BIM for construction safety and health

Abstract

Large to small organizations throughout the entire construction supply chain continue to be challenged by the high number of injuries and illnesses. Although the five C's (culture, competency, communication, controls, and contractors) have been focusing on compliance, good practices, and best in class strategies, even industry leaders experience marginal improvements in occupational health and safety (OHS) for many years. BIMfor construction safety and health identifies three major focus areas to aid in the development of a strategic - as opposed to tactical - response: (a) OHS by design, (b) pro-active hazard detection and prevention at the workplace, and (c) education, training, and feedback leveraging state-of-theart processes and technology. This chapter explains the motivation for developing a strategic roadmap towards the use of BIM in OHS. It highlights meaningful predictive, quantitative, and qualitativemeasures to identify, correlate, and eliminate hazards before workers get injured or other incidents cause collateral damage. Using selected case study applications, the potential of BIMin practical implementation as well as the social implications on conducting a rigorous safety culture and climate in a construction business and its entire supply chain is shown.