Nishigaki, S; Vavrin, J; Kano, N; Haga, T; Kunz, J C and Law, K (1994) Humanware, human error, and hiyari-hat: A template of unsafe symptoms. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 120(2), pp. 421-442. ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
For many years, the Japanese construction industry has practiced several accident-prevention activities. In spite of these safety activities, occupational accidents recur. Why? This paper offers examples of accident-prevention activities and it reports on a safety survey of construction workers in a Japanese construction company. These examples shows that “humanware” failure accounts for a much greater portion of the underlying causes of occupational accidents. “Humanware” is defined as a function of leadership, followership, and the reciprocal interaction between the two. The safety survey had 7,955 responses; 2,588 responses reported experiencing hiyari-hat (near-mass accidents). These respondents also reported on the nature and apparent causes of their hiyari-hats. In this paper, we found most accidents occur because of humanware failure. The underlying causes of hiyari-hat often include humanware failure and most frequently end with human error of individual workers. This paper presents a template that summarizes unsafe symptoms among humanware failure, human error, and hiyari-hats.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Index terms: | construction worker, construction industry, prevention, interaction, occupational accident, construction company, survey |
| Subjects: | practitioner, organization, data collection methods, behavioral psychology, industry analysis, financial risk, health risk and incident analysis |
| Topics: | Roles and Professions, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Cost Management, Health and Safety |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here