NAME: SIVA GANESAN S
REG NO: 17BCL0215
CONSTRUCTION PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT
DIGITAL ASSIGNMENT 1
Question 1. Write the important provisions of any two of the ‘Top 10
violated OSHA standards in Construction’ by referring the official
OSHA website.
Answer:
i> Fall Protection
Falls are among the most common causes of serious work-related
injuries and deaths. Employers must set up the work place to prevent
employees from falling off of overhead platforms, elevated work
stations or into holes in the floor and walls.
What can be done to reduce falls?
Employers must set up the work place to prevent employees from
falling off of overhead platforms, elevated work stations or into holes
in the floor and walls. OSHA requires that fall protection be provided
at elevations of four feet in general industry workplaces, five feet in
shipyards, six feet in the construction industry and eight feet in
longshoring operations. In addition, OSHA requires that fall
protection be provided when working over dangerous equipment and
machinery, regardless of the fall distance.
To prevent employees from being injured from falls, employers must:
▪ Guard every floor hole into which a worker can accidentally walk
(using a railing and toe-board or a floor hole cover).
▪ Provide a guard rail and toe-board around every elevated open
sided platform, floor or runway.
▪ Regardless of height, if a worker can fall into or onto dangerous
machines or equipment (such as a vat of acid or a conveyor belt)
employers must provide guardrails and toe-boards to prevent
workers from falling and getting injured.
▪ Other means of fall protection that may be required on certain jobs
include safety harness and line, safety nets, stair railings and hand
rails.
OSHA requires employers to:
▪ Provide working conditions that are free of known dangers.
▪ Keep floors in work areas in a clean and, so far as possible, a dry
condition.
▪ Select and provide required personal protective equipment at no
cost to workers.
▪ Train workers about job hazards in a language that they can
understand.
Construction's "Fatal Four"
Out of 4,674 worker fatalities in private industry in calendar year
2017, 971 or 20.7% were in construction — that is, one in five worker
deaths last year were in construction. The leading causes of private
sector worker deaths (excluding highway collisions) in the
construction industry were falls, followed by struck by object,
electrocution, and caught-in/between. These "Fatal Four" were
responsible for more than half (59.9%) the construction worker deaths
in 2017, BLS reports. Eliminating the Fatal Four would save 582
workers' lives in every year.
▪ Falls – 381 out of 971 total deaths in construction in CY 2017
(39.2%)
▪ Struck by Object – 80 (8.2%)
▪ Electrocutions – 71 (7.3%)
▪ Caught-in/between* – 50 (5.1%)
(*This category includes construction workers killed when caught-
in or compressed by equipment or objects, and struck, caught, or
crushed in collapsing structure, equipment, or material)
How to Protect Workers from Falls
There are a number of ways employers can protect workers from falls,
including through the use of conventional means such as guardrail
systems, safety net systems and personal fall protection systems, the
adoption of safe work practices, and the provision of appropriate
training. The use of warning lines, designated areas, control zones and
similar systems are permitted by OSHA in some situations and can
provide protection by limiting the number of workers exposed.
Whether conducting a hazard assessment or developing a
comprehensive fall protection plan, thinking about fall hazards before
the work begins will help the employer to manage fall hazards and
focus attention on prevention efforts. If personal fall protection
systems are used, particular attention should be given to identifying
attachment points and to ensuring that employees know how to
properly use and inspect the equipment.
ii> Eye and Face Protection
Thousands of people are blinded each year from work-related eye
injuries that could have been prevented with the proper selection and
use of eye and face protection.
OSHA requires employers to ensure the safety of all employees in the
work environment. Eye and face protection must be provided
whenever necessary to protect against chemical, environmental,
radiological or mechanical irritants and hazards.
Hazards and Solutions
Many workers are unaware of the potential hazards in their work
environments making them more vulnerable to injury. Personal
protective equipment (PPE) for the eyes and face is designed to
prevent or lessen the severity of injuries to workers when engineering
or administrative controls are not feasible or effective in reducing
these exposures to acceptable levels. The following references aid in
recognizing and evaluating eye and face hazards and provides
possible solutions for these hazards.
Training
Ensuring worker safety includes providing adequate training for all
workers who require eye and face protection. When employees are
trained to work safely, they should be able to anticipate and avoid
injury from job-related hazards.
Question 2. Write a summary of one journal paper that discusses the
role of safety in construction. The journal paper should have been
published in any one of ASCE, Elsevier or Taylor & Francis.
Answer:
SUMMARY
Workers’ attentional failures or inattention toward detecting a hazard
can lead to inappropriate decisions and unsafe behaviours. Previous
research has shown that individual characteristics such as past injury
exposure contribute greatly to skill-based (e.g., attention failure) and
perception-based (e.g., failure to identify and misperception) errors
and subsequent accident involvement. However, a dearth of research
empirically examined how a worker’s personality affects his or her
attention and hazard identification. This study addresses this
knowledge gap by exploring the impacts of the personality
dimensions on the selective attention of workers exposed to fall
hazards. To this end, construction workers were recruited to engage in
a laboratory eye-tracking experiment that consisted of 115 potential
and active fall scenarios in 35 construction images captured from
actual projects within the United States. Construction workers’
personalities were assessed through the self-completion of the Big
Five personality questionnaire, and their visual attention was
monitored continuously using a wearable eye-tracking apparatus. The
results of the study show that workers’ personality dimensions—
specifically, extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to
experience—significantly relate to and impact attentional allocations
and the search strategies of workers exposed to fall hazards. A more
detailed investigation of this connection showed that individuals who
are introverted, more conscientious, or more open to experience are
less prone to injury and return their attention more frequently to
hazardous areas. This study is the first attempt to illustrate how
examining relationships among personality, attention, and hazard
identification can reveal opportunities for the early detection of at-risk
workers who are more likely to be involved in accidents. A better
understanding of these connections provides valuable insight into
both practice and theory regarding the transformation of current
training and educational practices by providing appropriate
intervention strategies for personalized safety guidelines and effective
training materials to transform personality-driven at-risk workers into
safer workers.
This Journal was published online on ASCE at July 11,2019 under
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management.
Journal Name: Role of Personality in Construction Safety: Investigating
the Relationships between Personality, Attentional Failure, and Hazard
Identification under Fall-Hazard Conditions.
AUTHORS:
Sogand HasanZadeh, S.M. ASCE
Bac Dao, A.M. ASCE
Behzad Esmaeili, A.M. ASCE
Michael D. Dodd
