Hazard Recognition Patterns Demonstrated by Construction Workers

This study explored the types of hazard categories that construction workers are more or less proficient at recognising.

287 workers across 57 US construction workplaces were assessed on their hazard recognition patterns via construction photos with a range of hazards.

Hazards were categorised via the Haddon energy release concept, below.

Note, this only evaluated physical energy sources and not psychosocial hazards.

Providing background, they argue:

• Unrecognised hazards is an issue within workplaces and “traditional hazard recognition interventions (e.g., job hazard analyses and safety training) have been unable to tackle the industry-wide problem of poor hazard recognition levels” (p1)
• Previous US data has found workers failed to identify >40% of safety hazards, up to 57% of hazards in Australian data and 33% in a UK study
• Traditional safety training programs may not have had the desired impact on hazard recognition since they “are not designed with a sufficient understanding of why workers fail to recognize safety hazards” (p3)
• Some other limitations of training programs is that they lack robust and personalised training protocols, fail to adequately foster the new skills in the field post-training, don’t sufficiently engage people, and adopt “pedagogical instructional methods as opposed to andragogical approaches—which are more suitable for adult learners” (p3) [** that is, they draw on techniques used in child learning rather than adult learning]
• Limitations of methods like JHAs are also prevalent – like not capturing hazards created by other crews, or with checklists, which aren’t comprehensive of worksite hazards in a dynamic environment and can also “lead to tunnel vision—where the workers only look for safety hazards that are included as part of the safety checklist templates” or may “give a false sense of security to individuals when the workplace complies with the requirements as set by the checklist” (p3)

** This type of study design has its limitations (e.g. limited to construction photos rather than based in a real construction environment), so consider that when interpreting the findings.

Results

Key findings included:

·????????Workers failed “to recognize a disproportionate number of safety hazards” but were more proficient in identifying certain types of hazard types

·????????Specifically, 47% of hazards in the gravity, electrical, motion and temperature hazard categories were recognised whereas less than 10% collectively of hazards in pressure (15%), chemical (8%) and radiation (5%) categories were identified

·????????More than 60% of gravity hazards and 44% of electrical hazards were identified

·????????Temperature and motion hazards resulted in an identification proficiency level >42%

Hazard proficiency level results are shown below:

In sum, these findings suggest that workers are more proficient in identifying certain types of hazard categories than others; with weaker performance identifying pressure, chemical and radiation sources.

These findings may be relevant considering exposure to welding fumes, silica, asbestos and other carcinogens – which identifying such hazard exposures may be relatively weak among construction workers.

While workers had higher proficiency identifying gravity, motion, electrical and temperature hazards – this still amounted to just 47% of the total hazards.

That is, “despite the workers demonstrating relatively higher levels of proficiency in certain hazard categories, they still failed to recognize a substantial proportion of hazards even in the hazard categories where they demonstrated higher proficiency levels” (p9).

They further note that even in the gravity category which had the highest proficiency score, up to 40% of the hazards remained undetected (noting the danger of falls to different levels and to the same level).

Link in comments & links to other summaries of hazard recognition.

Authors: Uddin, S. J., Albert, A., Alsharef, A., Pandit, B., Patil, Y., & Nnaji, C. (2020). International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(21), 7788.