Identifying potential health and safety risks at the pre-construction stage

Abstract

Previous researches have demonstrated that decisions made during the pre-construction stage have a big influence on the construction worker safety. This paper introduces a systematic approach for dealing with health and safety risks during the pre-construction stage. The developed methodology helps designers to calculate the safety-related performance of their residential construction designs, providing a consistent basis for comparisons between them. In order to avoid a typical shortcoming in the evaluation of health and safety risks, indicators are based on quantitative data available in the project documents. Significance limits are statistically obtained with the analysis of 25 new-start construction projects