Research Proposal on HOW CONSTRUCTION SAFETY VULNERABLE TO INCONSISTENT PRACTICE? (SINGAPORE CONTEXT)

I. MAIN RESEARCH TITLE

HOW CONSTRUCTION SAFETY VULNERABLE TO INCONSISTENT PRACTICE? (SINGAPORE CONTEXT)

THE ABSTRACT

The study impacts safety vulnerability to construction safety due to inconsistence of practice has revealed social life as an important aspect of response to exposure and of subsequent coping. Vulnerability depended on gaining relevant information, access to international and local coping resources, and the range of individual assessments and response. The safety management commitment is expressed to be very important in developing a safety culture within the company. They should position safety and health management activities as an important element of their business operations. Resources should be allocated to safety aspects. Responsibilities and authorities should be delegated to specified personnel to promote implementation and operation of the safety management system, and perform risk assessment. The regulations should be observed and complied by the in-house safety and heal th standard to show a clear expression of commitment. Measures should also be taken to raise the awareness of their workers and motivate them to take the initiative to give feedback to the management level in order to improve the safety systems. Continual training and education should be provided for the workers to refresh their memories and to update their knowledge.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

Singapore have launched construction safety and security campaign in a bid to boost its construction sector's safety as Singapore's Minister for Manpower Ng Eng Hen said that public confidence has been badly shaken by major accidents in the construction industry, namely the Nicoll Highway and the Fusionpolis heavy steel bars crash last year. He stressed the need for Singapore to take deliberate steps to help workers feel safe and prevent further loss of lives. Outlining three key thrusts to achieve the vision of a safe construction sector in the island state, he said that the parties involved in a construction project must firstly internalize safety as a primary concern. Top management plays a critical role in upholding safety, he said, adding that there is a need to continuously review and recalibrate safety standards, especially in an increasingly dense and built-up environment like Singapore's where construction work happens close to public and property. The accident rate for Singapore's construction industry was 2.7 accidents per million man-hours worked in the year 2003 and about 46 workers have died in construction sites and factories in the first seven months up by 17 during the same period just last year.

The number of accidents still remains unacceptably high though the injury and fatality rates were observed to be decreased by 20 percent from 1998 to 1999. The accident rate is expected to be raised due to tight schedules and employment of foreign workers. Therefore, it is urgent to develop a mature and integrated safety management system or framework. Safety policies should be improved and established properly. The person responsible for the project site office is the project operations manager, who works on a project basis and is actually engaged in the health and safety management. He is required to report to the employer and give necessary on-site education, explanation and requirements to the workers everyday before work to help reducing the occupational disaster. More interactions are established between the site project manager and the workforce where a better monitoring can be ensured. Through his report to the employer, a dose link and a smooth transmission of information can be developed and it is easier for the top management to control and oversee the implementation of the whole management system.

BRIEF REVIEW ON SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IN SINGAPORE

Mandatory regulations on safety management system (SMS) for worksites in the building and construction industry were set up in Singapore. The Factories (Building Operations and Work of Engineering Construction) Regulations (BOWEC Regulation) is the main legislation governing the safety and health in the construction worksites. Worksites with contract sums of above S$10 million are required to implement a safety management system with major elements:

Ø Safety policy

Ø Safe work practices

Ø Safety training

Ø Group meetings

Ø Incident investigation and analysis

Ø Safety promotion

Ø Contractors evaluation, selection and control

Ø Safety inspection

Ø Maintenance regime

Ø Hazard analysis

Ø Emergency preparedness

A database is kept and checked every two months and reminder will be sent to the companies who fail to comply with the requirements. With such system, the performance was quite satisfactory in 1999, with 83 percent of compliance rate. An industry standard is also provided for the establishment and maintenance of safety management systems. Safety-auditing organizations are accredited by the Ministry to ensure the consistency standardization and high quality of such safety audits. Standard Committee comprising the representatives from the Ministry, building contractors and safety professionals was setup by the Singapore Productivity and Standards Board. The level of compliance to SMS and auditing requirements in the construction industry is quite high as 272 worksites fulfilled the requirements. Those who failed to comply were taken to task as provided for under the law. Thus, the contractors may need to perform better, both in the quality of work and in keeping their accident rates to an acceptably low level. Developer and contractor are recommended to be involved in setting the regulations and guidelines on safety. The feedback from the industry would be useful for updating and improving the policies. More research efforts should be paid by government departments and universities to identify what are the factors giving an 'unsafe environment and how to quantify them. Regulations should be enforced by conducting more periodical inspections of sites as identified in safety management (O'Connor 1987, 3; Blaikie 1988)

III. AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH

AIM

The overall aim of the study is amicably to improve the safety vulnerability of the construction development in Singapore that may serve as an effective approach in the process and can be addressed by sensitive area regulations, such as requirements for site design and infrastructure restrictions. To improve the safety of existing development, the city of Singapore may institute mandatory building-strengthening programs, require hazard disclosure on insufficient construction property to encourage safety actions and detailed hazard assessments to avoid accident occurrences (Deyle et al., 1998). The other aim is to examine the safety vulnerability in construction regarding some environmental risks in developing studies to understand construction safety in Singapore. Researchers put forward the hypothesis that present socio-political, socio-economic and institutional factors make Singapore's construction much more vulnerable to some environmental problems and create the type of settings where technical approaches used successfully in highly industrialized business prove less effective when analyzing and proposing solutions in the context of Singapore.

OBJECTIVES

a. Identify the safety vulnerability that has affected the development of the construction practice in Singapore

b. Discuss and improve the construction safety and its useful ways

c. Investigate the role for contractors and planners in general in reducing safety risks on the sites of construction process

d. Empowerment of safety in implementing safety measures in construction

e. Contextualize the understanding of construction sites hazards creating possibilities of scientific knowledge

IV. RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES

The research will use a case study as well as survey method that will consist of review of planning documents and interviews with 39 planning and building officials in the City of Singapore. Several lines of evidence were sought:

Ø Content of construction safety policies prior to the uncontrolled situations

Ø Development review procedures which is relevant to construction safety vulnerability

Ø Extent to which construction use development that reflects any construction hazards

Ø Opinions regarding relative effectiveness of construction safety vulnerability

In addition, the researchers will analyze documents for approximately one dozen specific development projects within the cities of Singapore to determine the role of construction safety issues in affecting the use of various planning decisions by describing a technical system of using hazard maps to improve construction safety in Singapore based on generalized identification of areas of potential ground failure. (Holden & Real, 1990) Reducing the safety vulnerability of the construction industry will require social policies and a comprehension of the limits of the normal scientific and economic approaches to such problems. The proposal will present the finding of a survey of main contractors in Singapore, which revealed their perceived importance of factors influencing their choice of subcontractors for building refurbishment works. The finding may assist the main contractors to evaluate the existing selection methods. Furthermore, Horlick-Jones defines vulnerability as a unifying concept based on the systems theory, as erosion of a system's resilience to perturbations generated by the interaction of a complex socio-technical system vulnerable to failure with a vulnerable population within a socio-economic environment.

Thus, vulnerability becomes a transdisciplinary concept integrating different specialists and methods in mapping risk situations in geographical and social spaces. The concept of vulnerability provides the basis for an integrated and transdisciplinary approach where social scientists, geographers, engineers can work together, combining qualitative and quantitative methods in order to interpret the socio-technical system and develop alternative proposals that could not be generated by isolated methods taken from normal sciences that limits the effectiveness of the social control of risks and increases the vulnerability of some social groups. Before the questionnaires were posted, a pilot survey was conducted to confirm the severity of the problems identified, and to check whether the questionnaire contained all the criteria viewed as important features for subcontractor selection. The feed back from this pilot survey was used to refine the questionnaire.

V. ANTICIPATED FINDINGS/CONTRIBUTIONS TO KNOWLEDGE

In today's highly competitive global environment, it is difficult to produce low cost and high quality products successfully without the contribution of good subcontractors (Vokurka, et al., 1996). Main contractors need subcontractors with good caliber and appropriate resources to execute the work at a fair price and high quality. Therefore, there is a need to develop an advanced decision tool to undertake this selection process in a more formal way. The research involved interviewing 12 domain experts and survey of main contractors in Singapore. Data collection is part of the knowledge acquisition phase. Knowledge can be collected from many sources (Turban and Aronson, 2001; Sriram, 1997). In this research, two knowledge sources were used, namely academic literature and domain experts (DEs). The knowledge was mainly concerned with the selection process of subcontractors, and factors influencing the selection of subcontractors in BR works. In this survey, a mailed structured questionnaire was employed. The format, structure and decision criteria used in this questionnaire were initially established through the interview of some domain experts (DEs), literature research and investigation of current methods. The questionnaire will consist of three parts: respondent classifications, rating the impact of criteria utilized in BR subcontractor selection.