Ranking of Risks for Existing and New Building Works

Abstract

Site safety is one critical factor affecting the sustainability of skyscrapers and decoration, repair, and maintenance projects. Many newly-built skyscrapers exceed 50 storeys in Hong Kong and decoration, repair, and maintenance projects are widely performed to extend the lifespans of buildings. Although many cities do not contain skyscrapers at present, this will change in the future. Likewise, more decoration, repair, and maintenance projects will emerge. Thus, the present research, which compares the safety risks among the new and DSR projects, provides insights for builders, policymakers, and safety personnel. Moreover, research studies which rank and compare decoration, repair, and maintenance projects and new skyscraper constructions are scarce. The use of the evidence-based practice approach, which aims to narrow the gap between practice and academia in construction safety research, is the first of its kind. In this paper, we firstly provide a systematic literature review from 1999 to 2019 regarding construction safety, and then study the industry’s perspectives by analysing the construction practitioners’ interview results, court cases, and analytic hierarchy process survey results to compare them with the literature. It is found that the generation gap and prolonged working hours lead to accidents—a phenomenon which is unique in Hong Kong and absent from the literature. It also reveals that most accidents happen on new building sites due to tower crane failure, while those on DSR projects are linked with the circular saw. Although many of the contractors involved in new buildings are wealthier than DSR contractors, it is surprising to learn that lack of funding for safety is the most important factor linked to safety risks on the sites.

Fuzzy and Interval AHP Approaches in Sustainable Management for the Architectural Heritage in Smart Cities

“…In terms of choosing alternatives, some papers used AHP-analytical hierarchical process to select the most optimal new purpose in the process of restoration and revitalization of historic buildings [37,38], while others used AHP for the most suitable historical buildings for protection [39]. On the other hand, AHP is often used to prioritize relevant risk issues or indicators regarding possible interventions and implementation of constructive measures [40,41]. Talking about the smart city framework, some authors have recognized AHP as a suitable MCDM technique for ranking criteria to provide qualitative guidelines for the development of smart cities or to identify the crucial barriers for smart strategies implementation [42][43][44][45].…”

Risk Profiling from the European Statistics on Accidents at Work (ESAW) Accidents′ Databases: A Case Study in Construction Sites

“…More in detail, as pointed out in the previous sections, numerous examples of tools aimed at extracting information from accidents statistics and data can be found in literature. However, most of them require a subjective intervention of the analyst and/or of a panel of experts [86,87]. Conversely, this study considered a database (Infor.MO) where the type of information made available is standardized.…”

Sustainable Emergency Management Based on Intelligent Information Processing

“…Aiming to compare safety risks between new projects and projects involving decoration, repair, and maintenance, Li et al studied the particular phenomena of Hong Kong construction worker generation gaps and extended working hours leading to construction accidents [16]. Based on the literature on building safety from 1999 to 2019, and using evidence-based practical methods and semi-structured interviews, this study aimed to compare the previous literature and analyze interviews with construction practitioners, court cases, and analytic hierarchy process investigations.…”