Factors Causing Health and Safety Hazards in Construction Projects in Pakistan

Abstract

In spite of technical advancements, construction industry in developing countries, including Pakistan, heavily relies upon manual labor and orthodox methods of construction. Such practices then give rise to safety issues to which all construction industry practitioners, end users and the contextual environment is vulnerable. Contrary to the utmost need of investigating the situation, `safety in Pakistan construction industry' has received very less attention from the academia and industrial researchers as well. This paper takes the opportunity to investigate fundamental factors that give rise to safety issues in local construction industry. A set of 23 factors have been identified based on the literature review. A questionnaire survey is then conducted that has reflected the most significant factors inflicting upon the safety issues on construction sites. The analysis results of 49 questionnaire survey responses showed that most significant factors causing health and safety hazards in construction projects are poor safety awareness among firm's leadership, lack of technical guidance in performing construction operations, lack of technological innovation/use to improve safety, lack of strictly defined operational procedures and poor safety awareness of project managers.