Addressing construction worker safety in the project design

Improving construction worker safety continues to be a major goal in the construction industry. While significant improvements in safety performance have been made in the past few decades, one party within the project team, the designer, has not been directly involved in the safety effort. Designers have been identified as parties who have a significant influence on construction safety. The lack of designer involvement in worker safety is attributed to their lack of education and experience in addressing safety on the construction site, the lack of tools to assist them in addressing safety, and their attempt to minimize their liability exposure. In this research, best practices which can be implemented into a project's design in order to minimize or eliminate construction site hazards were accumulated. These design suggestions were then incorporated into a computer program, titled "Design For Construction Safety ToolBox", which assists designers in recognizing project-specific safety hazards and incorporating the design suggestions into the project design. This computer program has the potential to improve construction worker safety by linking the design and construction phases.