施工作业人员不安全行为干预策略仿真研究

为有效控制施工作业人员不安全行为,采用系统动力学方法,构建施工作业人员不安全行为影响因素干预模型,借助Vensim软件模拟不安全行为的动态演化过程,通过算例数据进行仿真干预实验。研究分析结果表明：安全管理水平和作业人员个体的安全行为水平对其不安全行为产生具有明显的抑制作用;采取一定的组合干预策略后,作业人员的不安全行为水平明显下降,而基于“前摄性+反应性”思想的全面组合干预策略对不安全行为控制的正向促进作用更加显著。     

A Big-Data-based platform of workers’ behavior: Observations from the field

Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) has been used in construction to observe, analyze and modify workers’ behavior. However, studies have identified that BBS has several limitations, which have hindered its effective implementation. To mitigate the negative impact of BBS, this paper uses a case study approach to develop a Big-Data-based platform to classify, collect and store data about workers’ unsafe behavior that is derived from a metro construction project. In developing the platform, three processes were undertaken: (1) a behavioral risk knowledge base was established; (2) images reflecting workers’ unsafe behavior were collected from intelligent video surveillance and mobile application; and (3) images with semantic information were stored via a Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). The platform was implemented during the construction of the metro-system and it is demonstrated that it can effectively analyze semantic information contained in images, automatically extract workers’ unsafe behavior and quickly retrieve on HDFS as well. The research presented in this paper can enable construction organizations with the ability to visualize unsafe acts in real-time and further identify patterns of behavior that can jeopardize safety outcomes.     

The effects of error management climate and safety communication on safety: A multi-level study

Work in the construction industry is considered inherently dangerous, despite the technological improvements regarding the safety of work conditions and equipment. To address the urgent need to identify organizational predictors of safety performance and outcomes among construction workers, the present study examined multi-level effects of two important indicators of safety climate, namely contractor error management climate and worker safety communication, on safety behavior, injury, and pain among union construction workers. Data were collected from 235 union construction workers employed by 15 contractors in Midwest and Northwest regions of the United States. Results revealed significant main effects for safety communication and error management climate on safety behaviors and pain, but not on injuries. Our findings suggest that positive safety communication and error management climate are important contributors to improving workplace safety. Specific implications of these results for organizational safety research and practice are discussed.     

Employee engagement,boredom and frontline construction workers feeling safe in their workplace

Systems thinking is a philosophy currently prevalent within construction safety literature that is applied to understand and improve safety in sociotechnical systems. Among systems, the site-project organizational system is of particular interest to this paper. Using focus group and survey feedback research to learn about how safety incidents effect levels of construction workers engagement this paper reveals how a safety incident provides an opportunity to create a potential quality (productivity) upgrade within an organization. The research approach involved a qualitative study involving 27 frontline supervisors and a follow-up survey completed by 207 frontline workers in the Australian Asphalt and Pavement Industry. The focus group interviews supported the articulation of the concepts of tacit safety, explicit safety, situational awareness, foresight ability, practical intelligence and crew synergy. Our findings indicate that having regular shift changes and other job site workers being fatigued are influential on perceptions of tacit safety. An individual's foresight ability was found to be the most potent predictor of worker perceptions of work engagement. The paper explains that relatively small improvements in worker perceptions of safety can bring about significant improvements in employee engagement and productivity.     

The validity of the TR safety observation method on building construction.

The safety inspectors carried out monitoring visits to 305 building construction sites, and the results were compared with the accident figures of the same sites. The average number of observations per site was 144, and the observed safety aspects were: working habits, scaffolding and ladders, machines and equipment, protection against falling, lighting and electricity, and order and tidiness. Each item was scored as 'correct' if it met the safety standards, otherwise the item was scored as 'not correct'. The safety index was calculated as a percentage of the 'correct' items related to all the observed items. Only some hours of training were needed for making reliable observations, when the observers already knew the safety standards. Also the validity proved to be good. The sites were grouped according to the observed safety index in order to limit the huge random variation in the accident rates of single sites. There was a significant correlation between the observed safety index and the accident rate of the site groups. The sites with the lowest observed safety index had, on average, a three times higher accident rate than the sites with the highest safety index. The method is used by the site personnel as an internal weekly safety inspection and feedback tool. The state safety inspectors use the method as a means of objective feedback for the companies.     

A system of safety management practices and worker engagement for reducing and preventing accidents: An empirical and theoretical investigation

Objective

The overall research objective was to theoretically and empirically develop the ideas around a system of safety management practices (ten practices were elaborated), to test their relationship with objective safety statistics (such as accident rates), and to explore how these practices work to achieve positive safety results (accident prevention) through worker engagement.

Method

Data were collected using safety manager, supervisor and employee surveys designed to assess and link safety management system practices, employee perceptions resulting from existing practices, and safety performance outcomes.

Results

Results indicate the following: there is a significant negative relationship between the presence of ten individual safety management practices, as well as the composite of these practices, with accident rates; there is a significant negative relationship between the level of safety-focused worker emotional and cognitive engagement with accident rates; safety management systems and worker engagement levels can be used individually to predict accident rates; safety management systems can be used to predict worker engagement levels; and worker engagement levels act as mediators between the safety management system and safety performance outcomes (such as accident rates).

Implications

Even though the presence of safety management system practices is linked with incident reduction and may represent a necessary first-step in accident prevention, safety performance may also depend on mediation by safety-focused cognitive and emotional engagement by workers. Thus, when organizations invest in a safety management system approach to reducing/preventing accidents and improving safety performance, they should also be concerned about winning over the minds and hearts of their workers through human performance-based safety management systems designed to promote and enhance worker engagement.     

Identifying behaviour patterns of construction safety using system archetypes

Construction safety management involves complex issues (e.g., different trades, multi-organizational project structure, constantly changing work environment, and transient workforce). Systems thinking is widely considered as an effective approach to understanding and managing the complexity. This paper aims to better understand dynamic complexity of construction safety management by exploring archetypes of construction safety. To achieve this, this paper adopted the ground theory method (GTM) and 22 interviews were conducted with participants in various positions (government safety inspector, client, health and safety manager, safety consultant, safety auditor, and safety researcher). Eight archetypes were emerged from the collected data: (1) safety regulations, (2) incentive programs, (3) procurement and safety, (4) safety management in small businesses (5) production and safety, (6) workers’ conflicting goals, (7) blame on workers, and (8) reactive and proactive learning. These archetypes capture the interactions between a wide range of factors within various hierarchical levels and subsystems. As a free-standing tool, they advance the understanding of dynamic complexity of construction safety management and provide systemic insights into dealing with the complexity. They also can facilitate system dynamics modelling of construction safety process.     

Critical factors and paths influencing construction workers’ safety risk tolerances

While workers’ safety risk tolerances have been regarded as a main reason for their unsafe behaviors, little is known about why different people have different risk tolerances even when confronting the same situation. The aim of this research is to identify the critical factors and paths that influence workers’ safety risk tolerance and to explore how they contribute to accident causal model from a system thinking perceptive. A number of methods were carried out to analyze the data collected through interviews and questionnaire surveys. In the first and second steps of the research, factor identification, factor ranking and factor analysis were carried out, and the results show that workers’ safety risk tolerance can be influenced by four groups of factors, namely: (1) personal subjective perception; (2) work knowledge and experiences; (3) work characteristics; and (4) safety management. In the third step of the research, hypothetical influencing path model was developed and tested by using structural equation modeling (SEM). It is found that the effects of external factors (safety management and work characteristics) on risk tolerance are larger than that of internal factors (personal subjective perception and work knowledge & experiences). Specifically, safety management contributes the most to workers’ safety risk tolerance through its direct effect and indirect effect; while personal subjective perception comes the second and can act as an intermedia for work characteristics. This research provides an in-depth insight of workers’ unsafe behaviors by depicting the contributing factors as shown in the accident causal model developed in this research.     

Relational approach in managing construction project safety: A social capital perspective

Existing initiatives in the management of construction project safety are largely based on normative compliance and error prevention, a risk management approach. Although advantageous, these approaches are not wholly successful in further lowering accident rates. A major limitation lies with the approaches’ lack of emphasis on the social and team processes inherent in construction project settings. We advance the enquiry by invoking the concept of social capital and project organisational processes, and their impacts on project safety performance. Because social capital is a primordial concept and affects project participants’ interactions, its impact on project safety performance is hypothesised to be indirect, i.e. the impact of social capital on safety performance is mediated by organisational processes in adaptation and cooperation. A questionnaire survey was conducted within Hong Kong construction industry to test the hypotheses. 376 usable responses were received and used for analyses. The results reveal that, while the structural dimension is not significant, the mediational thesis is generally supported with the cognitive and relational dimensions affecting project participants’ adaptation and cooperation, and the latter two processes affect safety performance. However, the cognitive dimension also directly affects safety performance. The implications of these results for project safety management are discussed.     

Control charts for monitoring a Poisson hidden Markov process

Monitoring stochastic processes with control charts is the main field of application in statistical process control. For a Poisson hidden Markov model (HMM) as the underlying process, we investigate a Shewhart individuals chart, an ordinary Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) chart, and two different types of log-likelihood ratio (log-LR) CUSUM charts. We evaluate and compare the charts' performance by their average run length, computed either by utilizing the Markov chain approach or by simulations. Our performance evaluation includes various out-of-control scenarios as well as different levels of dependence within the HMM. It turns out that the ordinary CUSUM chart shows the best overall performance, whereas the other charts' performance strongly depend on the particular out-of-control scenario and autocorrelation level, respectively. For illustration, we apply the HMM and the considered charts to a data set about weekly sales counts.     

Relationships between psychological safety climate facets and safety behavior in the rail industry: A dominance analysis

The goals of this study were twofold: (1) to confirm a relationship between employee perceptions of psychological safety climate and safety behavior for a sample of workers in the rail industry and (2) to explore the relative strengths of relationships between specific facets of safety climate and safety behavior. Non-management rail maintenance workers employed by a large North American railroad completed a survey (n = 421) regarding workplace safety perceptions and behaviors. Three facets of safety climate (management safety, coworker safety, and work-safety tension) were assessed as relating to individual workers’ reported safety behavior. All three facets were significantly associated with safety behavior. Dominance analysis was used to assess the relative importance of each facet as related to the outcome, and work-safety tension evidenced the strongest relationship with safety behavior.     

Toward an understanding of the impact of production pressure on safety performance in construction operations

It is not unusual to observe that actual schedule and quality performances are different from planned performances (e.g., schedule delay and rework) during a construction project. Such differences often result in production pressure (e.g., being pressed to work faster). Previous studies demonstrated that such production pressure negatively affects safety performance. However, the process by which production pressure influences safety performance, and to what extent, has not been fully investigated. As a result, the impact of production pressure has not been incorporated much into safety management in practice. In an effort to address this issue, this paper examines how production pressure relates to safety performance over time by identifying their feedback processes. A conceptual causal loop diagram is created to identify the relationship between schedule and quality performances (e.g., schedule delays and rework) and the components related to a safety program (e.g., workers’ perceptions of safety, safety training, safety supervision, and crew size). A case study is then experimentally undertaken to investigate this relationship with accident occurrence with the use of data collected from a construction site; the case study is used to build a System Dynamics (SD) model. The SD model, then, is validated through inequality statistics analysis. Sensitivity analysis and statistical screening techniques further permit an evaluation of the impact of the managerial components on accident occurrence. The results of the case study indicate that schedule delays and rework are the critical factors affecting accident occurrence for the monitored project.     

A suggested color scheme for reducing perception-related accidents on construction work sites

Changes in workforce demographics have led to the need for more sophisticated approaches to addressing the safety requirements of the construction industry. Despite extensive research in other industry domains, the construction industry has been passive in exploring the impact of a color scheme; perception-related accidents have been effectively diminished by its implementation. The research demonstrated that the use of appropriate color schemes could improve the actions and psychology of workers on site, thereby increasing their perceptions of potentially dangerous situations. As a preliminary study, the objects selected by rigorous analysis on accident reports were workwear, safety net, gondola, scaffolding, and safety passage. The colors modified on site for temporary facilities were adopted from existing theoretical and empirical research that suggests the use of certain colors and their combinations to improve visibility and conspicuity while minimizing work fatigue. The color schemes were also tested and confirmed through two workshops with workers and managers currently involved in actual projects. The impacts of color schemes suggested in this paper are summarized as follows. First, the color schemes improve the conspicuity of facilities with other on site components, enabling workers to quickly discern and orient themselves in their work environment. Secondly, the color schemes have been selected to minimize the visual work fatigue and monotony that can potentially increase accidents.     

A Quality Control Chart for Work Performance Appraisal

A substantial disagreement between total quality management/Deming's principles and traditional management falls in the area of work performance appraisal. In fact, Deming ranks the traditional “evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review” third in his list of the Seven Deadly Diseases of the western style of management. Deming advocates argue that many of the faulty management practices in performance appraisal originate from a failure to understand variation among workers and a failure to distinguish between the “common causes” and the “special causes” of variation. Deming emphasized quality control charts as a proper tool for monitoring the stability of a system, for distinguishing the special causes from the common causes, and for detecting who among the workers is performing within the system, out of the system on the good side, or out of the system on the poor side. However, the implementation of most control charts requires that the performance ratings be quantitative on the interval scale of measurement, which may not be the case in practice. Some merit systems use ratings that are only categorical on the ordinal scale of measurement (e.g., excellent, good, fair, and poor) or rank workers by arranging them in order of merit from 1, 2, last.

Deming, however, did not show how to construct a control chart for performance appraisal when the performance ratings are reported only on the ordinal scale of measurement. In this article, we propose a quality control chart that is particularly useful in the area of performance appraisal when the workers' ratings are categorical on the ordinal scale of measurement. The proposed chart can aid managers in implementing Deming's teachings on performance appraisal. The manager will then be able to understand variation among workers and to distinguish between the “common causes” and the “special causes” affecting a certain work system. The manager can then determine who among the workers is performing within the bounds of the system, out of the system on the good side, or out of the system on the poor side.     

A hybrid simulation approach for integrating safety behavior into construction planning: An earthmoving case study

One of the key challenges in improving construction safety and health is the management of safety behavior. From a system point of view, workers work unsafely due to system level issues such as poor safety culture, excessive production pressure, inadequate allocation of resources and time and lack of training. These systemic issues should be eradicated or minimized during planning. However, there is a lack of detailed planning tools to help managers assess the impact of their upstream decisions on worker safety behavior. Even though simulation had been used in construction planning, the review conducted in this study showed that construction safety management research had not been exploiting the potential of simulation techniques. Thus, a hybrid simulation framework is proposed to facilitate integration of safety management considerations into construction activity simulation. The hybrid framework consists of discrete event simulation (DES) as the core, but heterogeneous, interactive and intelligent (able to make decisions) agents replace traditional entities and resources. In addition, some of the cognitive processes and physiological aspects of agents are captured using system dynamics (SD) approach. The combination of DES, agent-based simulation (ABS) and SD allows a more “natural” representation of the complex dynamics in construction activities. The proposed hybrid framework was demonstrated using a hypothetical case study. In addition, due to the lack of application of factorial experiment approach in safety management simulation, the case study demonstrated sensitivity analysis and factorial experiment to guide future research.     

基于人因工程的施工人员安全教育效果优化研究

以人为本地开展施工企业的安全教育工作,针对施工企业施工人员安全教育的现状,从人因工程的角度探究改善安全教育效果不佳的措施。统计工作人员在接受安全教育后15 d内产生不安全行为的类别及次数,并对记录的实验数据进行分析处理,确定保护他人安全意识及规范习惯性不安全行为的安全教育效果不佳。利用得出的结论对工人进行反馈调查,结果表明问题产生的原因主要是人际关系和有针对性的安全操作技术培训强度不够。结合人因工程理论的作业活动分解理论,从安全教育培训方式、工人接受意愿和安全教育效果的保持性等方面提出了相应的改善措施,为施工企业提升施工人员安全教育培训效果提供了新途径。     

申嘉湖高速公路双壁路堑开挖爆破安全管理

阐述申嘉湖高速公路双壁路堑开挖爆破的安全问题,以及如何加强和细化人员、爆破器材及施工过程中的安全管理工作,以确保在工程爆破中取得良好的爆破效果,保证爆破工程的安全.     

Research on Systematic Analysis and Countermeasures of the Buildings Construction Safety Problems

The buildings construction safety problems contain various safetyhidden dangers that caused by the human unsafe behaviors, the substance unsafe conditions, operation environment unsafe factors and management defects. The authors summarize comprehensively the problems of buildings construction safety in China at present based on grasping the whole safety status of buildings construction, and the synthetic countermeasures including the systems about laws, management, technology and education civilization for buildings construction safety management are brought up based on the viewpoint of safety system theory. Then it is thought that building scientific management mechanisms and popularizing effective management methods and measures are the fundamental ways for improving further the level of safety management for buildings construction in China at present.     

Robustness properties of Cuscore statistics for monitoring a nonstationary system

We investigate the performance of cumulative score (Cuscore) charts in monitoring a nonstationary process subject to minimum mean‐squared error (MMSE) feedback control. Specifically, we have previously designed Cuscore statistics to discover spike or step signals hidden in a nonstationary noise disturbance for feedback‐controlled processes. Here, we study the properties of the proposed policies in terms of their robustness to process model misspecification, to deviations from assumed values for their parameters, to model misspecification for the disturbance as well as to model misspecification for the signal. We found that, in general, the Cuscore charts are fairly robust to process and signal model misspecification. However, they are less robust to departures from its true parameter values. We present a numerical example to demonstrate the importance of understanding the Cuscore's robustness as well as its construction and application. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of a participatory ergonomics intervention: the value of involvement

This article presents the implementation of a participatory ergonomics (PE) approach in a multinational company in the northern side of Italy, aiming to improve ergonomics, well-being and production outcomes. The methodology used is based on the creation of a multi-disciplinary team to provide and discuss ergonomics’ solutions according to the physical problems of the workers involved and better manage the re-introduction of the workers in the line of production. The study consists of a longitudinal analysis before and after the plant redesign and the PE intervention. Some psychosocial variables as job satisfaction, perceived fatigue, perceived usefulness, repetitiveness, occupational safety and company attention to safety have been monitored to verify the impact of the PE intervention. The results show how the PE intervention positively influences the perception of workers regarding the level of fatigue and repetitiveness and increasing job satisfaction, usefulness and occupational safety with a positive impact on productivity.