Ranking the critical causes of accidents in construction projects of Sindh: Perspective of safety professionals

Abstract

Construction projects are running very rapidly throughout the world and undergoing many challenges like delay, quality standards, cost overruns, and accidents. Accidents at workplace have been a very common issue nowadays particularly in construction projects. The objective of this paper is to identify and rank the critical causes of accidents in building construction projects. The area of work is in the province of Sindh in Pakistan. For this study, the quantitative research methodology was used, and a questionnaire survey was conducted among safety professionals working on construction projects in Sindh. The average index method was used to analyse the data collected from the questionnaire survey. This study has determined a total of seven main causes of accidents in building construction projects, such as no edge protection; no availability or poor quality of personal protective equipment; violations of safety rules and regulations; carelessness or negligence; extensive subcontracting and outsourcing; malfunctioning or collapsing equipment or machinery, and a compressed work program. This research highlighted the critical causes of accidents in building construction projects and assisted the stakeholders of the construction industry in narrowing down some of the critical causes. Moreover, the results of this study motivate construction stakeholders to concentrate on the problems of accidents in building projects in Sindh.