Investigation into Road Construction Safety Management Techniques

David Nkurunziza

doi:10.4236/ojsst.2020.103007

Abstract

Rwanda is undergoing rapid development in transportation through constructing new roads and upgrading existing ones. During implementation of these projects, many accidents for road workers, road users and environment issues are raised due to unsafe road construction management techniques. This existing problem was carried out within the City of Kigali for three ongoing road construction projects namely road Ruliba-Karama-Nyamirambo, Kigali Urban Road Upgrading Projects of Agatare and the Sonatube-Gahanga- Akagera road, in order to investigate about the road construction safety management techniques. From the findings, 64.28% results showed that the maintaining of health and safety policy in the road construction sites is applied and there exist different means of maintaining safety, such as the provision of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) to the workers at the level of 57.14% as per the project managers; but from the field observations, it is alarming, and many workers do not wear as required. It was also found that 50% of accidents occurring in excavation works among all work performed during road construction are due to lack of adequate safety measures. The paper indicated that 85.71% of the concerned workers do conduct training and induction in their road safety construction sites, but on the other hand the level of accidents due to lack of safety recorded in the road construction sites is still high at the level of 78.57%. The mostly affected are unskilled laborers and this observation begs the question about the training and induction of workers in road safety and its effectiveness of on the concerned workers. The paper suggests some different safety measures to apply for providing safe road working environment according to the standard and gives some key recommendations for Rwanda.

Highlights

The importance of providing safe workplace has been reiterated by various related studies because of the intrinsic hazard and risk factors that undoubtedly underlie every work situation and their negative impact on a company’s overall performance [1].The safety of road-workers is a high priority for occupational health and road safety authorities and, especially, for the workers themselves and the organizations which employ and represent them
It was found that 50% of accidents occurring in excavation works among all work performed during road construction are due to lack of adequate safety measures
It is clearly observed that the training is possibly not adequate and may be very short because the findings indicate that 85.71% of workers seem to have conducted training and induction in their road construction sites but on the other hand the level of accidents recorded in the road construction sites by the respondents is still high at the level of 78.57%

Summary

Introduction

The importance of providing safe workplace has been reiterated by various related studies because of the intrinsic hazard and risk factors that undoubtedly underlie every work situation and their negative impact on a company’s overall performance [1].The safety of road-workers is a high priority for occupational health and road safety authorities and, especially, for the workers themselves and the organizations which employ and represent them. There are substantial risks involved in undertaking road construction in close proximity to moving traffic, and compromises between traffic flow, acceptable risk exposure levels, and equipment and resource levels associated with such tasks [2]. Construction safety involves defined safety procedure that is related to the construction industry or construction sites and aims to ensure that a construction site or the industry as a whole is not the cause of immediate danger to the public around a construction site, or the workers at a construction site, as well as making sure that the finished product of construction meets required safety standards. In Rwanda, in the City of Kigali, there is a need of improving transportation routes through constructing and upgrading roads. Safety management is needed in order to reduce injuries and fatalities on construction sites, but in some road construction projects, safety is not being used as it has been highlighted in Figure 1 and Figure 2

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion