Knowledge-based occupational health and safety planning for construction projects

The ability to identify safety and health hazards as early as possible and implement good occupational health and safety (OHS) plans is vital to a project of any size and scale. It is also a core requirement in safety regulations and standards. Nonetheless, OHS planning faces significant difficulties and challenges owing to: large scope, abundance of OHS standards and manuals in unorganized formats, fragmented nature of construction and skills shortage. Amalgamating OHS and knowledge management and ICT technology techniques, a web-based system was developed for implementing knowledge-based OHS planning practices in construction. The system was then evaluated by its potential end users. The evaluation results suggest that the system: (1) is capable of providing on-demand OHS planning information, (2) captures OHS knowledge from different sources and retains it in a single, easily accessible virtual location, (3) helps site staff with on-the-job learning of OHS skills. These functionalities of the proposed system alleviate the challenges facing OHS planning and could help minimize accidents on site and thereby save time and money for builders.