Special applications for safety management at construction works

Introduction
The fundamental objective of the safety management at a workplace must be prevention of fatal accidents and permanent personal incapacities and minimization of the day away from work cases (DAFWC). The strategic approach in this context is a continual proactive improvement of the safety performance with the target that residual risk levels, after corrective and preventive actions, would be ALARP (As Low As Reasonably Possible). For this, job specific special safety measures are required besides the basic mitigation measures as per the related legislation, standards and codes.

Methods
The tools for safety management are basically established through a generic assessment of the risks associated with the specific construction processes. Further to that, results derived from analysis of the recorded incidents provide very significant means for safety management. The identified direct and root causes of the accidents and near misses demonstrate that incidents are triggered off by uncontrolled external effects, human mistakes, equipment and material failures. A number of special applications have been developed based on the practice and experience for control of the safety risks.

Results
The following special applications have been found to be very effective for risk mitigation.
i. Task Specific Safety Plans under expertise for high risk operations,
ii. Permit to work for critical activities,
iii. Management of change (MOC),
iv. Tracking of deviations and non-conformity,
v. Cross check of safety supervision,
vi. Emergency management and drills by experts.
vii. Drama for lessons learnt for highest degree of awareness,
viii. Tool-box drama,
ix. Specific technical and competency trainings,
x. Incentive for forkforce involvement,
xi. Periodical check of equipment and color coding of electrical equipment.

Discussion
The merits of the special applications have already been experienced with improvement of the safety performance at heavy construction works. However, further studies are still required to elaborate the special applications.