Hybrid approach for occupational hazard assessment in road construction projects

Safety at workplaces is an important issue, and lack of effective and efficient safety management methods based on scientific studies could cost the construction industry. An effective accident investigation and root causes analysis could prevent the occurrence of incidents at minimum cost and time.
Material and First, major accidents in road construction projects were identified by interview and literature reviewing techniques. Then, fault tree was drawn for each main risks. In the next step, in order to calculate occurrence probability and severity of each accident type, a questionnaire was designed and distributed among the participants. Fuzzy logic was employed in calculations, due to the existence of uncertainty in linguistic variables. Fuzzy Fault Tree Analysis (FFTA) was used for calculating the occurrence probability, and importance of each criterion was determined using Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process (FAHP) to calculate the severity of each accident. Finally, risk factors for each accident type was calculated and the risks were ranked accordingly. Accidents related to crusher and asphalt plant, traffic accidents, heat exhaustion and lack of hygiene and hit by machinery were identified as the most important risks among the eleven investigated accident types. The findings in this research and also implementing effective safety management techniques, could be helpful on reduction of the probability of accidents root causes and to mitigate related risks