Study of construction accidents in Sri Lanka

This paper summarizes the results of a study which examined the accidents that take place at Sri Lankan construction sites as recorded in the Industrial Safety Division (ISD) of the Ministry of Labour. The paper intends to provide a profile of construction accidents in Sri Lanka compared to other industries. In addition, it portrays the occupational and demographic characteristics of the victims. The number of fatal accidents are high in the construction industry compared to other industries. The ISD data show that falls are the single most common cause of fatalities. This is followed by electrocutions and "Struck-by" incidents. Falls are more frequently associated with roofs and scaffolding. "Struck-by" incidents are the major cause of non-fatalities. Electricians and Unskilled Workers have been found to be over-represented among accident victims. Workers over 60 years of age and under 20 years of age have been found to be over-represented among fatalities.


Introduction
By nature accidents are unplanned and uncontrolled events and in terms of operational probability is a class of events which incur at low level of expectancy, avoidability and intention (Laufer& Ledbetter, 1997).Construction worker injuries have broad and adverse impacts, which include personal suffering of the injured worker, construction delays and productivity losses incurred by the construction contractor, higher insurance premiums that result from costly injuries and possible liability suits for all parties involved in the project.There are of course, many other impacts such as revenue losses on the part of the owner for late project delivery, reduced morale of workforce and soon.
In any kind of health and safety management programme, the initial step could be to identify the hazards or disaster situations in the work environment.In this sense a detailed evaluation and a critical analysis of accidents in the construction industry is of immense importance.This paper summarizes the results of a study which examined the accidents that take place at Sri Lankan construction sites as recorded in the Industrial Safety Division (ISD) of the Ministry of Labour.The paper intends to provide a profile of construction accidents in Sri Lanka compared to other industries.In addition, it portrays the occupational and demographic characteristics of the victims.This information about past accidents might be useful to make predictions about the number and types of accidents that are likely to occur in the future.With this information, efforts may be expended to establish effective accident prevention programs.When the causes of serious accidents are understood, preventive procedures have a greater probability of being effective.

Objectives and Research Methodology
Study of construction accidents is a topic that has received considerable attention in developed countries.However, sufficient research work has not been done on this topic in Sri Lanka.Therefore, this study was earned out with the intention of critically analysing and evaluating the accidents that take place in the Sri Lankan construction sites.As such the objectives of this research effort were: 1. to identify the types of accidents recorded in the construction industry, 2. to find out the causes of accidents, 3. to examine the level of injury and fatalities in the construction industry, and 4. to determine the character and occupational category of workers who are prone to accidents.In order to obtain a detailed evaluation of certain results of the analysis, an interview survey was conducted among a selected group of Project Managers who had experience of over 10 years managing construction sites in Sri Lanka.In total 9 Project Managers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guideline.

Construction Accidents
The term 'Accident' has been defined by Laney (1982) as "an uncontrollable occurrence which results injuries or damages".Another definition that has gained popularity is "an unplanned not necessarily injurious or damaging event that interrupts or disrupts the completion of an activity" (Laufer & Ledbetter, 1997) Construction industry is the largest contributor to fatal accidents, followed by Mining and Quarrying.These observations show that severity of construction accidents are higher compared to other industries.This proves poor safety performance in the industry and how vulnerable the workers are in construction sites.
Accidents at construction sites are more often serious than accidents in factories; the severity of a fatal accident is as much as nine times higher in the construction industry than in other industries.Figure 2 provides the trend of fatal accidents during the past two decades.It shows that construction has always had a higher fatality rate except for a brief period in early 1990's.Peak of fatal accidents in construction occur in 1987, which then drop drastically to the lowest value of the two decades.Another smaller peak could be observed in 1994 again with a sudden drop afterwards.In contrast, the number of fatal accidents in other industries gradually reduces with time.

Non-fatal Accldenti
Figure 3 shows the trend of non-fatal accidents during the same period.Despite the two peaks in 1989 and 1992 respectively, the general trend of construction accidents is similar to other industries.Non-fatal accidents in construction and in other industries reduce overtime.
Const ruct ran « Tot al of al t ot her Indust ri es  Accordingly an accident can be considered as a chain of events.The starting point of the chain is the prevalence of a conducive environment that can trigger off an accident at any moment.Unsafe act is the next event which causes an accident to take place.Once the accident has taken place it follows with an injury except when it can be categorized as a none injury case.

Position of injury
When reporting an accident, the position of the injury should be specified according to the ISD categorization.
If it is more than one position, "multiple injuries" category accommodates that data.If an accident affects the overall health rather than a part of the body, the reporter could select the "injury to overall health".Figure 5 provides the results of the analysis for fatal and non fatal accidents separately.The head, neck and multiple injuries are commonly recorded in fatal construction accidents.The hand, leg and foot were hurt most often in non-fatal accidents.The most typical injuries due to non-fatal accidents were sprains and strains, cuts and lacerations, open wounds and fractures.As can be expected, multiple injuries are comparatively high for fatal accidents.

Occupation
The results concerning the victims' occupation are given in Figure 7. Percentages given in paranthesis indicate the representation of the particular occupation in the national construction workforce (Jayawardane & Gunewardene, 1998).Electricians and Unskilled Workers are found to be overrepresented among accident victims.The proportion of fatal victims in the electrician trade (7%) was higher than their representation in the construction workforce (1.9%).Similarly, the proportion of unskilled victims on non-fatal accidents (71 %) was higher than their representation in the construction workforce (50.4%).On the contrary, Masons and Carpenters are very much under-represented among accident victims.The results concerning the victims' ages are given in Figure 8.Workers over 60 years of age and under 20 years of age are found to be over-represented among fatalities.In addition, the accident risk has been found to increase with age.The proportion of victims under 20 years of age (10%) was higher than their representation in the construction workforce (2.7%).Similarly, the proportion of victims over 60 years of age (7%) was higher than their representation (2.4%).However, workers over 60 years of age are not found to be common victims in non-fatal accidents.The construction industry constitutes a problem area for occupational safety.The number of fatal accidents in construction industry is high compared to other industries.Although fatal accidents in all other industries show a decreasing trend, construction industry shows otherwise in certain periods.There are many possible explanations for the high accident rates in the construction industry, particularly the changing site conditions that require risk-taking.The study also revealed that for every 13 non-fatal accidents one fatal accident occurs in construction.Table 1 compares this ratio with other industries.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Severity of construction accidents compared to other industries (per Rupee one billion output between 1984-2001)

Figure•
Figure 3: Trend of non-fatal accidents (per Rupee one billion output)

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Trend of fatal accidents ( per Rupee one billion output)

Figure 6 :
Figure 6: Construction accidents according to the time of the incident Figure 7: Occupational categorization of accident victims

. The safety record of the construction industry is considered to be very poor compared to other industries (Hinze & Appelgate, 1991). Davis and Tomasin (1990) have revealed three important reasons for this poor safety performance in the construction industry, which in turn has given rise to high rate of accidents. They are: 1. short term and transitory nature of the industry, 2. lack of controlled working environment, and 3. complexity and the diversity of size of organisation within the industry. The Section 6(1 )(A) to 6(1 )(D) of Workmen's Compensation Ordinance No. 19 of 1934 as amended, has divided accidents into four categories as follows (Chapter 158,1980)
:1. Death 2. Permanent total disablement -The Permanent total disablement means such disablement, whether of a temporary or permanent nature, as incapacitating a workman for all work which he was capable of performing at the time of the accident.3.Permanent partial disablement-Permanent partial

disablement means the disablement of a permanent nature and such disablement reduces the earning capacity of the disabled from employment which he was capable of undertaking at the time of the injury. 4. Temporary disablement -Temporary disablement means where the disablement is of temporary nature, such disablement reduces the earning capacity of a workman in the employment in which he was engaged at the time of accident. Even though accidents could be classified in several ways, the categorisation of Laufer & Ledbetter (1997) based on the level of injury or damage is the most popular. They categorized accidents into four types as follows: 1. Lost day cases -Cases which bring absence from their work. 2. Doctor's cases -None lost workday cases that are attended by doctors. 3. First aid cases -None lost day cases requiring first aid treatment. 4. None injury cases -'Accident' not resulting in personal injury but including property damage or productivity disruption. In this research only lost day cases are considered due to the fact that ISD data cover causes which come under the Factory Ordinance No. 45 of 1942 (Chapter 144, 1980). Data related to other three categories are not available. The main drawback of this study is that it is based on data from safety inspection authorities. Though the occupational safety legislation in Sri Lanka requires the employer to report every accident of a certain magnitude to the relevant District Factory Inspecting Engineer within ten days after the victim resumes his employment, it is,however, possible that employers did not report all serious accidents to authorities due to various reasons. This can be noted as one of the limitations of this study. There is no other source of information on construction accidents in Sri Lanka. 4. Profile of Construction Accidents in Sri Lanka 4.1 Severity Accidents can be broadly divided into two, as fatal and non-fatal based on the severity. Hinze & Bren , (1995) cited fatal accidents as "One in which at least one person is killed (but excluding confirmed suicides) within 30 days of the occurrence of the accident". Therefore all other accidents that do not fall into the category of fatal accidents are considered to be non fatal accidents. Research has shown that the severity of an accident has an inverse relationship to frequency (Laufer & Ledbetter, 1997).
number of fatal accidents in the Sri Lankan construction industry is significantly high compared to other industries.According to Figure1, 53% of fatal accidents have occurred in the construction industry.This figure is relatively low for non-fatal accidents (6%).
It may be due to loss of productivity after lunch.Drop of alertness and reflexes after lunch may be the cause of high accident rate during this time period.Figure6provides the results of the analysis.

Table 1 : Fatalities in construction compared to other industries
While a