Level of knowledge and usage of safety planning tools and techniques by building contractors in Ghana

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Date
NOVEMBER , 2015
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Abstract
The daily report on accidents and death issues in the Ghanaian construction industry is worrying. This has a major cost implication on the construction industry in Ghana as well as on the economy of the nation. It is for these reasons that this report sought to identify ways to improve upon safety planning and implementation by contractors in Ghana. This was done by first exploring the level of knowledge of the Ghanaian contractors on safety tools and techniques as well as the level of usage of these tools. To do this, a questionnaire survey was carried out on 40 contractors in the Upper East Region. The 40 contractors were selected through purposive sampling. The survey revealed that the level of knowledge and usage of the following tools and techniques in safety planning was quite high: Cost benefit analysis, Benchmarking, Trails and simulation, Flowcharting and Process mapping. Contractors however suggested the following as points to improve upon safety planning: Employee involvement in safety planning, all information on hazardous substance should be registered and assessed in a central catalog, Contractor’s current and past safety performance history should be examined. However, it was observed that project safety requirement review and risk management process tools and techniques were not employed by most contractors. Therefore it is recommended that contractors should review project to identify risky areas and plan towards reducing or eliminating these risk, regular and strict supervisions should be carried out by the authorities in the required institutions of health and safety, and also contractors should review projects to identify the residual risk so as to consider them in future projects.  
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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 requirement for the Degree of Master of Science in Construction Management.
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