Gharaie, E; Lingard, H and Cooke, T (2015) Causes of fatal accidents involving cranes in the Australian construction industry. Construction Economics and Building, 15(2), pp. 1-12. ISSN 2204-9029
Abstract
In ten years from 2004 to 2013, 359 workers died in the Australian construction industry because of work related causes. This paper investigates crane-related fatalities in order to find the upstream causation of such accidents. The National Coroners' Information System (NCIS) database was searched to identify fatal accidents in the construction industry involving the use of a crane. The narrative description of the cases provided in the coroners' findings and associated documents were content analysed to identify the contributing causal factors within the context of each case. The findings show that the most frequent crane-related accident types were those that were struck by load, and electrocution. The most prevalent immediate circumstance causes were layout of the site and restricted space. The two most commonly identified shaping factors were physical site constraints and design of construction process. Inadequate risk management system was identified as the main originating influence on the accidents. This paper demonstrates that a systemic causation model can provide considerable insight into how originating influences, shaping factors, and immediate circumstances combine to produce accidents. This information is extremely useful in informing the development of prevention strategies, particularly in the case of commonly occurring accident types.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | cranes; accident causation; immediate circumstances; originating influences; shaping factors |
| Index terms: | construction process, narrative, documents, risk management, construction industry, information system, prevention, fatalities, strategy, database |
| Subjects: | risk assessment, health risk and incident analysis, management, qualitative and interpretive research, financial risk, professional development, data management, building construction, industry analysis, information systems |
| Topics: | Health and Safety, Cost Management, Business Strategy, Information Management, Research Practice, Risk Management, Digital Applications, Site Management |
| 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