Preliminary Human Safety Assessment (PHSA) for the Improvement of the Behavioral Aspects of Safety Climate in the Construction Industry

Abstract

Occupational safety in the construction industry still represents a relevant problem at a global level. In fact, the complexity of working activities in this sector requires a comprehensive approach that goes beyond normative compliance to guarantee safer working conditions. In particular, empirical research on the factors influencing the unsafe behavior of workers needs to be augmented. Thus, the relationship between human factors and safety management issues following a bottom-up approach was investigated. In particular, an easy-to-use procedure that can be used to better address workers’ safety needs augmenting the company’s safety climate and supporting safety management issues was developed. Such an approach, based on the assessment of human reliability factors, was verified in a real case study concerning the users of concrete mixer trucks. The results showed that the majority of human failures were action and retrieval errors, underlining the importance of theoretical and practical training programs as a means to improve safety behavior. In such a context, information and communication activities also resulted beneficially to augment the company’s safety climate. The proposed approach, despite its qualitative nature, allows a clearer understanding of workers’ perceptions of hazards and their risk-taking behavior, providing practical cues to monitor and improve the behavioral aspects of safety climate. Hence, these first results can contribute to augmenting safety knowledge in the construction industry, providing a basis for further investigations on the causalities related to human performances, which are considered a key element in the prevention of accidents.

Applying Hierarchical Task Analysis to Depict Human Safety Errors during Pesticide Use in Vineyard Cultivation

“…For example, Ghasemi et al [59] used SHERPA to identify human error types in control units of the petrochemical industry, while Harris et al [51] used this tool to analyze aircraft pilots, and suggested that that error types such as "actions" and "checks" are particularly suited to the analysis of these work tasks. Other examples of the SHERPA application can be found in the analysis of heavy machinery operators in the construction sector [34], as well as in the analysis of the task of administering drugs to hospital patients [35]. Other studies have focused on extensions of the SHERPA method [53].…”

“…In fact, further studies on behavioral factors in pesticide use, including risk perception, are of major importance for effective risk management [32]. To address these issues, a human-centered approach is needed with the aim of investigating the different phases that characterize the work activities [33,34]. As argued by several authors in different fields, human error analysis can allow a better understanding of how human interaction with work tasks might lead to accidents and incidents [35][36][37], since normative approaches do not properly consider the characteristics of the work processes [38].…”

Use of Sherpa for the Prevention of Human Errors Among Agricultural Machinery Users

“…This accomplishes the research clues by Cividino et al [36], who pointed out the low perception and awareness of safety issue by the workers in the agricultural sector. Accordingly, as demonstrated also in other fields [45], [46], safety perception and climate in small working contexts need to be augmented, in order to reduce the number of accidents.…”

A Safety Performance Assessment Framework for the Petroleum Industry’s Sustainable Development Based on FAHP-FCE and Human Factors

“…BBS is deemed to be an effective approach to further prevent oil industry accidents. BBS has been successfully applied in a wide range of areas such as health care and hospitals [17,18], transportation [19][20][21], manufacturing [22], and construction [23][24][25]. These successful applications illustrated the effectiveness of the BBS approach for identifying potentially risky or unsafe behaviors [26].…”