Accident precursors and near misses on construction sites: An investigative tool to derive information from accident databases

Safety problems on construction sites seem to be largely unresolved as the fatality and injury records in construction continue to plague the industry across the world. The lack of an effective system to interrupt and prevent the precursors and contributory factors on construction sites is argued to be the critical deficiency of extant research and practice. This paper covers research to develop a systematic mechanism to interrupt and prevent precursors and immediate factors (PaIFs) on construction sites. First, the importance of precursors and near misses to further improve safety margins are emphasized. Furthermore, a systematic model of improving safety on construction sites is presented to consummate and perfect extant safety-improving systems on construction sites by reinforcing and accentuating the real-time tracking of precursors and immediate factors. The real-time tracking sub-system is argued to be an effective measure to interrupt and prevent PaIFs. Eventually, an investigative model of PaIFs on construction sites is proposed, indicating how to seek PaIFs from historical accident records and how to obtain near misses and mitigating measures from reported events. Results indicate that model of PaIFs is effective and able to acquire as much information as possible about precursors and near misses and thus, in part, overcome the deficiency of lacking sufficient and adequate historical accident records. This study proposes a feasible approach to facilitate acquiring more useful information from historical records of accidents in order to improve safety on construction sites and serve as a foundation for further study by drawing researchers’ attention to precursors and near misses.