Evaluation of Safety of Road Construction Sites - A Rational Approach for Indian Highways

Abstract

A five-stage methodology is presented for the safety evaluation of road construction sites. Seven performance indicators are suggested for evaluation duly considering the nature of control and way of implementation of mitigations measures. Sixty seven mitigation measures are considered under seven performance indicators to enrich the evaluation of sites against potential hazards. The overall safety score of a construction site is derived following a systematic and stepwise hierarchical approach. The methodology is applied successfully to four road construction sites in India. Major safety deficiencies are observed in the areas of barricading, temporary traffic control, and workforce management. Substantial variation is also found in the overall safety scores of the construction sites evaluated in the present work. The methodology and case specific findings, as presented in the paper, are expected to be of interest to researchers and practicing engineers working on improvement of safety of road construction sites in developing countries.