TY - JOUR
T1 - Characteristics and Causes of Construction Accidents in a Large-Scale Development Project
AU - Chan, Albert P.C.
AU - Yang, Yang
AU - Choi, Tracy N.Y.
AU - Nwaogu, Janet Mayowa
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 71971186), from which other deliverables will be produced with different objectives/scopes but sharing common background and methodology. The authors are grateful to the Coroner?s Court of the Judiciary of HKSAR for the death investigation reports provided. The authors also wish to acknowledge the contribution of other team members, including Carol Hon, Wen Yi, Daniel Chan, Edmond Lam, Qingwen Zhang, and Junfeng Guan.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2022/4/1
Y1 - 2022/4/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - accident analysis and prevention
KW - Kai Tak development
KW - mega interfacing projects
KW - modified loss causation model
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85128446585&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/su14084449
DO - 10.3390/su14084449
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85128446585
SN - 2071-1050
VL - 14
JO - Sustainability (Switzerland)
JF - Sustainability (Switzerland)
IS - 8
M1 - 4449
ER -