CREATING A SAFETY LEADING INDICATOR TO ADDRESS THE UNSAFE BEHAVIOURS OF CRANE OPERATORS IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Abstract

The Construction industry involves complicated and vigorous work environments, inevitably exposing hazards to workers on a regular basis. As a result of the complex and ever-changing nature of construction works, the Construction industry highly contributes to the occurrence of workplace injury and fatality. Out of the many causal factors that have led to the occurrence of construction-related accidents, cranes have been proven to have caused a majority of construction-related injuries and fatalities. Due to its ability to lift and move large objects, it is undeniable that the use of cranes has enhanced productivity. Especially in today’s context where there are high demands for tall buildings, the use of cranes is indeed necessary. Nevertheless, unfortunately, it has been estimated that crane-related incidents account for about one-third of all construction-related accidents; emphasising that crane safety is a critical issue that needs to be focused on worldwide. In addressing and enhancing crane safety, the development and installation of data loggers in cranes have recently been introduced. Though not compulsory in other countries, Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has made it mandatory for all new and existing mobile cranes to be installed with data loggers from 2015 onwards. The information generated from the data loggers can facilitate forensic investigation after a crane-related accident and holds the potential for more proactive monitoring of crane operations and its operators. The reason as to why the MOM specifically focuses on the need to monitor crane operators is because their unsafe behaviours have been highlighted to be one of the top contributing factors in causing crane-related accidents. Also, it is relatively hard to monitor the crane operators and their behaviours because risk perception is subjective and organisations mainly focus on punishing the crane operators, making them retaliate. Moreover, there is a lack of resources to follow-up on regulations that have been implemented. Fundamentally, many literature have proven that the root cause of the unsafe behaviours is a result of poor risk management and/or safety culture within the organisation, putting the responsibility on the organisations to address those problems. Given that there are currently no quantitative measures to monitor the crane operators and their behaviours, this research paper will fill in the gap by creating a safety leading indicator that addresses such a problem. Since organisations in Singapore’s Construction industry have yet to fully utilise the data logger reports other than for investigation purposes, this research paper will utilise them for monitoring purposes; firstly, by identifying a list of unsafe behaviours that crane operators engage in. Subsequently, given the subjectivity of unsafe behaviours, the concept of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) will be used to quantify the unsafe behaviours of crane operators, providing weightages to the behaviours identified. The ultimate aim of the safety leading indicator is to aid organisations in proactively monitoring the crane operators’ behaviours by highlighting the top unsafe behaviours and providing a safety index for each crane operator, indicating their safety performance. With that, organisations will not only be able to focus on addressing the common unsafe behaviours across the data logger reports, but will also be able to provide constructive feedback, as well as positive reinforcements to the crane operators based on their index. Knowing their own safety index will also encourage the crane operators to take ownership over their own safety, inspiring them to work towards achieving a better index. Instead of using punishments, the safety leading indicator aims to promote the importance of enhancing risk management as well as safety culture positively.