Trends of Safety Performance in Construction and Civil Engineering Projects in Pakistan

Abstract

The major construction and  civil engineering projects are sponsored by public sector in Pakistan. The users contracting and bidding procedures do not offer a significant space to the aspect of safety performance in construction and engineering projects. The prevalent measures of safety are after- the- fact measures - that means safety is given importance once casualties have actually been occurred. Such practices or measures are termed as inductive, reactive, trailing, down stream or lagging indicators. This is so because they are based upon retrospective data. As the country has undergone through massive development in engineering, construction and infrastructure sectors, safety aspect has been transformed from lagging indicators to leading indicator. Companies and organizations have started focusing on good safety performance under safety climate and culture. In this paper, a sincere research effort has been made to assess and analyze the health and safety performance of various constructions firms as well as overall construction engineering industry of Pakistan. In order to achieve this objective, various structured interviews and survey questionnaire were designed. The data collected from industry specific respondents has been analyzed using statpro   software. The salient findings of this study are as follows; the majority of the casualties are Fall of Individuals from Heights, Electric Shocks, Caught in between the Plants, Machinery and Confined Spaces and Struck by an Object or Machinery. Similarly there is no positive mindset from top down, non application of safety laws, lack of safety management plan, lack of safety and health of workplace, inadequate arrangement of first aid, lack of personnel’s protective equipment and absence of accident reporting mechanism.

The major recommendations of the study are as follows; At industry level, safety rules should be  as regulated and re-defined, documented and enforced. Moreover  provision of personnel protective equipment, training of entire organization, safety management plan under safety officer, adequate first aid at sites, efficient reporting mechanism and safety awareness of employees and workforce will also improve the existing situation. It is also recommended that more research should be carried out in order to evolve a comprehensive safety management policies.

Keywords: Construction, civil engineering, Pakistan, safety