Hinze, J and Godfrey, R (2003) An evaluation of safety performance measures for construction projects. Journal of Construction Research, 4(1), pp. 5-15. ISSN 1609-9451
Abstract
There are various measures of safety performance for construction projects. Although the metric involving the incidence of lost workday/restricted work activity injuries per 200,000 hours of worker exposure has been used for many years; other measures have also evolved in recent years. The incidence rate of injuries is the measure frequently employed as an industry standard. Despite this, these types of measures have the distinct disadvantage of focusing on the negative aspects of safety performance. That is, safety performance is only good when injuries do not occur. The occurrence of injuries, a negative parameter, generates concern. Information on the physical jobsite conditions, as determined through project safety inspections, provide a measure of conditions and work behaviour that do not involve the actual incidence of injuries. Similarly, the evaluation of near misses measures events that could have resulted in an injury, but did not. Behaviour based worker observation data is yet another measure that collects information on both safe behaviour and unsafe behaviour. Worker safety perception surveys provide yet another glimpse of the safety picture on a project. The advantages and disadvantages of using these measures of performance should be understood.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | assessment of safety performance; incident rates; measures of safety |
| Index terms: | construction project, exposure, safety performance, injury, unsafe behaviour, survey, safety inspection |
| Subjects: | data collection methods, occupational health and safety management, health conditions and diseases, public and environmental health, quality assurance, production management, financial risk |
| Topics: | Research Practice, Cost Management, Quality Management, Project Management, Health and Safety |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCE |
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