Accidents of Electrical and Mechanical Works for Public Sector Projects in Hong Kong

Characteristics and Causes of Construction Accidents in a Large-Scale Development Project

The airport at the Kai Tak district was relocated to Chek Lap Kok in 1998. The Hong Kong Government endeavors to redevelop Kai Tak into a mixed-use community. A total of eight fatal construction accidents have happened since the Kai Tak Development (KTD) commenced in 2013, and seven of them occurred between 2020 and 2021. The alarming figures call for an in-depth investigation of fatal accidents, hence the aim of the current research. Detailed accident investigation reports that outlined accident causation and preventive measures for the eight accidents were collected. With a detailed examination of validity and reliability, the modified loss causation model was applied to analyze the situational variables, incident sequences, and causes of accidents. The results showed that “fall” and “struck by” were the most common accidents in the KTD. Several risk factors for fatal accidents were identified, including “aging workers”, “new to a construction site”, “ethnic minority”, “illegal worker”, “working on weekends”, and “subcontracting companies”. Preventive measures were offered to help government authorities and construction practitioners enhance the safety performance of the ongoing KTD projects. This study contributes to the knowledge of construction safety by identifying safety issues of mega interfacing projects. The practice of learning from accidents should be promoted in order to prevent similar accidents from occurring again.

Implementation Phase Safety System for Minimising Construction Project Waste

The construction sector is a key component of a nation’s gross domestic product, but its inherent nature results in potentially dangerous conditions that affect the safety of all workers on construction projects (CPs). Therefore, the original idea of the research is to determine the relationship between safety system (SS) during the implementation phase (IPh) of CPs and the minimisation of waste (materials, time and cost). Achieving a lean construction work requires suitable planning, safety considerations and waste resource minimisation throughout the project cycle. This research aims to identify and rank the safety factors during the IPh of a CP, which will have positive effects on minimising waste. Information and data were gathered from the existing literature and the structured interviews and questionnaire survey conducted among 111 randomly selected construction companies. Questionnaire results were evaluated using statistical tools, such as hypothesis testing, analysis of variance and linear regression. This research identified and ranked 24 important safety factors with positive effects on minimising waste in CPs during IPh. The seven most important safety factors that should be considered to minimise material, time and cost wastage are as follows: handling, management, external factors, workers, procurement, site condition and appropriate scaffolding for SS. The best linear model was developed on the basis of the importance index of the identified factors. This model can predict the minimisation of waste (materials, time and cost) in CPs by using SS. Thus, the safety criteria and SS should be used during IPh to minimise waste on the basis of the developed model.