Factors Influencing Fire Safety on Building Construction Sites: A Fire Officer’s Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 147 (10) ◽  
pp. 04021118
Author(s):  
Jaehong Kim ◽  
Yongwei Shan ◽  
Sohee Kim ◽  
Dongwoo Song ◽  
Haejun Park ◽  
...  
Author(s):  
Jaffari S Jongo ◽  
◽  
Dennis N.G.A.K. Tesha ◽  
Valentine G.M. Luvara ◽  
Justine J Teyanga ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
John F. Y. Yeung ◽  
Daniel W.M. Chan

Amongst all types of construction accidents, industrial practitioners tend to pay less attention to the prevention of fires at construction sites.  Although fires may not occur frequently on construction sites, statistics show that when they do, the consequences are very serious; involving fatalities, injuries, serious project delays and financial loss.  There are many reasons why fires occur on sites, but a simple lack of awareness of the risks of fire is a major contributor.  Fire risk assessment is not commonly performed on sites.  Hence, it is believed that an appropriate assessment method for evaluating potential fire risk is required in order to improve the awareness of fire risk on construction sites.  This paper reports on the key findings of a research project which aims to develop a comprehensive, objective, reliable, and practical fire risk assessment framework for building construction sites based in Hong Kong.  A comprehensive list of those factors (or conditions) which may constitute a fire risk was compiled using desktop research and structured face-to-face interviews with experienced site personnel.  This list of factors was then used to develop a questionnaire survey form and the Reliability Interval Method (RIM) was used to analyse the survey results and determine the relative importance and rankings of the various fire risk factors at a broad level and risk sub-factors at a detailed level.  It was found that the fire risk factor of “Fire Services Equipment and Installations” has the greatest impact on construction site fire safety, with “Means of Escape in Case of Fire” being the second, and “Attitude of Main Contractor towards Fire Safety” being the third.  In fact, it is the main contractor who plays the pivotal role in maintaining construction site fire safety, which is in line with the high ranking given to the fire risk factor of “Attitude of Main Contractor towards Fire Safety”.  The proposed fire risk assessment framework can be used to develop a useful checklist for assessing the overall level of fire risk for a construction site, and to identify any areas needing improvement.  Although the fire risk assessment framework was developed locally in Hong Kong, the research methodology could be replicated in other countries to produce similar frameworks for international comparison.  Such an extension would aid the understanding of the management of fire risk on construction sites and help discover differences between countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 04020108
Author(s):  
Yang Su ◽  
Chao Mao ◽  
Rui Jiang ◽  
Guiwen Liu ◽  
Jun Wang

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3326
Author(s):  
Wei Tong Chen ◽  
Hew Cameron Merrett ◽  
Ying-Hua Huang ◽  
Theresia Avila Bria ◽  
Ying-Hsiu Lin

Construction occupational accidents are often attributed to workers’ having an insufficient perception of how their actions influence safety in the construction site. This research explores the relationship between safety climate (SC) and personnel safety behavior (SB) of construction workers operating on building construction sites in Taiwan. The study discovered a significant positive relationship between SC and SB of Taiwan’s building construction sites, and in turn SC level had a positive impact on SB participation and overall safety perceptions. The higher the SC cognition of Taiwan’s building construction workers, the better the performance of SB was found to be. The dimension of "safety commitment and safety training" had the greatest relationship with SB. Safety training also had a deep impact on the cognition of SB. Therefore, the organizational culture and attitudes to safety coupled with the successful implementation of safety education and training can effectively enhance SC and worker SB on building construction sites in Taiwan, thereby potentially reducing the impacts of the underlying organizational factors behind safety related incidents.


Construction sites records high accident and incident rate due to lack of safety measures. Safety assessment rating is significant for every construction site to know safety status of the particular site. In this research TR safety observation method is used to assess the site performance. As unsafe condition is the key factor in every construction site, this research considers the possible unsafe conditions to assess the site performance. A questionnaire survey is done with the workers to know the existing safe conditions. Results showed that the safety performance of the site is 39%. Then every unsafe condition is ranked with respect to severity rating for detailed analysis. Furthermore bowtie analysis is used to identify the causes and consequences of the unsafe conditions. Through this analysis the owner can reduce the risk of every event and improve the site performance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takuma Akaki ◽  
Tomoyuki Gondo

The purpose of the present study is to grasp the situation of construction sites easily by distinguishing the movements of construction workers at construction sites from the accelerometer data attached to their waists. For the construction manager to accurately perceive the active or inactive state of his workers, their movements were classified into three distinct categories: walking, standing, and sitting. We tracked and observed two rebar workers for 5 days at a large building construction site. Their movements were classified by two-axis plots of (1) the difference between the maximum and minimum absolute values and (2) the value of acceleration at each second, and visualized by a heatmap among others for this trial. The results showed that despite the difficulty in distinguishing rebar work without a total body movement while sitting, the accuracy of discrimination was 60–80% in walking and sitting. From this analysis, we were able to identify repetitive tasks and the differences between morning and afternoon tasks. Furthermore, by applying simple visualization, we could concisely represent changes in work intensity over a relatively long period.


2010 ◽  
Vol 163-167 ◽  
pp. 4564-4569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Firman Masudi ◽  
Che Rosmani Che Hassan ◽  
Noor Zalina Mahmood ◽  
Siti Nazziera Mokhtar ◽  
Nik Meriam Sulaiman

Estimation of construction and demolition (C&D) waste amount is crucial for implementing waste minimization program. Estimation of C&D waste amount generated is a mean in assessing the potential for waste reduction. Thus, a better understanding of C&D waste generation in terms of causes and sources can be achieved. The aim of this paper is to conduct a review on available construction waste quantification methods from previous studies, which have been utilized in certain countries, while attempting to choose the most suitable and applicable method, and to direct future studies for better quantification methods. This review is applicable only for building construction projects and did not include civil/infrastructure, demolition, renovation, and excavation projects. Six quantification methods and/or waste audit tool available from literatures are discussed, which include their limitation and future direction for this study. It is believed that some combination of these quantification methods could make a good impact in accurate numerical estimation of construction waste amount generated in building construction projects. A strong and accurate database as presented by Soliz-Guzman, combined with effective, vital, and resourceful estimation suggested by Jalali’s Global Index (GI), also with the aid of user-friendly software tool like the SMARTAudit could provide an effective and reliable waste quantification.


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