A case study on automated safety compliance checking to assist fall protection design and planning in building information models

Worldwide occupational safety statistics show that the construction industry in many countries experiences one of the highest accident rates of all industry sectors. Falls remain a major concern as they contribute to very serious injuries or even fatalities on construction projects around the world. Since the standards and rules for protective safety equipment vary by country, the growing numbers of internationally operating companies are in need of tools that allow ubiquitous understanding and planning of safety regardless of the country where they operate. The problem is examined using a customizable automatic safety rule-checking platform for building information models. The applied rule-based checking algorithms are designed to be add-ons to existing building information modelling (BIM) software and can check models for safety hazards early in the design and planning process. Once hazards have been identified preventative safety equipment can be designed, estimated, and included in the construction schedule before construction starts. A case study implements the safety rule-checking platform on a high-rise building project. Fall protection regulations from both the USA and Germany are applied to the developed rule-checking platform. Visualization of the safety information further explains the differences in the results once country-specific safety-regulative standards are applied on the same building information model. The case study also indicates that the role of BIM in safety design and planning can effectively assist the traditional safety decision-making process for fall protection equipment.