Pre-task planning for construction worker safety and health: Implementation and assessment.

BACKGROUND: Compared to other industry sectors, construction workers experience a disproportionately high rate of occupational injuries and fatalities. As research findings suggest, most of these incidents could be prevented if hazards were proactively recognized and properly addressed. In the construction industry, pre-task planning (PTP) is a preventive process intended to describe each step of work, identify associated safety and health hazards, and recommend controls to eliminate or mitigate the hazards before work begins. Despite its importance, the construction industry lacks comprehensive guidelines to design and implement PTP in a consistent and effective manner. To fill this gap, this study pursued two objectives: (1) identify shortcomings in current PTP practices and explore recommended solutions from practitioners' perspectives and (2) translate research findings into an applied tool to help practitioners assess and improve the quality of their PTP process. METHODS: To fill the gap, 28 construction safety and health professionals and 104 workers were interviewed, and seven onsite PTP sessions were directly observed. RESULTS: Shortcomings of current PTP practices as well as recommended solutions were categorized as (1) planning and implementation, (2) all-trades coordination, (3) engagement and buy-in, (4) training and logistics, (5) workforce diversity and the language barrier, and (6) PTP content accessibility. DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS: An effective PTP process should be based on workers' direct involvement and input on task requirements and hazards. It needs to be regularly updated to reflect the changing work conditions. In addition to task-related information, to increase workers' awareness, PTP should paint a holistic view of the project and other trades' scopes.

Production practices affecting worker task demands in concrete operations: A case study.

BACKGROUND: Construction work involves significant physical, mental, and temporal task demands. Excessive task demands can have negative consequences for safety, errors and production. OBJECTIVE: This exploratory study investigates the magnitude and sources of task demands on a concrete operation, and examines the effect of the production practices on the workers' task demands. METHODS: The NASA Task Load Index was used to measure the perceived task demands of two work crews. The operation involved the construction of a cast-in-place concrete building under high schedule pressures. Interviews with each crew member were used to identify the main sources of the perceived demands. Extensive field observations and interviews with the supervisors and crews identified the production practices. RESULTS: The workers perceived different level of task demands depending on their role. The production practices influenced the task demands in two ways: (1) practices related to work organization, task design, resource management, and crew management mitigated the task demands; and (2) other practices related to work planning and crew management increased the crew's ability to cope with and adapt to high task demands. CONCLUSIONS: The findings identify production practices that regulate the workers' task demands. The effect of task demands on performance is mitigated by the ability to cope with high demands.

Task parameters affecting ergonomic demands and productivity of HVAC duct installation.

BACKGROUND: Mechanical installation workers experience work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) at high rates. OBJECTIVES: (1) Quantify the ergonomic demands during HVAC installation, (2) identify the tasks and task parameters that generated extreme ergonomic demands, and (3) propose improvements to reduce the WMSDs among mechanical workers. METHOD: The study focused on installation of rectangular ductwork components using ladders, and analyzed five operations by two mechanical contractors. Using continuous time observational assessment, the videotaped operations were analyzed along two dimensions: (1) the production tasks and durations, and (2) the ergonomic demands for four body regions (neck, arms/shoulders, back, and knees). The analysis identified tasks with low portion of productive time and high portion of extreme postures, and task parameters that generated extreme postures. RESULTS: Duct alignment was the task with the highest portion of extreme postures. The position of the ladder (angle and distance from the duct) was a task parameter that strongly influenced the extreme postures for back, neck and shoulders. Other contributing factors included the difficulty to reach the hand tools when working on the ladder, the congestion of components in the ceiling, and the space between the duct and the ceiling. CONCLUSIONS: The identified tasks and factors provide directions for improvement.