Assessing Workers Safety Management Knowledge on Construction Site
Abstract
Safety management is associated with the policies, objectives, procedures, methods, roles and functions that aim at controlling hazard and risk in socio-technical systems. Companies that have implemented effective OSH Management system have reported benefit from increase operational efficiency, reduction in insurance cost and improve in workers retention and satisfaction. Many accidents that occur at construction site are due inadequate adherence of workers to work procedures. The awareness and perception of workers toward safety, health and their working environment are important aspect to enhance the building construction to the better condition to the workers. Workers play an important role in accomplishment of the building construction. All these supporting evidence reflects on the needs to study building construction workers knowledge of safety management system. The study is a criteria – based study, in which 24 construction companies were selected for the study The respondent samples used in the study were drawn from the total population of permanent construction workers in the 24 construction companies selected. The total numbers of permanent construction workers in the 24 construction companies are 750 while 254 were selected for the study. The research questionnaires were administered on 254 permanent construction workers within the 24 construction companies in Abuja. The analysis of the questionnaires survey data was undertaken using the statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 20. A reliability test was conducted on the data in order to control error within the data. The Cronbach’s Alpha of the two variable data are .853 and .863 respectively and make the data reliable. Correlation analysis was conducted in order to determine the relationship between worker’s general knowledge and worker’s safety management knowledge and the result was found to be significant (P<0.005). This relationship was modelled using simple linear regression and from the model the result shows that improvement on the worker’s safety management system knowledge practice on sites will improves general knowledge among construction workers. Therefore, workers’ knowledge of safety management systems significantly influences the overall benefits of safety management system on the construction sites. As such there is need for potential improvement on the knowledge or awareness of the workers to safety management system as perceived from the analysis in order to bring about the expected high performance standard on construction sites.
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Introduction
Construction industry is vital to the development of any nation, as it strongly contributes to the economic growth of the nation. As such there is need for the industry stakeholders to comply with necessary law and regulations as regard to safety and health of workers. The poor performances record of safety and health in construction industry is because the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) management system is a neglected area and a function that has not been pursued systematically in the construction industry (Bakri et al. 2006). High rate of injury are primarily due to inadequate or nonexistence of an OSH management. Therefore Davies & Tomasin (1996) were of the opinion that effective application of OSH Management system can lead to safe construction work and reduce the rate of accidents at construction site.
Occupational safety and health (OSH) is aim at preventing accidents at workplace. Despite the achievement in accidents prevention at most construction sites it has been identified that accidents still exists in construction sites (Levitt & Samelson, 1993). Safety management relates to the actual practices, roles and functions associated with remaining safe Kirwan, (1998), while Reiman & Rollenhagen, (2011) safety management is associated with the policies, objectives, procedures, methods, roles and functions that aim at controlling hazards and risk in socio-technical systems.
Conclusion
The effectiveness of workers general knowledge on site through construction workers’ knowledge of safety management system was determined. It was revealed that a reasonable correlation exists between workers’ knowledge of safety management system and workers’ general knowledge (r = 0.360, P < 0.001). This means that workers’ general knowledge and workers’ knowledge of safety management systems are significantly related. This indicates that as the level of workers’ knowledge of safety management system increases, the benefit of the safety management system also increase, i.e improve workers general knowledge.
The regression models finding indicate that additional improvement on the level of knowledge of safety management system among the workers’ will spring up enormous benefit of workers general knowledge on the construction sites. Those are the evidence that improving workers’ awareness of safety management system would improve safety and health measures on construction sites. As such workers’ knowledge of safety management systems significantly influence the overall benefits of safety management system on the construction sites. The implication of the finding is that while it might be important for contractors to put in place all necessary training relating to safety management system, the training program identified may not bring about the expected high performance standard of safety and health on construction sites. There is need for potential improvement on the knowledge or awareness of the workers to safety management system as perceived from the analysis in order to bring about the expected high performance standard on construction sites. Knowledge or awareness to safety management system is an important consideration to effective safety management system on site as high safety and health performance could improve the organization image through less accident, less absentees of workers from work, less medical bills, etc. The importance of knowledge of safety management system among construction workers is that it will encourage the management to develop and implement an effective safety management system in construction industry. The models could be of help to the stakeholders in the construction industry in developing an effective safety management.
Adequate training of workers is important in order to increase their knowledge or awareness most especially as regard to identifying and minimizing risks/hazards on the sites. Many safety professionals were of the opinion that training and educating construction workers help in reducing cost and save lives. Toole, (2002), had found out that if workers lack proper training on safety and health, the workers’ may not be able to recognized potential hazard at the construction sites. This shows that safety and health training plays a significant role in the enhancement of safety in construction. For those contractors that have been beneficiaries of improved safety and health management system in their organization/or construction sites, it is recommended that they should pay more emphasis on meeting the safety requirement standard at construction sites by organizing induction training for new workers, training and educating the old workers, promoting safety measures at the workplace through poster, video and audio media.