Beyond ConCA: Rethinking causality and construction accidents

Abstract

The construction industry takes an orthodox approach to safety: Finding root causes, quantifying risk, and often blaming frontline workers. However, safety has reached a plateau and the limitations of this approach are starting to be acknowledged. A sociotechnical systems approach (as applied in the ConCA model) presents new opportunities to understand accident causation by linking immediate accident circumstances with the distal shaping and originating influences. 32 construction safety managers, consultants, and experts contributed their views regarding the hazards of construction (both human and physical) and the difficulties managing these. The findings provide an insight into the work of construction safety managers and their decision making which is influenced by industry-wide pressures and worker attributes over physical hazards. Construction suffers from a wide range of pressures; a combination of both top-down, from the client, and bottom-up challenges from the workforce it attracts. The original ConCA model has been revised to reflect the findings. By applying systems thinking, the relationships between negative perceptions of workers' risk-taking and these challenges can be crystallised. The results support integrating safety into primary activities to increase engagement, learning legacies to transfer knowledge between projects, multi-disciplinary teams to raise risk awareness, empowerment to combat their feelings of dissatisfaction and disloyalty, and collaboration in risk management to incorporate workers' expertise and ensure they feel valued.

Psychosocial and Ergonomic Conditions at Work: Influence on the Probability of a Workplace Accident

“…Along the same lines, Giorgi et al [24] considered that managers have to develop mechanisms for the detection and the supervision of the psychological health of their workers and specifically the stress that they undergo for the improvement of the conditions that cause it. In the study carried out by [25], the results support when risk management takes into account the psychosocial aspect of workers. There is also evidence that there has been collaboration with workers to demonstrate that they are valued, among other factors.…”

Preliminary Human Safety Assessment (PHSA) for the Improvement of the Behavioral Aspects of Safety Climate in the Construction Industry

“…A means of suppressing or overriding information 9 5 No means of conveying spatial or functional information to human operator 9 6 Poor system/human-user interface 8 7 No obvious means of reversing an unintended action 8 8…”

“…In fact, the combination of the following aspects, such as frequent employee turnover, subcontracting and stringent contract deadlines, outdoor work in all weather conditions, lack of highly trained workers, use of obsolete working equipment, frequent change of work sites, as well as the presence of different companies on the same site contemporaneously contributes to the high rate of accidents and injuries [5]. Consequently, analysis of accident causality and the definition of the related measures for safety management represent a complex task [6].…”

Virtual Fence System Based on IoT Paradigm to Prevent Occupational Accidents in the Construction Sector

“…Physical barriers are sometimes difficult to assemble and disassemble in dynamic environments with daily changes, and they may fail [ 42 ]. Safety procedures, on the other hand, can be poorly designed or insensitive, and frequently they are not updated according to the changing environments of construction sites [ 43 , 44 ].…”