The need for a pro-active methodology to reduce health and safety inefficiencies within a construction organization

The construction industry delivers projects that are unpredictable in terms of time, cost and quality, whilst at the same time trying to ensure a zero accident rate. The Author aims to develop a model that will identify inefficiencies within a construction organisation, through an integrated project process, to achieve sustained improvement. This will ultimately increase value for the customer to meet the targets set by Latham and Egan. Methodologies have been used in other industries to identify areas of weakness but none of these are directly applicable in the construction environment. The Total Loss Control theory, originally used for safety analysis, will be adapted to reduce inefficiencies within an organisation, by providing a pro-active and predictive approach. The model which is in the form of a questionnaire, has been field tested with respect to site-based activities and it was concluded that, although inefficiencies were highlighted, many questions were not sufficiently targeted to the project. The next stage of the research is therefore to utilise a filtering matrix to obtain a more targeted and accurate response to the questionnaire.