Effective health and safety practices on highway project sites

Abstract

The highway projects have been recognised as ones of the most hazardous projects in which to work in Rwanda because they represent, not only human tragedies, but also substantial economic costs. They have poor accidents records when compared to other construction projects. Besides causing human tragedies and economic losses, highway construction incidents also affect the productivity and reputation of the construction industry. The aim of this research is to develop an appropriate framework and set guidance for improved awareness and understanding of effective health and safety management for highway projects. The specific objectives of this research are: to ascertain the nature of health and safety incidence in highway projects and to document the areas in highway projects that are prone to highest safety incidence, to investigate the factors that impacts on health and safety incidence on highways projects, to document the critical success factors to effective health & safety in highway projects, to develop and present a framework and set of guidance (including recommendations) for improved management of health and safety in highway projects. In order to achieve the above mentioned aim, the researcher used both a qualitative and quantitative approach for data collection through the following methods: analysis of literature pertaining to health and safety, evaluation of survey questionnaires completed by ten respondents from active highway construction companies in Kigali City Districts and assessment of five structured interviews. The population comprised all highway construction companies which were in operations at the time of sampling and therefore the sample size was equal to the population. The sampling method used is convenience sampling. Based on the results of this research, it was revealed that the level of consideration of health and safety practices was generally high, but some of them have been found to be less considered by contractors such as effective communication, conducting health and safety audits, vii and regular health and safety education (training) on health and safety procedure and area of controlling noise and therefore need more attention for consideration as these component features have great impact on health and safety performance in highway projects. Furthermore, results showed factors impacting on health and safety incidence on highway project sites. These factors were summarised as: Institutional factors, Management factors, Job/work environment factors, and Personal /individual factors. However, critical success factors to effective health and safety in highway projects were found to be : Management activities on site, consideration of health and safety during tendering process by allocating effective resources, formulation of health and safety policies, personnel attitudes towards health and safety, process of identifying hazards and assessing risks, risk response and risk management system. Therefore, health and safety has been proved to be a fundamental consideration for all highway projects clients, designers and contractors. Effective health and safety practices should base on both legal and professional responsibilities to ensure understanding and application of health and safety principles at all times on highway project sites. It is anticipated that the findings of this research will enable a significant contribution to be made towards the achievements of an organisation’s health and safety culture and its contributory effective health and safety management systems.