Safety Performance of Specialist Contractors

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Date
2015-02-23
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Abstract
The problem of measuring safety performance has existed since the very beginning of organised attempts to control accidents and their consequences.Most large construction projects are performed mainly by the aggregation of specialty works undertaken by specialist companies.On building construction projects, it is common that 80–90% of the work is performed by specialist contractors.Specific hazards associated with specialty construction make it very essential to pay more attention to specialist construction safety and to improve the safety performance of specialty construction companies.However, little research has been carried out on specialist contractors in Ghana. The objectives of this research are to identify factors that significantly influence the safety performance of specialist contractors, to adopt and adapt a standard evaluation tool for evaluating the safety performance of specialist contractors and to evaluate the safety performance of selected specialist contractors using the adopted and adapted tool. Seventy five sub factors were identified and grouped into ten main factors. Specialist companies who participated in this research included roofers, electrical contractors, curtain wall specialists and form work fabricators and installers.50 questionnaires were distributed to 50 specialist companies and 47 (94%) were returned from the respondents. The data collected were analysed and ranked using the mean score and standard deviations. The safety performance evaluation tool from literature was changed to meet the requirements of the results from the data analysis and it was then used to case study three specialist companies that were purposively selected.The roofing company was the largest followed by the curtain wall and the smallest was the electrical contractor. The roofing company had 70% evaluating rating performance, the curtain walling and the electrical contractors had overall evaluation performance of 56% and 40% respectively. The findings show that smaller specialist firms perform abysmally in safety assumptions.Based on the findings, it is recommended that small specialist firms should utilise the entire safety channels provided by the general contractor to discuss safety issues as they arise and to coordinate their specialty activities with the general contractor for the safety of all workers and others at the work site.
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A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Building Technology, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of a degree of Master of Science in Construction Management, 2014
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