Everett, J G and Frank Jr, P B (1996) Costs of accidents and injuries to the construction industry. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 122(2), pp. 158-164. ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
In 1979, the Business Roundtable (BR) commissioned a study to determine the true costs of accidents and injuries in the construction industry. At that time, the BR concluded that accidents and injuries account for 6.5% of the total cost of industrial, commercial, and utility construction. Since the time of the original study, much has changed in the construction industry. Most importantly, the costs of workers' compensation insurance have skyrocketed and there has been a rash of third-party lawsuits as a result of accidents on construction sites. This paper reexamines the total costs of accidents and injuries to the construction industry, updating the original inputs, and, where necessary, modifying methods. Because the results are very sensitive to several assumptions, the analysis is performed using a range of values for each key assumption, rather than just a single figure. This paper shows that the total costs of accidents have risen to somewhere between 7.9% and 15.0% of the total costs of nonresidential, new constrution.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Index terms: | injury, construction site, insurance, compensation, construction industry |
| Subjects: | dispute resolution, economic analysis, work location, industry analysis, health conditions and diseases |
| Topics: | Health and Safety, Business Strategy, Research Practice, Site Management, Legal Issues |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
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