Using Behavioral Based Safety to Enhance Safety Performance

Abstract

Safety in the construction industry has progressed exponentially in the last century. The development of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) may be seen as a major milestone for work place safety. However, the first stages of OSHA were reactive. In the early 2000‘s, companies placed aggressive focus on the application of proactive measures in preventing incidents rather than simply reacting. Risk Assessments, Constructability Reviews, and Hazard Identifications were few of the best practices implemented in this time period. Experts now believe the implementation of a Behavioral Based Safety Program (BBS) is the next revolutionary technique to help decrease injury rates further. Several studies were conducted which exhibit a correlation between effective BBS implementation and OSHA classified recordable injury rates. However, there are no previous studies identifying correlation between BBS implementation versus Near Misses, and BBS implementation versus OSHA classified First Aid Cases. This paper helps identify whether BBS implementation on a typical Petrochemical/refinery construction project impacts the number of Near Misses and First Aid Cases. BBS was implemented on 14 different construction projects within Technip, collecting all BBS and incident data, and applying different analysis techniques to identify existing trends between BBS observations/First Aids Cases/Near Misses. It helps identify whether BBS improves the safety performance on a job site by identifying its impact on injuries, in addition to Near Miss reporting. The paper will assist similar companies with evaluating whether the implementation of a BBS program yields favorable results to the safe performance of their projects.