Occupational health and safety risks: Towards the integration into project management

Abstract

Project management in industrial settings in many cases is deficient with respect to integrating OHS risks. This deficiency manifests itself as problems affecting the safety of industrial practices and is explained generally by poor knowledge of OHS within organizations and project teams. We present, through this paper, a critical review and provide an overview of research and industrial practices aimed at systematic integration of OHS risks into the execution of projects, based on published scientific literature. We thus introduce some of the tools, methods and approaches being developed or adapted to integrate OHS and a general description of the current status of this integration in various fields. Our focus includes, in fact, laws, management systems, OHS risk management throughout project life cycle and efforts to integrate OHS risk management to industrial safety practices including approaches using historical data and industrial interventions. We conclude that publications identified are mainly derived from the construction industry and we stress that the objectives, methodologies and results are largely heterogeneous. The integration of OHS risk is not systematic in all industrial fields despite the changing and improving laws and management systems. In order to complete the overview of OHS integration, we will suggest future reviews and research that specifically investigates other innovative OHS applications and many analyses of recent industrial accidents. Complete synopsis will give opportunities for researchers to use or improve methods and approaches to promote OHS risk management in the manufacturing sector that suffer from lack of knowledge in this area.