Strategies for construction hazard recognition

39
ABSTRACT
Most construction safety management processes rely on the hazard recognition capability of workers. Hazards that remain unidentified can potentially result in catastrophic injuries and illnesses. As such, thorough hazard recognition is fundamentally essential to protect the health and the well-being of the construction workforce. Despite its importance, recent research indicates that a large proportion of hazards remain unrecognized, exposing workers to unmitigated risks. Surprisingly, safety research has not adequately focused on developing specialized strategies to develop construction worker competency in hazard recognition. This paper reports an intensive two-year research effort with the following objectives (1) develop a high-fidelity augmented virtual environment (SAVES) that helps develop workers hazard recognition skill through risk-free learning and immediate feedback (2) embed cognitive retrieval mnemonics to improve long-term retention of cues for construction hazards (3) evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy as an intervention on active construction crew using the multiple baseline testing (MBT) approach. The first two objectives were accomplished through a combined effort from a panel of 14 subject matter experts and 5 academic researchers. This was followed by experimental field tests conducted by a site-based expert panel, which tested the hypothesis that experience with SAVES improves the proportion of hazards identified by participants during subsequent field operations. Our findings revealed that crews on average were able to only identify 46% of hazards prior to the introduction of the intervention, but were able to recognize 77% of hazards in the post-intervention phase. A separate pre/post-test corroborated these findings. This study represents the first endeavor to measure the effectiveness of augmented virtuality and serious crew gaming in developing hazard-signal detection skills in construction field settings.

40

Download 2.75 Mb.

Share with your friends: