Construction safety planning: Site-specific temporal and spatial information integration

The Occupational Safety and Health Act was established in 1970. Since then, various injury prevention strategies have been developed and resulted in measurable improvements in construction safety management. However, the last decade has seen a deceleration in construction safety improvements, which may be due to the dynamic nature of construction jobsites. Traditional safety planning approaches rely primarily on static information, tacit knowledge, regulations, company safety policies, and 2-dimensional (2D) drawings. As a result, site-specific dynamic information, temporal (e.g. when and who will be exposed to potential hazards) and spatial (e.g. location of dangerous zones) information are currently not specifically addressed. This paper presents a formalized 4-dimensional (4D) construction safety planning process that addresses site-specific temporal and spatial safety information integration. The authors integrated safety data, which includes general safety knowledge, site-specific temporal and spatial information, from a project schedule and a 3-dimensional (3D) model. The authors conducted a case study to test and verify the proposed safety planning process. Findings show that risky activities, days, and zones can be prioritized when project schedule contains activity information regarding number of workers including occupation types and zoning plan. In addition, activity safety risk can be visualized when a 3D model is integrated. The proposed safety planning approach is expected to provide safety personnel with a proactive and site-specific safety planning tool that can be used to better manage jobsite safety. In addition, visual safety materials can enhance safety communication among project participants.