Health and Safety Management for Construction

Health and Safety Management for Construction

Introduction

This incident took place mainly due to the chaotic situation in the Construction plant. The operations had to deliver a consignment of paints to one of its key customer, failing short of time; the forklift operator had great pressure on his shoulders, he had to make sure that the tins of paint were loaded quickly into the delivery vans. The operations in-charge failed to notice how rough the driver was riding the forklift with loads of paint tins on the pallet.

Discussion

In no time, the driver lost the control of the forklift while maneuvering with the load in narrow lanes of the Construction site. This caused a crash, the paint was spilled on the floor damaging some parts of the stores, and 4 staff members were affected as they inhaled hazardous fumes and were hospitalized for two days, and finally resulting into stoppage of production.

Accident

No incident is preplanned, it just takes place, and this is known as accident. An accident is defined as an unplanned and uncontrolled event which has resulted into a physical injury or death; damage to Construction plant, equipment or environment; or any other loss.

All accidents have causes and effects. Causes can be generally controlled, they rely on the person in-charge of a task, or in other words, how well does he control/carries out a specific task without causing any accident whilst effects are result of luck i.e. if you escape uninjured during an accident you are lucky not harming yourself with an injury, the case may be vise versa if you are injured.

Accidents usually occur because of human errors. These errors are generally classified into two categories (1) direct cause and (2) indirect cause. A direct cause is due to unintentional action which results into an accident while an indirect cause is simply negligence of safety standards, this may be faulty practices or designs which may vary from situation to situation.

Loss Causation Model

There are many theories defining an accident, the Loss Causation theory is based upon the Domino theory. This theory has five different tools and each depends upon its factors.

The Management Control: In this tool the major cause of an accident are inadequate standard(s) of work, system and compliance. This can be avoided if the internal standards are designed to reduce risk, preventive measure are quick into action and updated from time to time.

The Basic Cause

This tool depends on two factors (a) job and (b) personal. The job factors are dependant on insufficient supervision, maintenance, wear and tear, and misuse of equipment. The personal factors are inadequate physical and mental capacity, stress, and lack of knowledge and interest of work. The above can be avoided by adequate emphasis to safety and ergonomic considerations, implementing affective loss control policy, training staff for optimal performance.

The Immediate Cause

This tool is a substandard act performed by an employee. This occurs when there is a negligence of safety precautions and mishandling safety devices, unauthorized access to operations and ...