Identifying Causes of Building Construction Site Accidents in Tigray Region, Towards a Safe Construction Industry

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The definition of an accident provided by Heinrich in the 1930s is often cited. Heinrich defines an accident as an unplanned and uncontrolled event in which the action or reaction of an object, substance, person or radiation results in personal injury or the probability thereof. Variations on this definition can be found throughout the safety literature.

Accident prevention has been defined by Heinrich as An integrated program, series of coordinated activities, directed to the control of unsafe personal performance and unsafe mechanical conditions. There are many evidences in representing construction industry as hazardous and inconsistent industries.

Given the hazardous nature of the construction industry world over, the need for an effective safetymanagement system which aims at forestalling the risks and hazards inherent on site has been reiterated by recent studies and applicable laws. Studies however show that level of effectiveness differs from country to country; industry to industry and from company to company. This study therefore undertakes both qualitative and quantitative investigation into the safety management system of a Ethiopia-based construction company with a view of determining how compliant the system is to international standards.

1.2 Problem statement

Construction is a high hazard industry that comprises a wide range of activities involving construction, alteration, and/or repair. The fact that a construction job or work environment is considered as highly risky and hazardous does not mean that its susceptibility to accident is not controllable.this largely depends on “work situation” which is humanly controllable. Safety records in the same construction industry in most advanced countries have proven this to be true. Little wonder Koehn, Ahmed, and Jayanti (2000), Idoro (2008) and Enhassi, Choudhry, Mayer &Shoman (2008) all express similar worry as to why worse safety conditions persist on construction work sites in most developing countries like Ethiopia. Historically up to recently the duties of implementing safety were passed to the Contractor. Legislation has changed this situation somewhat on paper but in our view the Clients and Designers have still left safety in the hands of the Contractor.

Construction is always a risky task because of outdoor operations, work-at heights, complicated on-site plants, and equipment operation coupled with workers’ attitudes and behaviors towards safety (Choudhry and Fang 2008). Construction is much more unsafe than manufacturing. This is partly due to the more hazardous working methods and machines employed in construction (Helander 1991). These situations at construction sites expose workers to lots of risks. Many safety hazards are specific to the particular job classification, and typically, construction workers underestimate the hazards with their own work. Hazard is something that can cause so much damage if not control. A risk is a combination of the probability that particular outcome will occur and the damage of the harm involved. The outcome is a damage that that results from uncontrolled hazard. This affects the motivation for adopting safe work procedures (Helander 1991). Research has been done to identify problems for construction safety all over the world. Some research findings from developing countries also apply to Indian sites. Kartam et al. (2000) have observed, at Kuwaiti construction sites, that the problems arise due to disorganized labor, poor accident record-keeping and reporting systems, extensive use of foreign laborers, extensive use of subcontractors, a lack of safety regulations and legislation, the low priority given to safety, the small size of most construction firms, competitive tendering, and severe weather conditions during the summer. Previous studies such as Bluff (2003); Needleman (2000); Saksvik& Quinlan (2003); LaMontagneet al (2003); and Indian Council of Medical Research (2003) uniformly recommend that construction firms adopt safety system that seeks to prevent the occurrence of accidents rather than essentially managing accident cases and victims by paying medical bills and compensation. The core of such safety management system as highlighted by Bluff (2003) includes “systematic identification of hazards, assessment and control of risks, evaluation and review of risk control measures” to ensure that they are effectively implemented and maintained.

The construction industry is a high risk industry because there is a high risk of

accident occurrence. Reasons are time, cost and quality that are always the main factors

considered ahead of safety. Safety issues are always considered secondary and take a

back seat in construction. Many employers have not established comprehensive accident prevention policies but instead concentrate on maximizing profit. They do not emphasize

on safety because they do not know how high the actual cost of an accident is until it

occurs. The statistics of accidents occurred in the construction industry indicate that the

accident rate in Malaysian construction industry is still high and it give us a picture that

construction industry is one of the critical sectors that need a huge and fast overhaul from

the current site safety practices. In order to prevent an accident, preventive measures must

be taken. In order to prevent accidents, one must know the causes of accident, more

specifically the root cause of accidents.

Given the hazardous nature of the construction industry world over, the need for an effective safetymanagement system which aims at forestalling the risks and hazards inherent on site has been reiterated by recent studies and applicable laws. Studies however show that level of effectiveness differs from country to country; industry to industry and from company to company. This study therefore undertakes both qualitative and quantitative investigation into the safety management system of an Ethiopia-based construction company with a view of determining how compliant the system is to international standards.

Here in Ethiopia many people have been injured in big projects and small scale construction. The problem is not that, the hazards and risks are unknown, it is that they are very difficult to control in a constantly changing work environment. We select this research title because we want to study the main causes of construction site accidents and come up with solutions