Safety Management in Construction: Best Practices in Hong Kong
Publication: Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice
Volume 134, Issue 1
Abstract
Safety issues have gained vital importance throughout the construction industry. Many construction companies around the world are implementing safety, health, and environmental management systems to reduce injuries, eliminate illness, and to provide a safe work environment in their construction sites. This paper describes an exploratory study of site safety management in construction sites’ environments. It explains a successful, modern safety, health and environmental management system for a leading construction company based in Hong Kong. A typical site-specific safety plan was utilized to provide safety guidance throughout the construction project. A safety management survey was conducted to determine the status of safety in the construction sites. All employees of the company and its subcontractors participated in the survey from 20 construction projects. In total, 1,022 valid records were obtained from the construction sites. The analysis provided useful information on eight aspects of construction safety, including safety policy and standards, safety organization, safety training, inspecting hazardous conditions, personal protection program, plant and equipment, safety promotion, and management behavior. The findings of the survey provide practical knowledge to construction project managers and construction safety practitioners in order to make their sites safer. Insights and discussions are given in this paper.
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Acknowledgments
The first writer would like to express his appreciation to the Higher Education Commission, Government of Pakistan for granting the Ph.D. scholarship to undertake this study. Special thanks are due to Mr. Zhou Quan and Mr. Cao Peng for translating the questionnaire into Chinese and for entering the data into computer program SPSS 13.0. Sincere thanks are due to Dr. Jeffrey Lew and to the anonymous reviewers, for helpful comments and editing, which led to the improvement of this paper. Support from Gammon Construction Limited is also gratefully acknowledged.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice
Volume 134 • Issue 1 • January 2008
Pages: 20 - 32
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: May 8, 2006
Accepted: Sep 21, 2006
Published online: Jan 1, 2008
Published in print: Jan 2008
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