Construction worker health: A web-based approach to selecting alternatives to hazardous procedures

Construction workers health has been studied mostly under occupational health environments. Most studies examine the effects that exposure to harmful substances and procedures can have. Other studies refer to changes that can be made to procedures to avoid hazardous situations and to safeguard the health of the construction workers. Some recommendations have been adopted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and others are the result of and the efforts of other agencies such as the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) and its maximum exposure values and how to minimize exposure. Unfortunately, health issues are largely disregarded by different construction stakeholders such as owners, designers and construction managers, primarily because of the latency period from the time and length of exposure to the onset of the effects of that exposure. Safety has been given considerable attention because the cause and effect lag time is minimal, as a worker who has an accident, usually sees the effects at the same moment the accident happens. The adoption of safety regulations by OSHA to prevent injuries and the importance given to safety by construction professionals makes safety an important issue in construction. Jobsites have safety training and safety talks to avoid accidents, but health issues are rarely addressed in these talks. Besides putting together the different substitutions in procedures and materials, this study aims to present it in a way accessible to construction managers and other construction stakeholders to ensure their adoption. A web-based database, organized using Construction Specification Institute (CSI) Masterformat 1995, has been developed to provide easy access to the different substitutions that can be made to safeguard the health of the construction worker. Furthermore, the database can be access from design software programs like Sketchup through an application programming interface programmed in Ruby. It can also be accessed from Excel, a common tool use by estimators to do their project estimate, via an add-in programmed in Visual Basic. Moreover, it translates to Extensible Markup Language (XML) that later can be integrated to design software and other tools to provide the information at the planning and design stages of the project. This study does not include all divisions of the CSI Masterformat as it only covers divisions 2 through 5 which are: Sitework, Concrete, Masonry and Metals divisions. It will cover issues that affect long term such as respiratory illnesses, ergonomics, and cancer related agents. Items that require special training, such as dealing with asbestos, will not be covered. Furthermore, this research does not include the different requirements for safety and health protection that manufacturers of construction materials need to provide for their workers. Only construction site issues will be addressed.