Developing an automated safety checking system using BIM: A case study in the Bangladeshi construction industry

Construction workers are backbone of this industry since construction industry is less mechanized and more labor intensive. So the major consideration is ensuring workers safety during construction in Bangladesh. As current practice of Bangladesh checks the construction safety manually, this checking process always leads to error-prone, inconsistency in assessments and delays the construction process as a whole. The aim of this study is to develop an automated fall safety checking system using BIM to solve this problem in the Bangladeshi context. A framework is developed and safety rule checking approach is illustrated during conceptual and legal stage and how these process works in two situations is proposed to identify fall hazard at planning phase. A case study is performed to illustrate its practical implementation on a building project in Bangladesh. Results show that the developed system demonstrates the feasibility of integrating safety into BIM for detecting and eliminating fall-related hazards. This study will contribute the construction professionals by introducing and informing automated safety checking platform to find the reports, why, where, when, and what safety measures are needed for preventing fall-related accidents at pre-construction phase. The significance of this study is to lead to safer designs early in a project.