Assessment of Construction Safety and Health practice in Addis Ababa City Road Authority Road Projects

Abstract

This study focuses on assessment of construction safety and health practice in Addis Ababa City Road Authority road projects. Safety and health are the decisive concerns of a particular construction project and it gives an opportunity to define the overall success and performance of the project outcome equally to the cost, time and quality aspects. Thus, to examine the case of Addis Ababa City Road Construction Projects, a questionnaire survey was designed by including the current practice of safety and health practices in the aforementioned projects, causes that results an accident in the construction site, and the ways to improve this safety performance. The sample size was determined by subjective method using conventional approach that is taking the average of sample size of different other studies. Therefore, 65 questionnaires were distributed and 59 interpretable responses were gained from the construction officials (contractor, consultant and the client). The collected data from respondents were rated with various terms related to the type of question and further analyzed by quantitatively descriptive statistics Microsoft excel & SPSS. This study was conducted in a relatively potential construction working area. However, it was revealed the safety and health practices of Addis Ababa Road Construction Projects are below standards irrespective of their operating budgets. The causes of accidents are mainly lack of personal protective equipment, lack of top management commitment, lack of technical guidance, a reluctance to allocate resources for safety, workers physical exhaustion, lack of insufficient supervisory inspection, lack of awareness of written safety policy rules and standards are the principal factors for unsafe working conditions on the Addis Ababa City Road construction sites. To improve these insufficient performances, providing adequate safety equipment, improved personal behavior, responsible top management, good communication between management and workers and surveying worker’s safety perception and give expert advice and trainings are considered as the key solutions.