No abstract

Purpose -The paper analyses the nature and causes of fatal incidents involving excavators occurring in the Australian construction industry. A three-level incident causation model developed by researchers at Loughborough University forms the theoretical framework for this analysis, which seeks to identify immediate circumstances, shaping factors and originating influences in selected incidents. Design/methodology/approach -Case study incidents were identified from the National Coronial Information System database. These incidents were subjected to content analysis to identify causal factors. Findings -Ten cases were analysed in total. In all of these cases immediate circumstances could be identified. These included the use of unsafe work methods and the condition, suitability or useability of plant. In several cases shaping factors, such as communication between work-team members and the design of work processes, were identified as likely contributors to the incidents. In none of the cases could originating influences be identified.Research limitations/implications -The research was limited by the relatively small number of cases for which detailed investigation reports were available and the fact that, for the most part, the reports focused on the immediate circumstances surrounding the incidents. Practical implications -The circumstances of the fatal incidents in Australia are similar to those reported in the UK and the USA and the identified causes have known safety solutions. The persistence of these incidents in the Australian construction industry suggests that there may be underlying reasons why known safety solutions are not implemented. Further in-depth analysis of incident causes may help to identify organisational and/or cultural causes of incidents involving excavators. Originality/value -The analysis provides a more detailed qualitative analysis of the causes of fatal incidents involving excavators than would is possible using national compensation data, which restricts analysis to a classification of the mechanism and agency of injury.

In ten years from 2004 to 2013, 359 workers died in the Australian construction industry because of work related causes. This paper investigates crane-related fatalities in order to find the upstream causation of such accidents. The National Coroners’ Information System (NCIS) database was searched to identify fatal accidents in the construction industry involving the use of a crane.  The narrative description of the cases provided in the coroners’ findings and associated documents were content analysed to identify the contributing causal factors within the context of each case. The findings show that the most frequent crane-related accident types were those that were struck by load, and electrocution. The most prevalent immediate circumstance causes were layout of the site and restricted space. The two most commonly identified shaping factors were physical site constraints and design of construction process. Inadequate risk management system was identified as the main originating influence on the accidents. This paper demonstrates that a systemic causation model can provide considerable insight into how originating influences, shaping factors, and immediate circumstances combine to produce accidents. This information is extremely useful in informing the development of prevention strategies, particularly in the case of commonly occurring accident types.

The Australian house building industry has been facing an increase in the average house completion time in the last decade. This increase in some states is quite dramatic. For instance, Western Australia has faced a 70 percent increase in the average house completion time during this period. This paper uses two planning approaches to explain this; i) the activity-based planning methods and ii) the workflow-based planning methods. In addition, this research investigates the strengths and weaknesses of these two planning approaches in explaining the behaviour of the house building industry. For this purpose, a national case study and five state case studies including Victoria, Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia have been used. The data related to the key parameters have been collected and their correlation with the average house completion time has been investigated. These key parameters include the average house floor area, the number of house completions and the number of houses under construction. The reasons for the increasing trend of the average house completion time have been postulated in all case studies. According to this research, the increase in the average house completion time cannot be explained using activity-based planning methods. In contrast, by using workflowbased planning methods, it has been shown that the average house completion time is correlated with the number of houses under construction. This paper shows that the average completion time is influenced directly by the workflow in the house building industry and that workflow planning should be the basis for the house building industry planning.