Proactive and Real-time hazard identification

125 although workers may perceive two situations to be similar, generalizing across different settings is often invalid. Workers also rely on the availability heuristics, which is the ease with which instances or situations can be recalled from memory (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974). Such reliance on availability can also result in biased and incorrect predictions. For example, workers may more easily recall recently witnessed accidents or relatively extreme incidents. Further, because regular safety training programs emphasize more on high frequency and/or high severity injuries, other latent and subtle hazards often remain unrecognized. Our examination of JSAs, for example, revealed that gravity hazards (e.g. fall, trip, slip) were regularly mentioned, but radiation hazards (e.g. welding arc, microwaves) and biological hazards (e.g. bacteria, viruses, contaminated water, which are also more health than safety related, were rarely reported and communicated. In fact some studies demonstrate that such less frequently mentioned hazards may lead to very costly long-term effects including muscular-skeletal disorder (MSD), silicosis, radiation-induced cancers, etc. (National Academy of Sciences Moreover, these long-term predictions, that are made during the planning phase although important, may fail to identify emerging and latent hazards because of any gap that exists between work as planned and work as executed (Borys, 2012). In practice, emerging and latent hazards can be reliably identified using short-term predictions with progress in work as uncertainty reduces. In fact, the human cognitive framework naturally identifies hazard patterns as events unfold based on past experience and acquired knowledge. In other words, the human brain can assess tasks and conditions throughout the work period and refine the list of potential hazards based on real-time information. This process involves repeated steps in which the worker identifies hazards as they are developing and adjust their hazard

126 management model to reflect these changes. Unfortunately, current hazard recognition methods do not allow for the capture and communication of hazards that are identified during the work process. Our goal was to provide workers with anew strategy that captures potential hazards proactively using recall cues, existing knowledge, and past experience by using the Hazard identification and transmission board. We aimed to use the hazard identification and transmission board to identify and communicate hazards during the pre-task planning phase and to identify additional hazards that become more obvious as the work is executed. Figure 2 conceptually illustrates how individuals recognize events in dynamic, complex and rapidly changing construction environments to identify hazards. Individuals use their cognitive framework that they have developed through past experiences and acquired knowledge (Baron,
2006) to discern patterns that signify the presence of hazards. Alertness and active search for hazard patterns within the construction environment leads to improved situational awareness SA) and facilitates the detection of hazard stimuli. This involves discriminating between actual hazard signals and irrelevant signals or noise (SN) typical of these environments. Workers can then mentally relate observed patterns with experience and knowledge from the past to recognize hazards during execution (Kowalski-Trakofler and Barrett, 2003).

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