Major Reasons for Workplace Injuries

Question:

Explain why you wish to undertake the study, and give a reasoned and justified approach to the proposal. Why, for example, is it of interest either to you, the profession or to the fields of Environmental Health or Health and Safety generally?

There has been the occurrence of major accidents in the construction worksites of a construction company despite safety management system being implemented. There are certain safety issues that needs to be worked upon and there is the requirement to find out the discrepancies that are present regarding the appropriate implementation of the management system to do the restoration of the workplace safety within the construction company.

Purpose of the research topic

The topic of the research will assist the management in finding out the apparent reasons in respect of the workers succumbing to injuries at the place of work. This will also be assisting in finding out the discrepancies that are present regarding the appropriate implementation of the management system to do the restoration of the workplace safety. This will also be assisting the organizational authorities towards undertaking precautionary measures at the place of work in advance so that no workers are succumbing to injuries or suffering the loss of lives (Hinze 2013).

Research Question

Why the workers are succumbing to injuries at the construction worksite irrespective of implementing the safety management system?

To determine the reasons as to why construction workers are facing injury in the construction worksite irrespective of the implementation of a safety management system

The research aim is associated with finding out the reasons as to why the construction workers are succumbing to injuries at the construction worksite, irrespective of implementing the safety management system. The researcher is required focusing on finding out particular reasons, which are held accountable for the workers facing injury at the construction worksite and whether the safety management system is being implemented in an appropriate manner or not (Guo 2013).

The key research objectives are mentioned as under,

1. For finding out the reasons as to why the construction workers are succumbing to injuries at the construction worksite irrespective of implementing the safety management system
2. For finding out whether there is any deficiency on the management’s part to appropriately implement the safety management system
3. For finding out whether any precautionary measures have been taken into consideration in respect of the workers by the organizational management (Shin 2015).

It has been found out that the major reason for the workers getting injured at the construction worksite are due to the falls. In addition, another significant cause of injuries is considered to be the outcome of construction workers being struck by objects. Another significant cause of workers succumbing to fatal injuries at the construction worksite is due to electrocution (Roy 2015).

Concerning the safety management practices, it can be stated that a safety policy is considered being a written statement of principles as well as goals that will be demonstrating the commitment of the senior management for ensuring the methods of safe working as well as environment within the construction worksite. Moreover, the safety policy is explained as the corporate philosophy of the organization relating to the health as well as safety matters (Zhang 2013).

Safety Management Practices

In this context, the safety officers are playing a major role in setting the expectations relating to the safety on construction worksites. One of the significant practices at the construction worksite is to appropriately guide as well as supervise the progression of the work. Therefore, it is necessary to provide an appropriate safety zone around the areas of construction for the prevention of experiencing harm from falling objects. In this regard, there is the requirement for dividing the construction worksite into two zones such as ‘green zone’ as well as ‘red zone’ (Chapman 2017). It needs to be separated through the installation of boundary fences as well as placing safety signboards. ‘Green Zone’ will be including the offices, car parks, canteens, clinics as well as yard resting shades and will be considered to be a safety zone as because it is in the non-fabrication area whereas, the ‘Red Zone’ or fabrication area will be requiring the workers to wear Personal Protective Equipment since it might be causing danger. The minimum PPE that this area requires are considered to be safety boots, helmets, glasses as well as long-sleeved jackets. There is also the requirement for conducting an emergency drill once in every three months (Gunduz 2017).

There is also the significance associated with the aspect of monitoring and measuring the health and safety performances of the construction workers. Lack of monitoring will be giving rise to challenges towards policy determination and to control any kind of risk. There is the option to create a team that will be having the responsibility towards reviewing the daily activities, precautionary measures as well as identifying the risks in order to prevent them and mitigate them as soon as possible (Sousa 2014). Health as well as Safety Audit is considered being another aspect that is not being followed by many staffs that is regarded to be another reason for staffs getting injured at the construction worksite irrespective of implementing the safety management system (Gopang 2017). Audit assists in measuring a simple parameter that will be forming a part of the routine safety inspection. It is assisting in meeting the policies and organizational objectives.

The research study needs to be undertaken because it will primarily assist in finding out the major causes of workers succumbing to injuries at the construction worksites irrespective of implementing the safety management system.

The research process that will be getting used need to include the following aspects such as,

Data Collection and Analysis

Type of study

The type of study will be considered to be a deductive method since it is a social research approach and will be based on theory, hypothesis, observation as well as confirmation.

Type of design

The type of design is considered being a descriptive design and there will occur a probability sampling design that will comprise of simple random sampling in respect of the construction workers. From the three construction worksites, 150 construction workers have been taken into consideration.

For doing this, 50 construction workers have been randomly chosen out of 150 from the three-construction worksite and the sampling has been conducted.

Step 1: A list of all the three construction worksite has been made

Step 2: A sequential number has been assigned to each construction worksite

Step 3: The sample size has been figured out which is 150 construction workers

Step 4: A random number generator has been used i.e. 50 random construction workers have been chosen from each of the three construction worksite the sample size of 150

Type of data

The type of data taken into consideration is primary data that will have off-line questionnaires, which will be distributed among all the 150 construction workers for receiving the information from them.

The data collection method that will be carried out will be based on primary data comprising of off-line questionnaires. These questionnaires will be distributed among all the 150 construction workers for receiving the information from them. Out of the 150 construction workers, 50 of them will be selected from each construction worksite.

For analyzing the data, statistical tests will be conducted through 5-point likert scale and analysis will be done by using mean, median, mode as well as standard deviation methods.

In respect of the research study, the major ethical issues that will be considered are to take the consent of the participants for taking part in the research study in full knowledge of what is involved and the researcher must be actively preventing the participants from being harmed in any way by the research.

The work plan will get outlined by using a Gantt Chart.

Gantt chart

	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6	Week 7
Visiting the organizations
Collecting the data
Analysis of the data

From the research study, it has been found out that to overcome the various safety issues that the construction workers are facing certain measures need to be taken and when these will be followed diligently, then the number of construction workers succumbing to injuries will reduce significantly

References

Chapman, R.E., 2017. What Gets Measured, Gets Managed: A Case Study of Construction Safety. Construction Business Review.

Gopang, M.A., Nebhwani, M., Khatri, A. and Marri, H.B., 2017. An assessment of occupational health and safety measures and performance of SMEs: An empirical investigation. Safety science, 93, pp.127-133.

Gunduz, M. and Laitinen, H., 2017. Observation based safety performance indexing method for construction industry–validation with SMEs. KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering, pp.1-7.

Guo, H.L., Li, H. and Li, V., 2013. VP-based safety management in large-scale construction projects: A conceptual framework. Automation in construction, 34, pp.16-24.

Hinze, J., Thurman, S. and Wehle, A., 2013. Leading indicators of construction safety performance. Safety Science, 51(1), pp.23-28.

Roy, N. and Jacob, J., 2015. A STUDY ON CONSTRUCTION SAFETY ISSUES AND DEVELOPMENT OF A GENERAL SOLUTION FRAMEWORK. International Journal of Engineering Research and General Science, 3(6).

Shin, S.S. and Kang, K.S., 2015. Special safety measures and health education survey and study on the construction industry. Journal of the Korea Safety Management and Science, 17(4), pp.123-134.

Sousa, V., Almeida, N.M. and Dias, L.A., 2014. Risk-based management of occupational safety and health in the construction industry–Part 1: Background knowledge. Safety science, 66, pp.75-86.

Zhang, S., Boukamp, F. and Teizer, J., 2015. Ontology-based semantic modeling of construction safety knowledge: Towards automated safety planning for job hazard analysis (JHA). Automation in Construction, 52, pp.29-41.

Zhang, S., Teizer, J., Lee, J.K., Eastman, C.M. and Venugopal, M., 2013. Building information modeling (BIM) and safety: Automatic safety checking of construction models and schedules. Automation in Construction, 29, pp.183-19