Impact of Hazard State on Construction Workers Safety Risk Assessment

Effective safety risk management plays an important role in improving construction workers' safety. A review on existing literature suggests that most published works focus on identifying and assessing the impact of workplace hazards, such as working at height and noisy worksite on a construction worker's overall safety. However, hazards are often assessed independently, disregarding the potential correlations and interactions among multiple hazards concurrently present at the job site. Moreover, the possible temporal and spatial association between various hazards and the workers' safety risk perception is mostly ignored. Therefore, the present study aims at investigating how knowledge of new hazards can shift workers' safety risk assessment. As part of a larger study, data were collected from 57 Civil and Construction Engineering students using images integrated into an interactive survey to achieve the goal of this research. Responses on the severity and frequency of seven potential accidents were captured and analyzed for three work scenarios with different information levels (different number of hazards). Findings showed participants' assessment of safety risk increased as more hazard-related information was introduced to the work environment. However, participants focused on the most significant change while downplaying the potential impact of other hazards that could lead to an accident on the job site. The present study contributes to safety research by showing the potential interdependencies between safety risk factors. Safety trainers should account for the impact of these interdependencies when designing and delivering safety training.