Power point report : Please follow the instructions from the template

The purpose of this progress report is to outline an investigation into the existing solutions that could help reduce Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) risks for employees at ALD demolition company headquarters in New South Wales (NSW).

List of figures

Figure 2: Proposed demolition works

Table 1: Likelihood interpretation

DRGs- Director General Requirements

HAZID- Hazard Identification

HIPAP- Hazard Industry Planning Advisory Paper

JHA- Job Hazard Analysis

JSA- Job Safety Analysis

NSW- New South Wales

OPCO- Operating Company

OHS- Occupational Health and Safety

PTW- Permit to Work

PPE- Personal Protective Equipment

The purpose of this project is to outline the various risks employees face and investigate the solutions to minimize the said risks. This project also outline the methodologies by which ALD services will use to educate and train their staff, identify, assess, control and monitor OHS. The methodologies will be used to make risks identification a priority and assist also in the allocation of resources for new selection sites for demolition as well as implement risk controls.

There has been a growing interest on the health and safety of workers in Australia after the eneactment of the OHS ACT. A higher percentage of businesses in Australia have in the past been reported to operate without an individual or institutional capacity to protect the health and safety of tits workers and this is what companies need to make an improvement on the quality of the working environment. The occupational Health and Safety Act of 1984 came into being in Australia after after an incident in 1956, where workers of a company were tilling the roof of a five storey building hoisting buckets of hot bitumen. One of the buckets containing hot bitumen spilled on a worker and the High Court made a decision in favour of the worker determining that the results were due to negligent administration. From this time, this act seeks to secure the health, safety and welfare of individuals at work as well as protect persons at work against any safety and health risks that might arise in connection with the activities during PTW.

This issue is worth investigating because the suffering cause by such incidences and illnesses to workers affect their families as well and are incalculable. This issue is also worth investigating because unfortunately so many other companies have been reported not to adhere to the strict health and safety guidelines for demolition and more lives of workers are likely to be lost during such operations. While other sectors of the economy have developed policies to protect workers, demolition sector does not have a comprehensive framework that cub such malpractices. It is with such concern that this study attempted to respond to the question why new employees at ALD get injured on sites.

The research question that guided this study was:

Q1: How and why the new employees at ALD gets injured at the working sites?

The research objective that guided this study was:

RO1: To determine the causes of the accidents and hazards in the work sites (new employees)

RO2: To identify the best available methods to minimize the accidents and hazards

RO3: To explore the different OHS training and inductions available for the new employees

RO4: To make recommendations to the ALD management team for effectively minimizing the risks faced by the new employees

Though this study was aimed at examining the factors that expose new employees to risks of occupational safety and health during demolitions in Australia, the researcher narrowed down the study to focus on New South Wales region hence targeting ALD services and other building contractors registered in the region.

The executive summary details a summary of the report. The introduction section gives an overview into what happens in the demolition industry, determines the question and objectives of the report. The literature review section details the findings on new employee risks and identifies what contributes to risks and accidents. The methodology section shows the strategies used to gather data and the results section gives an explanation of the findings.

This section notes what other authors have found about demolition hazards for new employees in the larger construction industry of Australia. Construction risks and safety assessment methods are to be presented in this chapter. To begin with, this chapter tackles the nature of occupational accidents then follows the identification of attributed that help assess hazard in various projects. In the end, the factors that relate to safety-rating of demolition will be explored.

Davies & Tomasin (1996) classify occupational injuries in construction activities as;

· Damage to health and

· Danger to of fatality and physical injury

Hinze et al, (2005) qualifies accidents from construction into 8 basic groups from the basic fatalities and physical injuries. The broad classification is as follows;

· Falling from heights

· Struck by moving machines

· Excavation related accidents

· Failure of temporary structures

· Fire/explosion

· Electrocution

· Accident by operation and machinery tools

· Other accidents such as oxygen deficiency, lightning strike and slipping from same level.

The nature of health hazards new employees’ face during demolition and their causes are shown in the table below;

Haslam (2005) analysed intensely the root causes of occupational risks in demolition sites and listed them as follows;

According to the researchers above, working condition is the inherent risk to new employees. This inherent hazard could be managed through a system of safety management. However, the negligent attitude of employees to overlook safety hazards also cause accidents although this cause cannot be quantified. Activities that do not relate to human are beyond prediction and control and as noted by Imriyas (2009), the estimation of demolition risks to new employees should be assessed from two factors; safety management level and project’s inherent hazard level.

Jannadi & Assaf (1998) focused on risky activities in demolition projects that could facilitate hazardous environments. According to these authors, demolition is one of the most risky activity in the construction industry and has a rate of about 17 times more of what construction in itself has a risky operations. Davis & Tomasin (1996) approximated the rate of fatal accidents that result from demolition every year to be at 10 percent. Demolition workers face respiratory hazards from dust that contain toxic constituents such as silica, have flying particles cause eye and skin injuries, suffer vibration from hand-held tools and are exposed to explosives and fire dangers.

Hislop et al., (2000) used key three approaches to evaluate the safety of programs in demolition projects. In his literature, he identified accident statistics, evaluation of documented safety programs and workplace inspection. Accident statistics is the most common unit used to measure safety in operations. Rates of occupational injury are measured from severity and frequency over a particular period of time. However, such statistics according to the author only provide managers with a retrospective investigation of injury experience but is an indicator of how effectively a management program of safety was. The OHS laws of Australia have two regulations; 1) the contractor to submit tender document for approval, the contractor submits proposed safety management system that complies to the Australian Code of practice in construction and 2) the law holds the client, consultant and contractor responsible for any accidents on sites (Safetyculture 2012). Workplace inspection is also an effective means according to Hislop (2000). Through inspections, ALD services can assess and determine the influence degree to have on site conditions, enforce management standards and control hazards. Through inspections, ALD services can protect new employees by using required PPE and enhance the degree to which safety at work is upheld.

The research gap is in the project is the role of government to intensify measures that strengthen inspectorate activities and institutional frameworks that help achieving meaningful administration of OHS act. In addressing the research objectives, the focus should be on the role of existing legislations

In this section, there will be an explanation of the procedures employed to make this study a success. This will include section one with introduction, section two discussion on research approach and section three of justification and specific techniques for data collection.

This study adopts a descriptive survey study with attempts to explain the factors that affect implementation of occupation and safety measures on site. A descriptive survey was used because it was believed that it best suits to provide answers to ‘how’ and ‘why’ question for the research. The target agency in this study was the OPCO and other small agencies in NSW that perform demolition operations. The study population was about 300 participants as this was believed to present adequate data for the study. A higher percentage of participants will be from ALD services, top officials in the construction industry and top legislators. Out of the 300 participants, 170 subjects would form an ideal sample for study thus meeting the criteria of at least fifty percentage sample size of the total population.

Primary data collection was done from self-administered questionnaires and this was supplemented by observations and interviews. Secondary data on the other hand was gathered from published books and journals that contain contents related to this study. The questionnaires formed the basis for data collection. Both secondary and primary sources of data were explored with a belief that a combination of both would help minimize bias in study findings as well as help meet research objectives.

Most researchers have used both qualitative and quantitative risk assessment in previous researches and for this study, qualitative methods will be explored to find out the numbers and aligned associations between new employees and OHS risks. Stratified sampling technique that groups construction agencies from A to H will be used to get homogenous subjects from each classification. Simple random sampling will again be used to enable easy selection of subjects from each group.

There are a number of sources that can be found in relation to OHS training and induction on safe workplace. Therefore, secondary data can be gathered from the internet with a search for online journals. On the other hand, primary data will be gathered exclusively from questioners administered to employees and other participants. The questionnaires will include specific OHS questions, the method of work and the kind of instructions given on site. From these answers, this study will determine the level of knowledge workers have about demolition and safety. The main focus of this study on ALD will be on two different sites but with employees as the main target. More information will be gathered from an interview with officials and site supervisors.

The data collected analysed qualitative data using SPSS computer software and the results recorded. The questionnaires were distributed to 170 sampled participants which comprised of respondents from registered agencies and ALD contractors. The distribution of questionnaires was done physical when participants were available. Data was analysed from response rate of respondents and verified with an indication of how they thought safety policies were upheld. Null hypothesis was also used to test how contractors valued health and safety management. Alternative hypothesis focused on analysing whether employees though the company had health and safety management systems. Using five degree of freedom, participants were allowed to rank the company in relation to adoption of safety and management systems. Using the same degrees of freedom, participants ranked the level of confidence on the company and the rate at which accidents are likely to happen. This data was a clear testimony of the measure the company should improve on to reduce the number of accidents in demolition sites.

Results to be obtained from respondents will be done from a similar frequency table to show major casualties and compare to other sites. It is important to do such a frequency table to know the category of workers that are more likely to be affected.

Table 1: Likelihood interpretation

Figure 1: An aerial view of proposed demolition project .

Hislop, D., Newell, S., Scarbrough, H. & Swan, J. (2000). Networks, knowledge and power: decision making, politics and the process of innovation. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 12(3), 399-411.

Appendix A: Questionnaire

1. Identification

Respondent’s position . (optional)

Organization’s name

2. Health and safety management systems

a) Have you recorded accident(s) or incident in your demolition sites in the last

years?

· Yes

· No

b) If your answer to the question above is YES, what was the nature of the accident(s)

· Fatal injury

· Severe injury

· Minor injury

c) In your opinion, what caused the accident?

· Worker’s negligence

· Worker’s incompetence

· Faulty equipment

· Inappropriate work methods

d) Is there a health and safety policy in your sites?

· Yes

· No

3. Training and inductions

a) Does the company perform health and safety training and inductions for employees?

· Yes

· No

b) How do workers respond?

· Very good

· Good

· Poor

c) According to you, what benefits do these trainings have?

· Increased staff awareness to matters of health and safety

· Reduced accidents and injuries

· Worker motivation and improved task performance

· No benefit

4. Government policy

a) Are there government officials who visit your construction sites for inspections?

· Yes

· No

b) If your answer to the above question is Yes, how often are these visits?

· Very often

· Often

· Rarely

· Not at all

c) What is your opinion about government policy on health and safety in the industry?

· Very good

· Good

· Poor

· Very poor

d) Do you have a copy of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of Australia of 1984?

· Yes

· No

1 | Page