Assessment and management of occupational hazards in water transfer tunnel project in the west of the country using hazards and effects management process

Digging and tunneling projects are among the most risky projects due to differences in project implementation conditions and insufficient knowledge of the geological situation of the region. Evaluation and management of occupational hazards in these projects are necessary in order to protect the health of the workforce and to preserve the financial resources of the organization.

In this study, the Hazards and Effects Management Process was used to identify, evaluate and control occupational hazards in the water transmission tunnel project in west of Iran in 2018.After identifying the risks of each place and occupation, the ranking of risk levels was performed and corrective measures were taken based on the Hazards and Effects Management Process and then secondary risk assessment was carried out.Ethical considerations were taken into account at all stages.

The tunnel sector with 46% and the office sector with 5% had the highest and lowest occupational hazards, respectively. The general lighting of all stations was less than the standard value with the initial average lighting of 24.5 lux, which was upgraded to 58 lux. Respirable particles in two stations in the first stage were 18.5 and 11.02 mg/m3, which improved to 4.37 and 0.63 mg/m3, respectively. The highest improvements with 39%, 27% and 25% were related to the control indicators of lighting, noise, and chemical factors, respectively.

The results showed that the most dangerous place in the whole project was the tunnel unit and the most important occupational risk factor was H2S, followed by the noise of the work environment. The results of control indicators showed that the proposed method for managing occupational health risks in the project had an acceptable efficiency and led to proper identification of risks, classification and prioritization of risks and control measures and thus optimal spending of the control budget.