Abstract
The need to improve the safety management in the maintenance and operational works on a motorway is a request that all the organizations demand to achieve better goals on safety and in the use of resources. The use of instruments linked to efficiency and effectiveness is one possible solution to this problem. The objective of the present investigation is to prove that it is possible to identify the main activities contained in the A area of an ABC curve and linked to the Pareto´s concepts, defining this way the 20% most dangerous maintenance and operational activities on motorway works. The methodology used was a DELPHI panel formed by experts from different areas linked to safety at work on motorways. The statistic treatment was made through the informatic program IBM SPSS Statistics 24. The results show that it is possible to identify 36 main activities in maintenance and operational works, being relevant the activities related to emergency response, safety guards, expansion joints, provisional signaling and the access to working stations in toll areas. The conclusions of the study reveal that these 36 activities represent the 20% most dangerous activities in maintenance and operational works on a motorway, and show that besides the risks of the work itself, there are four crucial traffic factors to develop a correct risk analysis: weather conditions, traffic characteristics, pavement characteristics and motorway morphologic type.
Highlights
The complexity produced by multiple variables of causes in the working accidents on operational motorways is one most the defying problems that health and safety professionals must deal with in order to ensure the safety of all the users and workers involved in maintenance activities in these infrastructures
Apart from exceptional situations, motorways as public infrastructures must always be open to traffic. This problem has been addressed in some research (Esmaieli et al, 2013), as one of the main hazards to workers and motorways users when traffic and maintenance works exist on operational motorways
The relevant question is to find out the main traffic factors and the main maintenance construction works that can cause damage to the both groups
Summary
The complexity produced by multiple variables of causes in the working accidents on operational motorways is one most the defying problems that health and safety professionals must deal with in order to ensure the safety of all the users and workers involved in maintenance activities in these infrastructures. To ensure the outcome of zero serious or mortal accidents, different factors are crucial to the risk analysis that must be conducted. Besides the inherent risks associated with the construction work or the activities that must be developed, conditions related to external factors cannot be forgotten. Morphologic motorway factors, traffic type and conductors’ behavior are examples of some problems that should be considered when analyzing risks. Another type of challenges has arrived for all the organizations in the Health and Safety area. The allocation decrease of human and material resources is a International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Safety, 2:2 (2018) 12-20
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