McKay, L J; Gibb, A G F; Haslam, R and Pendlebury, M (2002) Implications for the effect of standardization and pre-assembly on health, safety and accident causality: Preliminary results. In: Greenwood, D (ed.) Proceedings of 18th Annual ARCOM Conference, 2-4 September 2002, Northumbria, UK.
Abstract
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has highlighted health and safety as being under-represented in Government-funded research. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) acknowledges that Standardization and Pre-Assembly (S&P) need to be properly evaluated for their effect on health and safety. The adoption of S&P is widely supported for many reasons - including claims that it will improve safety performance. Most experts agree that this should be the case. However, there is no conclusive evidence that this is the case - much is anecdotal. There has been no real investigation of the actual causal relationship between accidents and the change in construction methods initiated by S&P strategies. Furthermore, although the actual health and safety risks reduce on site with S&P, the hazards change and need careful consideration throughout the project process. This paper reports on the preliminary findings of a research project which aims to provide a comprehensive study covering, non-volumetric, volumetric and modular building approaches across engineering construction, civil engineering and building sectors. It will establish the extent of the effect of S&P on health, safety and accident causality in construction. A particular aim is to inform industry of the benefits and risks of using S&P. The process will involve 1) ergonomic work place audits to elicit key areas of concern regarding health and safety in off-site fabrication. 2) the development of a decision making process framework to identify areas of risk and benefit for both conventional on-site construction and off-site fabrication. This paper presents and delivers an overview of the salient issues relating to the research. Preliminary results and a selection of conclusions are presented.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction planning; decision analysis; health and safety; prefabrication; standardization |
| Index terms: | standardization, investigation, evidence, prefabrication, fabrication, construction planning, safety performance, modular building, health and safety, strategy, decision analysis, decision-making process, health and safety executive, audit, construction method |
| Subjects: | construction planning, data collection methods, evaluation and assessment methods, practitioner, occupational health and safety management, building construction, decision analysis, manufacturing engineering, management, performance measurement, health safety and environment |
| Topics: | Business Strategy, Health and Safety, Research Practice, Engineering Principles, Roles and Professions, Risk Management, Construction Technology, Quality Management, Site Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCA |
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