineum. Majority of these companies are located on Jurong Island, southwest of Singapore. Jurong Island houses nearly 100 leading petroleum, petrochemicals and specialty chemicals companies and the total investment is about S$42 billion in total. With a land surface area of only 716 km² and a high concentration of process plants, the Singapore government places strong emphasis on safety and risk management. In this paper, four process industry veterans from the government, academic and private sectors were interviewed. Through the interviews, the authors sought to understand the veterans’ perspectives on lessons that the Singapore process industry should learn from the Bhopal disaster. The veterans expanded their thoughts beyond the Bhopal disaster and provided many insights and suggestions critical to process safety management in Singapore and other countries. A systemic model of process safety management was derived from the interviews and key elements of operational process safety management were identified. In addition, a research agenda was identified based on the inputs from the veterans.     

An assessment of health and safety management within working groups in the UK manufacturing sector

Problem: In response to the demands of competitiveness, there has been a proliferation of management delayering in order to move responsibility to those people carrying out the operations and to focus on working as a team. Teams can be managed in different ways: using supervisors, team leaders, or self-managed. The management of health and safety and other business risks is dependent on the way in which the team is managed. Method: This study has assessed, through the use of semistructured interviews, how UK manufacturing companies have addressed a range of health and safety management issues (i.e., the setting, communication, and measurement of company objectives, employee participation and empowerment, and risk assessment) in relation to different styles of group working (i.e., supervised groups, groups with team leaders, and self-managed groups). Discussion: Although the differences are not always significant, it is noticeable that within organizations using supervised work environments, there is a lack of communication of specific health and safety information, little involvement and participation in safety activities, and a greater reliance on the safety function. However, in organizations using team leaders and self-managed groups, there is evidence of greater management involvement, more open communication, and greater employee involvement in health and safety, although empowerment in its true sense was still limited in these organizations. Impact on industry: The results obtained illustrate the impact of different working groups on the management of health and safety in the UK manufacturing sector.     

Risk analysis and risk management approaches applied to the petroleum industry and their applicability to IO concepts

Due to changes introduced by Integrated Operations (IO) it is possible that traditional risk analysis and risk management approaches in the oil and gas industry are also challenged. In this paper we study the impact on these approaches by asking two questions: (1) what methods for risk analysis are used in the Norwegian oil and gas industry? (2) What are the risk analysis and risk management challenges in an IO context from the perspective of actors in the Norwegian oil and gas industry? An explorative approach was chosen and the empirical findings are based on three separate studies: (1) a survey of risk analysis and risk management in different business sectors in the oil and gas industry; (2) qualitative interviews about the generation of knowledge for decisions that involve risk in an operating company; and (3) qualitative interviews of people working with risk analyses in different companies exploring their use of risk analysis methods. The four main results are: due to IO it is necessary to look for other inputs to risk analyses; establish suitable assessment approaches to human and organizational issues; develop resilience-based approaches for operational risk assessment; and, utilize IO to improve the risk management process.     

化工安全生产与生态环境保护管理措施探究

现代社会进入一个科技化、现代化发展阶段,人们的生活条件不断提升,其中诸多民生相关的产业都发挥着关键作用。化工产业作为社会产业基础构成部门与民生息息相关。但从其基本属性来看,实践工作难免会遇到一些安全性的问题,以及相应的环境污染。需要探索生态环境保护管理与化工安全生产协调配合的有效措施,由此才能达成可持续化发展目标,提升其积极影响作用。     

机械制造企业安全现状模糊综合评价

为完善机械制造企业安全现状综合评价指标体系及评价方法,建立了包括人、物、环、管四个方面的机械制造企业安全现状综合评价指标体系,提出了模糊综合评价方法;运用层次分析法计算指标权重,采用专家评价和隶属度函数相结合的方法来确定各指标的评语等级隶属度;将该方法应用于湖南某汽车制造企业的安全现状综合评价中,得出企业安全现状等级为较好,明确了该企业在人员素质和作业环境方面存在的不足,为制定安全对策措施提供了指导。     

Exploring the organisational preconditions for occupational accidents in food industry: A qualitative approach

The continuing high frequency of occupational accidents in the Swedish food industry calls for new approaches to better understand the underlying factors. In the present study, 54 accidents involving hand injuries were investigated from the operators’ perspective, to explore the organisational preconditions. In-depth interviews were conducted with operators and their supervisors, and 24 of these interviews were analysed using the grounded theory method. The core category ‘safety as a process’ was identified encompassing the perception of the process of the accident at operative level and organisational preconditions that increased the risk of occupational accidents. These preconditions were open factors: deficiencies in technical/physical environment and work organisation; and concealed factors: insufficient communication and learning, a high level of responsibility in combination with low control, conflicting goals and a gap between procedures and practice. These preconditions lead to risk acceptance, resignation towards improved safety and normalisation of risk. Through the analysis a five-step hypothesis was empirically generated.     

Pushing and pulling: an assessment tool for occupational health and safety practitioners

A tool has been developed for supporting practitioners when assessing manual pushing and pulling operations based on an initiative by two global companies in the manufacturing industry. The aim of the tool is to support occupational health and safety practitioners in risk assessment and risk management of pushing and pulling operations in the manufacturing and logistics industries. The tool is based on a nine-multiplier equation that includes a wide range of factors affecting an operator’s health risk and capacity in pushing and pulling. These multipliers are based on psychophysical, physiological and biomechanical studies in combination with judgments from an expert group consisting of senior researchers and ergonomists. In order to consider usability, more than 50 occupational health and safety practitioners (e.g., ergonomists, managers, safety representatives and production personnel) participated in the development of the tool. An evaluation by 22 ergonomists supports that the push/pull tool is user friendly in general.     

Health and Safety Perception of Workers in Turkey: A Survey of Construction Sites

This study reports the general health and safety (HS) conditions in the Turkish construction industry from the perspective of construction labor. Toward this aim, a questionnaire survey was carried out with 800 workers employed in 32 construction projects in Turkey. Contractors were found to neglect their legal liabilities in paying workers’ insurance premiums. Also, they overlooked safety training and were reluctant to hiring physicians at construction sites and investing in personal protective equipment (PPE). As the real constructors of projects, workers did not attach adequate importance to occupational training. In addition, they were not willing to use some PPE. Key participants of HS affairs such as workers, contractors, unions, and government should comprehend their drawbacks to overcome the current dangerous view of the industry. In this regard, related government bodies should compel contractors and workers to adapt to the relatively new regulations on occupational HS.     

Worker-centered investigation of issues with procedural systems: Findings from interviews with a representative sample of workers in high-risk process industries

Issues related to procedural systems have been found to contribute to incidents in many high-risk industries such as petrochemical, oil and gas, etc. While previous research has focused on understanding issues with procedural systems from the perspective of the workers (who are the end-users of procedures), most of this research suffers from samples that only include companies with programs focused on improving safety by improving procedures. These companies may have inherent differences in their safety practices and thus the experiences of these workers may not completely represent all workers’ experiences in this domain. The purpose of this study is to gain insights into the thoughts and perceptions from a representative and broad sample of workers concerning procedure use and purpose. To improve the generalizability of previous findings, interviews were conducted with workers from a broad range of high-risk process industries to investigate issues related to procedure adherence that may be present in companies not currently implementing. Findings from a qualitative data analysis provide support for the generalizability of issues previously discovered, such as: more experience workers being more likely to deviate; procedure quality being inconsistent; and the procedure revision process being problematic. However additional prominent issues were found as well. Most importantly, this study found that adherence to procedures is often motivated by potential liability issues instead of genuine concerns for safety in organizations and many deviations from procedures were due to pressure from immediate supervisors. These findings suggest a relationship between the effectiveness/quality of procedural systems and the safety climate of the organization or work unit.     

Presence of drug screening and employee assistance programs: Exclusive and inclusive human resource management practices

Drug screening and employee assistance programs (EAPs) are human resource management practices for addressing substance abuse among employees. The two practices reflect different human resource management strategies and lead to different outcomes for employees and applicants. Drug screening is designed to exclude drug users from the workplace whereas EAPs offer them ‘rehabilitation’. Characteristics of worksites and their surrounding labor market may influence the presence or absence of these personnel practices. The results suggest that, when controlling for number of employees, economic sector, industry, and union presence, worksites with low turnover and in areas with high unemployment rates are more likely to engage in pre-employment drug screening, while worksites with low turnover more often provide an EAP.     

Reducing unknown risk: The safety engineers’ new horizon

A significant gap exists between accident scenarios as foreseen by company safety management systems and actual scenarios observed in major accidents.The mere fact that this gap exists is pointing at flawed risk assessments, is leaving hazards unmitigated, threatening worker safety, putting the environment at risk and endangering company continuity. This scoping review gathers perspectives reported in scientific literature about how to address these problems.Safety managers and regulators, attempting to reduce and eventually close this gap, not only encounter the pitfalls of poor safety studies, but also the acceptance of ‘unknown risk’ as a phenomenon, companies being numbed by inadequate process safety indicators, unsettled debates between paradigms on improving process safety, and inflexible recording systems in a dynamic industrial environment.The immediacy of the stagnating long term downward major accident rate trend in the Netherlands underlines the need to address these pitfalls. A method to identify and systematically reduce unknown risks is proposed. The main conclusion is that safety management can never be ready with hazard identification and risk assessment.     

Collective work and resilience of complex systems

This article aims to describe the characteristics of collective working situations in complex systems – especially those in nuclear power plants – related to common forms of cooperation, in order to improve systems resilience. In addition, we will try to detail some aspects of collective working situations, emphasizing the differences between various forms of control. The similarities between work activities (multi-addressed messages, linkage to regulation, central and peripheral information) are nonetheless exposed. We conclude by proposing a contribution to support systems design, thus facilitating cooperation in teamwork activities.     

OHS inspectors and psychosocial risk factors: Evidence from Australia

Legislation giving prominence to psychosocial risk factors at work has changed the role of government occupational health and safety (OHS) inspectors in many countries. Yet little is known about how inspectorates have responded to these changes. Between 2003 and 2007 an Australian study was undertaken on OHS standards, entailing detailed documentary analysis, interviews with 36 inspectorate managers and 89 inspectors, and observations made when researchers accompanied inspectors on 120 typical workplace visits. Our study found that general duty provisions in OHS legislation clearly incorporated psychosocial hazards and inspectorates had introduced guidance material, pursued campaigns and increased interventions in this area. However, the regulatory framework remained narrow (focused on bullying/harassment, occupational violence and work stress) and workplace visits revealed psychosocial hazards as a marginal area of inspectorate activity. These findings were reinforced in interviews. While aware of psychosocial hazards inspectors often saw the issue as problematic due to limited training, resourcing constraints, deficiencies in regulation and fears of victimisation amongst workers. In order to address these problems a number of changes are required that recognize the distinctiveness of psychosocial hazards including their ‘invisibility’. Notable here are revisions to regulation (both general duty provisions and specific codes), the development of comprehensive guidance and assessment tools to be used by inspectors, greater use of procedural enforcement, and enhanced inspectorate resourcing and training. There is also a need to recognize complex inter-linkages between psychosocial hazards and the industrial relations context.     

LPG leakage and explosion accident analysis based on a new SAA method

The petrochemical industry has inherently high safety risks. On 5^th June 2017, a liquefied petroleum gas tanker in the storage and transportation department of Linyi Jinyu Petrochemical Co., Ltd. leaked during unloading, causing a major explosion and fire. Ten people were killed and nine were injured. To prevent the recurrence of similar accidents, a retrospective accident analysis was conducted using the system accident analysis method known as ‘24Model’. This analysis proved the coupling relationship between accident causes involving multiple organisations and multiple factors. The analysis results show that the five modules of maintenance and design, that is, loading and unloading valves, emergency training, management of subsidiaries and contractors, multi-level supervision, and task arrangement need to be checked from top to bottom by relevant organisations.In order to verify the reliability of 24Model analysis results, three SAA methods, namely STAMP, FRAM, AcciMap, were used to analyse the accident, and results obtained by the four methods were evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively. The results show that the output of 24Model is reliable and has a more understandable framework, which can be used as reference for the development of other linear accident cause models and application of system accident analysis methods to real applications.