Higher Accidents at Constuction Sites Means More Safety Practice

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The statistic of accidents at construction sites proofs that Malaysian construction industry is one of the critical sectors that need to take the site safety practices seriously. Accident is not a natural incidence. It happens because of unsafe acts, unsafe conditions or both. In general, accidents are a combination of contributing causes, unsafe acts and unsafe condition. The root causes of construction accidents is the main thing that need to be highlighted in order to improve the overall safety performance. That knowledge could be utilised to be more conducive working conditions and environments at construction sites. Therefore, a study has been conducted to identify the causes of accident at construction sites. This study was started out by reviewing literature from journals, books, newspaper, and web pages. Then reported accidents cases kept by the Department of Occupational Safety and Health Malaysia (DOSH) were examined to investigate causes of accidents. Surveys using questionnaire forms were carried out to obtain data from respondents who are mainly contractors and the rest are developers and consultants firms all around countries that are well versed with the construction safety. The finding of this study reveals that accidents are the result of many contributing factors, causes, and sub causes. Some of the critical factors are unsafe method, human element, unsafe equipment, job site conditions, management, and unique nature of the industry. The causes of accidents in Malaysia were found to be similar to that mentioned in literature review. However, some of the causes are low in frequency of occurrence. The main cause of construction accidents found are the workers ‘negligence, failure of workers to obey work procedures,...

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...ntion, the rate of accident will rises thus it will badly affected the image of the construction industry company. On average, more than 40 accidents were recorded each year beginning from 2005 till 2009 despite the efforts done to ensure the safety environment. All accidents have their causes so it is important to identify the causes to the accident so that it can be prevented in future and thus reduce injury, ill health and also cost to the business. This is the article i took from my sinchew.com, the title was second Penang bridge collapse. The possible causes of the accident is because of this three factors, namely design, material used and quality of work not accordance with specifications, and supervision and quality control at the project site. The safety officer should regularly check the construction site to prevent this kind of accidents happen in future.

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