Frequency rates of severe injury, including fatality, as well as occupational diseases, are notably higher in construction than other industries. Studies also indicate that the safety performance of the construction industry is always under challenge due to various factors, including the inherent nature of high-risk activities, deployment of large number of unskilled people, and use of heavy machinery, as well as various demographic factors.
Construction workers keep moving from one place to the other to pursue their profession. Prior to joining the trade, a miniscule number of them receive some formal skill training and safety training, which are essential for safe working. Consequently, a large portion of them get set to pick up the trade skills on-the-job, which compounds the challenges of ensuring safe working at site.
In this study, spanning 18 months' duration, involving over 20,000 workers from multiple project sites, factors associated with "risk perception," emerge as one of the most common causative contributors for various recordable injury cases. The study highlights that misplaced risk perception by the individuals associated with the activities at various levels have acted as the "trigger," directly or indirectly, leading the event chain to injury outcome.
Subsequently, focused efforts are planned for mitigation by improving risk awareness among all concerned team members through various methods, including on-the-job, classroom training, and experiential learning associated with activity-related hazards and consequences.
This paper will describe facets of risk perception, and its role in risk mitigation, and demonstrate the effectiveness of awareness programs, as well as other initiatives in optimizing risk perception for incident prevention.
Risk can be quantified and is a product of probability and consequence of the event. Any activity beyond an acceptable risk level needs to be treated with suitable mitigation measures to bring the risk to within as low as reasonably practicable limits.
