IDENTIFYING ROOT CAUSES OF CONSTRUCTION INJURIES

Accident prevention begins with having a clear understanding of those factors that play key roles in their causation. One source of informat ion on the causes associated with many serious injuries and fatalities is maintained by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (O SHA). This essential information is contained in abstracts that are br ief descriptions of the conditions and circumstances that were existen t at the time of the accidents. Unfortunately, the information cannot be retrieved readily. This paper presents recommendations on how the O SHA reports could be made more meaningful. First, injuries should be c oded into one of the 20 possible cause categories, rather than the tra ditional five groups of falls, struck-by, electric shock, caught in/be tween, and other. Additional or secondary cause codes also were develo ped. If these cause codes were adopted and used to describe all accide nts recorded by OSHA, relevant data retrieval may be more effective. T his information could then be utilized to focus greater attention on t hose areas for which modifications in the regulations are warranted an d it would be more helpful to the construction industry by emphasizing the major causes of serious accidents.