Occupational Health and Safety is largely determined by the creation of a Safety Culture that minimises risk. In South Africa the construction sector is the second most hazardous industry after mining. This study focuses on two exemplary construction firms in the Western Cape. The main research question is "How do the companies ensure coherent safety management practices that create a safety culture?" Based on a modification of a Balanced Health and Safety Scorecard for the Construction sector five sub-questions address safety management practices from a Management Perspective, an Operational Perspective, a Learning Perspective and a Client and Compliance Perspective. Data has been gathered from company documents, semistructured interviews, together with on-site observation. In conclusion the study reveals that management commitment, active communication and employee acknowledgement contribute positively to creating an effective safety culture on-site. Further studies are recommended with a specific view on small and medium companies in the construction sector. / Magister Commercii - MCom

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / Safety culture is a multi-layered dynamic concept, meaning that it is not only the aspects pertaining to compliance with compulsory legislation, but also many other non-compulsory safety management and leadership initiatives, which enhance the companies’ safety performance. Most of the available literature focuses on a safety climate, which is an aggregate measure of employee attitude and opinion regarding safety. This paper presents the zero harm safety culture, a common contextual framework, taking readers beyond the traditional safety climate metrics and presenting a variety of assessment and analytical tools for each level of the framework. Techniques used to transform the safety culture toward a state of zero harm are explored in this research report. Finally, 26-components exist in a zero harm safety framework, to illustrate the development and application of a zero harm safety culture in the mining industry. It is also worth mentioning that the most important element of clearly perceived leadership has been found to be neglected in the past and resulted in persistence of incidents leading to fatalities. This important factor, which requires constant leadership interaction, is what makes or breaks the zero harm safety culture framework. Hence, it is crucial that organisations appoint leaders in positions influencing direction of the safety culture, and that these individuals are committed to the drive towards zero harm. This would assist leaders in the mining industry, especially small mines where resources are scarce, to apply the zero harm framework in such a way that the drive towards a zero harm safety culture becomes a reality. When considering implementing the zero harm safety framework in any mining company, irrespective of its size, a successful safety culture can be accomplished realistically within three to five. This paper also provides a series of recommendations to help implement this framework.

published_or_final_version / Transport Policy and Planning / Master / Master of Arts

The following study identifies and describes the cultural knowledge of women working in the construction industry regarding occupational health and safety. Data was gathered on 6 female construction workers, using the techniques of participant observation and the ethnographic interview. Results of the field observation and the interviews revealed that the women had a high level of knowledge of many work place hazards. They were also aware of kinds of accidents and injuries and a number of ways of cutting down on the hazards. Less was known about chronic, progressive, as opposed to acute injury. Despite their belief that most accidents were preventable, the women described a variety of reasons for not taking precautions. The major reasons given involved peer pressure and lack of time.

Risks are present in every aspect of business. As one of the biggest industries worldwide, the construction industry is plagued with risks. Being such a large industry, there are hundreds of contracts signed every day. These contracts range from new construction, refurbishment to maintenance. Some projects are simple and worth few thousands of dollars where others are complex and may cost hundreds of millions. Irrespective of how simple or complex the project is, all projects are exposed to risk and can go wrong (Edwards and Bowen, 2005). Construction is governed by complicated contracts and involves complex relationships in several tiers (Abdou, 1996). According to Sawczuk (1996) as soon as the employer and the contractor have signed a contract they have taken on board risks. Their awareness of the risk and the steps to be taken to manage their share of the risk, will determine the likelihood of problems occurring. Construction projects have an abundance of risk, contractors cope with it and owners pay for it. The construction industry is subject to more risk than any other industries. Taking a project from initial investment appraisal to completion and into use is a complex and time-consuming design and construction process. It requires a multitude of people with different skills and a great deal of effort to co-ordinate a wide ranges of disparate, yet interrelated, activities. Inevitably, this complex process is compounded by many unexpected events that may cause loss to the client and other involved parties (Shen, 1999; Flanagan and Norman, 1993). According to Carter et al. (1997) the construction industry is facing a more challenging environment than any time in the past. Client expectations have grown higher and they call for better quality and service. Smith (1998) highlighted that for years the South African building industry had a very poor reputation in managing construction risks. These risks could be prevented or reduced if management takes action at early stages ofthe project life cycle. In order to overcome these limitations and improve the image of the South African construction industry, this research aims to develop an innovative framework to enable construction contractors to identify, quantify and classify the risks associated with the Joint Building Contracts Committee (JBCC) Principal Building Agreement (PBA). This will help making decisions on informed bases. In addition, it will enable contractors develop particular course of actions to mitigate the effects ofthese risks. The research methodology designed to achieve this aim consisted of literature review, questionnaire and interview. Firstly, the literature review was used to review risk management in construction, construction contracts, Risks are present in every aspect of business. As one of the biggest industries worldwide, the construction industry is plagued with risks. Being such a large industry, there are hundreds of contracts signed every day. These contracts range from new construction, refurbishment to maintenance. Some projects are simple and worth few thousands of dollars where others are complex and may cost hundreds of millions. Irrespective of how simple or complex the project is, all projects are exposed to risk and can go wrong (Edwards and Bowen, 2005). Construction is governed by complicated contracts and involves complex relationships in several tiers (Abdou, 1996). According to Sawczuk (1996) as soon as the employer and the contractor have signed a contract they have taken on board risks. Their awareness of the risk and the steps to be taken to manage their share of the risk, will determine the likelihood of problems occurring. Construction projects have an abundance of risk, contractors cope with it and owners pay for it. The construction industry is subject to more risk than any other industries. Taking a project from initial investment appraisal to completion and into use is a complex and time-consuming design and construction process. It requires a multitude of people with different skills and a great deal of effort to co-ordinate a wide ranges of disparate, yet interrelated, activities. Inevitably, this complex process is compounded by many unexpected events that may cause loss to the client and other involved parties (Shen, 1999; Flanagan and Norman, 1993). According to Carter et al. (1997) the construction industry is facing a more challenging environment than any time in the past. Client expectations have grown higher and they call for better quality and service. Smith (1998) highlighted that for years the South African building industry had a very poor reputation in managing construction risks. These risks could be prevented or reduced if management takes action at early stages ofthe project life cycle. In order to overcome these limitations and improve the image of the South African construction industry, this research aims to develop an innovative framework to enable construction contractors to identify, quantify and classify the risks associated with the Joint Building Contracts Committee (JBCC) Principal Building Agreement (PBA). This will help making decisions on informed bases. In addition, it will enable contractors develop particular course of actions to mitigate the effects ofthese risks. The research methodology designed to achieve this aim consisted of literature review, questionnaire and interview. Firstly, the literature review was used to review risk management in construction, construction contracts, / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

This thesis looked at traffic crashes in the emirate of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to establish the current situation in road safety and ways of improving it. A global overview of road safety literature revealed that standards of road safety vary widely by region. Key indicators like fatality rate and risk (Jacobs et al, 2000) were found to be higher in most neighbouring Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) countries (10-25 fatalities/100,000 pop., 3-5 fatalities/10,000 motor vehicles) than in the best-performing Western countries (6 fatalities/100,000 pop., 1 fatality/10,000 motor vehicles). Interventions and countermeasures to tackle specific road safety issues were reviewed from international studies. Countermeasures were chosen with consideration for the local situation in Dubai within the categories of Human, Environmental and Vehicle factors. Examples of selected measures include offending driver punishment (Human), Electronic Stability Control (Vehicle) and central barriers (Environment). These measures were mostly studied in different environments to those in Dubai so the aspect of knowledge transfer between areas of different cultural and environmental conditions was discussed. Data from real world injury crashes (as collected by Dubai Police and the Roads & Transport Authority) over twelve years (1995 2006) were subject to macroanalysis in SPSS to identify the main issues over the past decade. 18,142 crashes involving 30,942 casualties and 48,960 vehicles were analysed at the outset. The following issues were among the main concerns: - High proportion of fatal crashes out of all injury crashes (13.5% compared to 1.4% in the UK); - Most fatal crashes involved a single vehicle hitting a pedestrian; - Most injury crashes involved a single vehicle; - Inconsiderate driving was the most common crash cause cited by the police. Countermeasures found in the literature to counteract these problems were then suggested for application and the estimated savings from applying them were calculated. Savings were quantified as either reductions in casualties or injury crashes. Furthermore, cost savings for the calculated reductions were estimated using existing UK crash costs due to the scarcity of UAE crash cost estimates. Calculation of the estimated improvement in safety if these countermeasures were applied retrospectively meant a reduction of 4,634 injury crashes and 1,555 casualties over the 12-year period with an estimated cost saving of approximately £368 million or 2.7 billion Dirhams. To refine this method more detailed data on crashes were required and collected from the dedicated crash investigation team files in Dubai Police for 2006 and part of 2007. This new dataset (300 crashes) was put into a purpose-built database with over 140 fields and subject to microanalysis to more accurately match the problems and interventions. Six interventions were matched to individual cases in the database where they would have positively altered the outcome. This process was verified by independent crash experts and investigators. The benefits from these six countermeasures were then weighted to calculate the benefits for the whole crash population over a year. Examples of specific interventions included guardrails along the roadside; grade-separated crossing facilities for pedestrians; Electronic Stability Control and speed cameras. The estimated total reduction in crashes was 2,412 annually with calculated savings of £40 million or 280 million Dirhams. This was the first time this geographical area was studied in such depth and detail to allow the calculation of benefits from interventions matched to known road safety issues. Various limitations were encountered such as the unavailability of GIS basemaps and the continuously changing infrastructure and population of Dubai. Numerous areas of further work were identified. Such work areas include hospital studies for collecting injury data to compare with police data; changing vehicle standards so that they are better suited to local crash types; the calculation of crash and injury costs based on local figures; vehicle fleet analysis for comparing different vehicle segments and exposure; and improved data collection and storage methods.

Background: Hospitals face an increasing pressure towards efficiency and cost reduction while ensuring patient safety. This warrants a closer examination of the trade-off between production and protection posited in the literature for a high-risk hospital setting (intensive care). Purposes: Based on extant literature and concepts on both safety management and organizational/safety culture, this study investigates to which extent production pressure (i.e., increased staff workload and capacity utilization) and safety culture (consisting of safety climate among staff and safety tools implemented by management) influence the occurrence of medical errors and if/how safety climate and safety tools interact. Methodology / Approach: A prospective, observational, 48-hour cross-sectional study was conducted in 57 intensive care units. The dependent variable is the incidence of errors affecting those 378 patients treated throughout the entire observation period. Capacity utilization and workload were measured by indicators such as unit occupancy, nurse-/physician-to-patient ratios, levels of care, or NEMS scores. The safety tools considered include Critical Incidence Reporting Systems, audits, training, mission statements, SOPs/checklists and the use of barcodes. Safety climate was assessed using a psychometrically validated four-dimensional questionnaire. Linear regression was employed to identify the effects of the predictor variables on error rate, as well as interaction effects between safety tools and safety climate. Findings: Higher workload has a detrimental effect on safety while safety climate - unlike the examined safety tools - has a virtually equal opposite effect. Correlations between safety tools and safety climate as well as their interaction effects on error rate are mostly nonsignificant. Practice Implications: Increased workload and capacity utilization increase the occurrence of medical error; an effect that can be offset by a positive safety climate but not by formally implemented safety procedures and policies. (authors' abstract)

An increased focus on the development of autonomous safety-critical systems requiresmore attention at ensuring safety of humans and the environment. The mainobjective of this thesis is to explore the state of the art and to identify the safetyrelatedchallenges being addressed for using autonomy in safety-critical systems. Inparticular, the thesis explores the nature of these challenges, the different autonomylevels they address and the type of safety measures as proposed solutions. Above all,we focus on the safety measures by a degree of adaptiveness, time of being activeand their ability of decision making. Collection of this information is performedby conducting a Systematic Literature Review of publications from the past 9 years.The results showed an increase in publications addressing challenges related to theuse of autonomy in safety-critical systems. We managed to identify four high-levelclasses of safety challenges. The results also indicate that the focus of research wason finding solutions for challenges related to full autonomous systems as well assolutions that are independent of the level of autonomy. Furthermore, consideringthe amount of publications, results show that non-learning solutions addressing theidentified safety challenges prevail over learning ones, active over passive solutionsand decisive over supportive solutions.

Cette thèse contribue à une approche formelle de conception d'un programme de contrôle/commande pour les systèmes automatisés de production (SAP) contrôlés par des automates programmables industriels (API). Dans ce contexte, deux constats principaux ont été soulevés : il existe manque de méthodologie efficace pour la conception d'un programme API dans le monde industriel et les méthodes formelles issues du monde académique ne sont ni connues ni utilisées par l'industrie car trop complexes. Par ailleurs, l'industrie du futur nécessitera des contrôleurs toujours plus flexibles et fiables. La flexibilité implique que les programmes seront encore plus difficiles à réaliser, et par conséquent, la difficulté pour garantir la fiabilité de ceux-ci sera accrue.Pour répondre à ces problématiques, une méthode de conception formelle s'intégrant dans un cycle de développement industriel classique (cycle en V) a été proposée. De plus, afin de faciliter le transfert vers l'industrie tant d'un point de vue technique (API) qu’humain (pratique des automaticiens), le formalisme utilisé est entièrement basé sur des variables et des équations logiques appelées contraintes logiques. Ces contraintes logiques permettent la spécification des exigences informelles recensées dans le cahier des charges. A partir de ces contraintes logiques, un algorithme de résolution des contraintes, implémentable dans un API, est synthétisé et implémenté automatiquement dans un langage de programmation normalisé pour API. Ce filtre logique peut être utilisé pour : commander un SAP contrôlé par un API, vérifier formellement un programme API, mettre en sécurité un programme API déjà existant présentant des erreurs.Les travaux de cette thèse ont eu pour objectif de lever certains verrous et de globalement améliorer et renforcer l'approche par filtre logique. Dans le but de généraliser l'approche par filtre, un effort important a été réalisé autour de la formalisation des contraintes logiques et des différentes fonctions et propriétés associées au filtre logique. Cet apport de formalisation a permis, en particulier, de proposer une approche de vérification formelle de la notion de cohérence d'un filtre logique ainsi qu'une condition nécessaire et suffisante à cette propriété. Enfin, après avoir mis à jour l'algorithme d'implémentation classique, deux algorithmes de recherche locale d'une solution basés sur des techniques de solveur SAT ont été proposés. / This thesis contributes to a formal approach to design control/command program for automated production systems controlled by Programmable Logical Controller (PLC). In this context, two main observations have been highlighted: there is a lack of efficient methodology for the design of PLC program in the industrial field and the academicals formal approaches are neither known nor used in manufacturing industry due to high complexity. Furthermore, the industry of future will require flexible and reliable PLC program. The flexibility implies that programs will be even more difficult to design and, consequently, the complexity to guarantee the reliability will be increased.To address these issues, a formal design approach, presented as a classical V-cycle, have been proposed. Moreover, to facilitate the industrial transfer from both technical (PLC) and human (engineer practice) point of view, the formalism is exclusively based on logical variables and equations called logical constraints. These constraints are used to specify the informal requirements described in the specification book. From these constraints, a logical filter is synthesized automatically and a solving algorithm, IEC 61131-3 compliant, is implemented in the PLC program. This logical filter may be used to: command an automated production system controlled by a PLC, verify formally a PLC program, and make safe an existing PLC program containing errors.The contributions of this thesis covered the whole development cycle: formal specification, formal analysis and synthesis, automatic implementation in a PLC program. To support these contributions, a significant effort was made on the formalism based on logical constraints. This new formalism has allowed, in particular, to propose a necessary and sufficient condition to the coherence property of a logical filter and to guarantee the convergence of the online solving algorithm. At least, the classical solving algorithm has been updated according to the new formalism, and two algorithms based on SAT solver techniques and local research have been proposed and tested on real PLC.

Traditional intersections have always caused congestion, delay, and accidents. There are numerous geometric intersection designs that best fit each situation. This study performed an operational and safety comparison with unsignalized/signalized offset, Tintersections, a two-lane roundabout, and a modified roundabout to decrease the overall travel delay and increase the safety using a case study. Using data from a government source, all designs were tested in a calibrated micro simulation model and traffic signals were optimized using a signal optimization platform. Each design was tested with various balancing schemes, left turn percentages, and hourly volumes to determine the failure point. The unsignalized/signalized offset T-intersections, two-lane roundabout, and modified roundabout were compared by throughputs, travel delay, and travel time. After analysis, it was determined that the modified roundabout performed the best out of any design. All approaches had minimum travel delay while reducing the number of conflict points considerably with the modified roundabout. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection