Transforming inherent safety risk in the construction Industry: A safety risk generation and control model

Abstract

To enhance the assessment and understanding of why accidents occur, several accident causation models have been developed for the construction industry. These models successfully describe accident causation with comprehensive causal factors and enable the support of accident investigation methods. With growing recognition of proactive safety management, a number of safety risk analysis methods have been introduced with construction domain knowledge. However, most current safety risk analysis methods in the construction industry lack a theoretical background. This study proposes a safety risk generation and control model that describes the phenomenon of dynamic safety risk with construction domain knowledge. Based on extensive literature review and analysis of fatality reports, the proposed model addresses how the inherent safety risk of a worker can be transformed by different measurable risk factors such as activity resource and temporal and spatial risk factors, as well as management control. Successful implementation of the proposed model is expected to improve the understanding of safety risk and provide a theoretical basis for the development of practical safety risk analysis methods in the construction industry.