Climate Change Impacts on Occupational Health and Safety of Façade Maintenance Workers: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

At present, climate change is considered a considerable future threat due to its possible catastrophic impacts on humans, their properties, and also the environment. Therefore, most people and organizations have paid attention to this area. Thus, special consideration should be given to building operations, as buildings and building operations are capable of being impacted by various negative consequences of climate change. As façade-maintenance workers experience considerable climate change impacts as they perform their work for prolonged hours, at height, on the exterior of buildings, this study focuses on identifying the impacts of climate change on façade-access methods and façade-maintenance workers. Thus, in this study, a qualitative research approach was undertaken with an interview research design. A comprehensive literature review was conducted along with 12 semi-structured expert interviews selected through judgmental sampling. Software-aided thematic content analysis was carried out to analyze the collected data. The findings indicated that climate change could have significant impacts on building operations, as the attention paid to climate change adaptation by building operations is negligible in various countries, especially in developing countries. A significant impact was identified on façade-maintenance workers and façade-access methods caused by climate change, creating various risk factors for their occupational health and safety. Furthermore, the research methods that have been applied in this study are also capable of expanding to address various other probable operations. Accordingly, this research is exploring a new field of study that should be given more consideration by researchers due to its significant importance in scenarios that are experienced worldwide.