Incident management for construction works

Introduction
A safety incident is either a work related accident or a near miss. An incident management process is required to comprehend the mechanism of the incidents such that corrective and preventive actions can be cautiously planned and implemented for avoidance of such accidents.

Methods
The incident management process must involve a thorough analysis of the incidents for identification of the direct and root causes. The following special techniques can be implemented in this respect: 

i. Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), 
ii. Event Tree Analysis (ETA) or 
iii. Decision Tree Analysis (DTA). 
Whereas, FTA can most conveniently be adapted to incidents with single or combined causal relations. 
An appropriate incident management practice enables formation of a detailed comprehensive standard statistical safety data base, in which correlations can be established among the related safety parameters once sufficient data is available from the safety applications. 

A detailed comprehensive description of a typical incident management procedure applicable to construction works is introduced in the present paper as follows: 

i. Definition and classification of incidents, 
ii. Liabilities and requirements for incident management, 
iii. Emergency response, 
iv. Notification, reporting and recording of incidents, 
v. Investigation of incidents, 
vi. Analysis and assessment of incidents; direct and root causes and lessons learnt, 
vii. Deviations and non-conformances, 
viii. Corrective and preventive action, 
ix. Feedback to Safety Management System and 
x. Preparation of incident database.

Results
The leading and lagging key performance indicators of a construction work data base is used for measurement and assessment of the prevailing safety performance. Further to that, the relationships between the corrective and preventive actions and risk reduction are used for planning of continual improvement on the safety performance.

Discussion
The assessment process should be completed through an active involvement of the employee in the “lessons to be learnt” from the incidents.