Quantification of risk and assessment of key safety factors for safe workplace in Indian building construction sites

Abstract

Construction sites are known to be hazardous as it involves height work, hot work, confined space, etc. Prioritizing and classifying the risk zone may create awareness among the workers and help to prevent them from accidents in high-risk area. To prioritize the risk in building construction sites, Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (HIRA) technique is adopted. The hazards in the sites are identified through direct observation and previous safety reports, and the risk values are determined using likelihood and severity ratings of each hazard. HIRA study reveals that the building construction site considered in this work has 13.3% of low risk, 37.7% of medium risk, 44.4% of high risk and 4.6% of extreme risk. Total percentage of risk involved in each task is calculated and ranked to know the high-risk task. Through the obtained results, it is noted that crane operation (10.4%), height work (9.1%) and drilling (8.8%) are the three major tasks with high risk. It is observed that in the particular construction site, the percentage of low risk is very less. To know the key safety factors which influence the task to be hazardous, Relative Importance Index is used to rank the factors and it is identified that there is a higher level of disagreement in using Personal Protective Equipment, non-availability of separate gangways and bar bending sheds. If these key factors are addressed, then the hazardous task will become risk free.