A Proactive Approach to Monitor Construction Safety using Indicators of Safety and Quality Audits
Albert W.K. Kwok Graduate Student, Department of Civil & Structural Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
S. L. Tang Associate Professor, Department of Civil & Structural Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
ABSTRACT: In the past decades, poor construction quality and safety records in the construction industry in Hong Kong are being criticised. Both problems inherently reflect the insufficient effort input by management of the construction contractors. Auditing systems both in quality and safety are developed to monitor the management performance. In this regard, the authors aim to work out a method which will help improve construction safety proactively by correlating the two auditing scores (quality and safety) with safety performance. The principle objective of this work is to develop two indicators. The first indicator is the relationship between accident rates and quality auditing scores and the second one is the relationship between accident rates and safety auditing scores. The indicators would be in the form of simple graphs relating accident rates with the scores achieved in quality audit and safety audit exercises being used by local construction contractors.
1 CONSTRUCTION SAFETY IN HONG KONG
Though tuning down a bit after the financial storm in the Asia Pacific Rim in late 1997, the construction industry has been long playing a very important role in Hong Kong's economy. The property and construction sectors contributed about 25% of Hong Kong's GDP (Rowlinson and Walker 1995). The earned per capita GDP for Hong Kong was about US$ 24,500, and some skilled workers in the construction industry earned as much as US$ 135 a day in 1996. However, there had been a high price to pay for the expenses of occupational safety and health.
The reportable accident rate for the industrial sector was 52.4 per thousand workers in 1996, compared to 53.2 in 1986. For the non-industrial sector, the rate was 10.9 in 1996, compared to 26.7 in 1986. In absolute terms, we had 59,000 work-related injuries in 1996, of which 40,200 arose from industrial undertakings which used 32.6% of the workforce. The safety record in the construction industry has been the worst for many years. In 1996, the construction industry which employed about 75,000 workers contributed about 40% of the total industrial accidents while the manufacturing industries which employed 347,000 workers contributed only 20% (Lee 1997). The accident rate per thousand workers per year in the construction industry was 220 (including 51 fatal cases) which was about ten times as that of the developed countries (Rowlinson 1997).
2 THE GOVERNMENT'S POLICY ON INDUSTRIAL SAFETY
Over the past three decades, the Hong Kong Government adpoted an “prescription approach" to enforce industrial safety regulations in Hong Kong. It has been considered to be reactive and non-incentive. In this approach, actions would be taken only after accidents occurred. In response to the very bad situation in workplace safety in particular the construction industry, the Government disseminated a “Consultation Paper On The Review Of Industrial Safety In Hong Kong” in July 1995 proposing new strategies in industrial safety of transforming the latter from an enforcement approach to a safety management approach. A new set of regulations will be enforced which will encourage employers and employees to manage safety on a self-regulatory manner through education, training, promotion of safety awareness and a better understanding of the costs of accidents (Hong Kong Government 1995). Then, in 1997, the Governement enacted the Occupational Safety & Health Ordinance offering a wider coverage of safety in the workplace by the inclusion of workers from the non-industrial settings. In 1998, the self-regulatory safety management regulations which include the implementation of Safety Auditing System became legislated.
3 SAFETY AUDITING IN PUBLIC WORKS
The Works Bureau is a government department responsible for the construction of public civil engineering works in Hong Kong. Before the commencement of the Safety Auditing Systems required by law, it initiated the Pay For Safety Scheme (PFSS) (Hong Kong Government 1996a) to encourage safety promotion among its contractors. About 2% of the contract sum is allowed in the bill of quantities for provision of site safety organisation, safety inspection, safety training and safety auditing. The audit system being adopted in this scheme is designated as an Independent Safety Audit Scheme (ISAS) (Hong Kong Government 1996b) which was developed by the Occupational Safety & Health Council by modifying from an UK proprietary safety auditing system named "CHASE". At the same time, the Housing Authority of the Government supported the move and imposed the ISAS in housing contracts as well. The audit system delineated fourteen key process elements for monitoring the safety performance of the contractors' management. (Hong Kong OSHC 1996)
4 QUALITY PERFORMANCE IN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY IN HONG KONG
Apart from safety performance, poor quality of public housing built in the past decades were also much criticised. The Hong Kong Housing Authority initiated to implement a quality assessment system named "Performance Assessment Scoring Scheme (PASS)" for the new housing work as from 1991 and a similar system named "Maintenance Assessment Scoring Scheme (MASS)" for maintenance work since 1994. The schemes are used to measure and review the contractor's quality performance against defined standards as well as their management capability. There are three main components in the "PASS" which includes outputs, inputs and maintenance period assessment. In the output component includes structural work, architectural works, external works and other obligations, while the input component includes management of works, resources, co-ordination and control, documentation and programming aspects. The third component is a quarterly assessment during the maintenance period that divides into three parts: (1) outstanding works, (2) execution of works of repairs and (3) management, response and documentation. (Kam & Tang 1997)
5 OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH
It is a universal trend that the mechanism of control of management systems is shifted from a reactive approach to a proactive approach. Auditings in quality and safety are developed to monitor the management efforts of construction contractors. Both safety and quality problems inherently reflect the insufficient effort input by the management. It is logical to consider that high scores in safety and quality audit exercises indicate companies' commitment to sustaining good management performance. Now, the two auditing mechanisms are carried out independently. It is likely that a correlation between quality audit scores and safety performance will exist and that a correlation between safety audit scores and safety performance will also exist.
The principal objective of the work is to develop two indicators to monitor proactively safety management of construction companies in Hong Kong. One indicator is to establish a relation of accident rate against quality performance and the other is to establish a relation of accident rate against safety performance. The required level of safety performance can be predicted by using the results of the quality and safety audits well before the occurrence of accidents. The scores will serve as signals to contractors and thus the method is proactive.
6 THE TWO INDICATORS
The possible mode of the two indicators may be illustrated by two simplified graphs shown as below.
6.1 Indicator I
Accident Rate
y
x
Safety Audit Score (Safety Management Effort)
6.2 Indicator II
Accident Rate
y
x
Quality Audit Score (Quality Management Effort)
6.3 Accident Rate
One of the key parameters in formulating the performance indicators is the accident rate. As mentioned above the accident rate per thousand workers in the construction industry in Hong Kong is about 220 per year. A reportable accident is defined as one that requires more than three days absence from work resulting from injury (Rowlinson 1997). Currently there are a number of different methods used to define accident rate by different occupational safety institutions in different countries. The most common way to define accident rate is usually the incident rate (per thousand workers per year) (IR) or the frequency rates (number of accidents per 100,000 man-hours worked) (FR).
6.4 Application
If there is a requirement in the contract documents of a civil engineering/building contract that the accidents rate should not be greater than a certain figure, say, y per thousand workers per year, then one can find out the value x which is the corresponding safety audit score (or quality audit score) of the accident rate y from the correlation graphs (indicators I and II). Before the commencement of any construction processes, a safety audit (or quality audit) will be conducted. An audit score which is greater than x will indicate that the predicted future accident rate of the project will be lower than y (i.e. satisfying contractual requirement), and vice versa. If the audit score is less than x, the contractor's management effort should be improved before any work could commence.
7 METHODDOLOGY AND STUDY DESIGN
In order to increase the accuracy of the two indicators, the research is supported by a large amount of data information. In collecting data of scores on quality and safety audits, a survey of 100 numbers of construction contracts, 50 civil engineering contracts and 50 building contracts is being conducted. The target groups of contractors are those in the List I Groups B & C and List II contractors on the Government’s list for Works Bureau projects and the contractors in the approved list of Building Contractors for Housing Authority projects.
In the collection of data, a questionnaire is designed which basically consists of three parts. The first part collects the demographic information of the construction companies and the type and stage of work. The second part collects information on accident rates and the final part details of scores of safety and quality audits. Such a large scale survey is being conducted. It is hoped that some figures will be available at the time of presentation of this paper at the conference.
REFERENCES
Hong Kong Government 1995. Consultation Paper On The Review Of Industrial Safety in Hong Kong, Education and Manpower Branch, Hong Kong Governement
Hong Kong Government 1996a. Works Branch Technical Circular No. 4/96: Pay for safety scheme (PFSS). Works Branch, Hong Kong Government Secretariat, 4 March 1996
Hong Kong Government 1996b. Works Branch Technical Circular No. 5/96: The independent safety audit scheme. Works Branch, Hong Kong Government Secretariat, 5 March 1996
Hong Kong Occupational Safety & Health Council 1996. Works Branch Safety Auditing Systems (WBSAS) Version 1.0, Hong Kong Occupational Safety & Health Council
Kam C.W. & Tang S.L. 1997. Development an implementation of quality assurance in public construction works in Singapore and Hong Kong, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol.14 No.9, 1997, 909-928
Lee K.F. 1997. Managing a shared responsibility - From safety charter to new legislation, APOSHO 13 Conference Proceedings Hong Kong 21-22 April 1997: 7-13
Rowlinson S. & A. Walker 1995. The Construction Industry in Hong Kong, Longman Asia
Rowlinson S. 1997. Hong Kong Construction - Site Safety Management, Sweet & Maxwell