The current policy stance of construction safety focuses on enforcing legal regulations every time a serious accident occurs. The implementation of safety management plans is contractor centered under a standardized plan rather than reflecting opinion...
The current policy stance of construction safety focuses on enforcing legal regulations every time a serious accident occurs. The implementation of safety management plans is contractor centered under a standardized plan rather than reflecting opinions and experiences of site workers. In addition, there is a limitation that the risk factors listed on risk assessment templates or checklists do not include specific work conditions because they are made on the basis of fatality cases. In other words, it is difficult to achieve the desired effect of safety management solely through the role of the safety manager or main contractor. Therefore, it is necessary to provide an environment in which field workers directly exposed to the risk on site can actively participate in the safety management process.
The purpose of this study is to propose a safety management process which site workers can join in by using near-miss accidents, which are incidents whereby no injuries are sustained and no property damage is incurred. In this study, firstly, major safety management activities and literatures which workers need to participate in are reviewed to analyze the necessity and applicability of near-miss accident information. Some companies have proved that near-miss reporting program is an effective management tool and can lead to reduction in accidents. However, there is a lack of research on how to collect near miss accidents and how to apply them to safety management activities. Secondly, the near-miss case collection template has been proposed in accordance with the guidelines of industrial accident record and classification to analyze near-miss cases. As a result of the near-miss case analysis, it was confirmed that the details included in the case of near-miss accidents were more detailed than the general information provided by the safety management guidelines and the risk assessment manual, and it was confirmed that cases of near-miss accidents need to be effectively reflected in safety management activities. Finally, this paper has proposed a site worker centered safety management approach to collect and utilize near-miss accident data through the project life-cycle.
The results of this study suggest that it is meaningful that the field workers can actively participate in the safety management activities and the direction of how they can be used in the safety management work process during the construction process. However, a culture should be created to freely report near miss accidents because voluntary participation of workers is essential for this. In other words, in order to promote the discovery of a near miss accident, the field worker should be given the right to identify risks, and additionally, an environment which encourages risk identification and reporting through worker incentives and compensation should be provided.