Safety Culture and Risk Management in Construction

This assignment delves into the crucial aspects of safety culture and risk management within the construction industry. It examines the existing literature on safety culture and climate, highlighting key findings and trends. The assignment further analyzes organizational factors contributing to workplace accidents and disasters, drawing upon various theoretical frameworks. A central focus is placed on understanding how safety culture influences worker behavior and contributes to overall risk management effectiveness in construction projects.

Running head: WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY
Work Health and Safety
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY
The term fatigue can be explained as a state of psychological or physical or both
exhaustion that results in the reduction of the working ability and efficiency of an individual.
Considering the fact that fatigue in an individual can develop due to both work and non-work
related issues, a good number of employees working in different institution, all over the world
are found to be the sufferer of fatigue due to several factors associated with workplace. While
poor sleep quality due to family issues or street noise can be considered as a good example of
non-work related fatigue, some of the chief causes behind work related fatigue include prolonged
working shifts, unsatisfactory recovery period between two shifts, long commuting time and
excessively stressful job structure. In this essay, the role of fatigue in active failure has been
discussed along with the importance of ‘blame the system’ approach instead of ‘blame the
victim’ have approach in global organizations. Finally it has been concluded that in order to
eradicate active failure, managers should implement different strategies to control excessive
work load.
Fatigue imposes negative impact on the performance of an employee which often causes
severe active failures. Active failures, also known as human error problems, involve various
unintended disasters that are often performed by an individual. In this paragraph various roles of
fatigue in active failure have been discussed. According to FATIGUE MANAGEMENT A
WORKER’S GUIDE (2013), since fatigue reduces the alertness in employees, sometimes safety
of the workplace gets adversely affected by the fatigued employees. Some of the major cases
where fatigue may lead to disastrous incidents or injuries include driving vehicles or operating a
mobile or fixed plant or working in a shift (day or night) an employee is not comfortable with.
The Australian government has decided to increase the monthly remuneration of the truck
drivers who are often suffering from substance abuse disorders due to fatigue resulting in major
accidents. According to research, Australian truck drivers get victimized of fatigue due to
scheduling pressure, insecure access to work and rewards, unpaid waiting time and self-
hazardous practices like drug abuse and speeding. It has been found that drivers who are paid on
the besis of trip-based scheme, drives approximately 15 Km per hour faster than drivers who are
being paid by fixed rate scheme. Apart from this, those drivers, who are paid with respect to their
working time, are reported to have much lower fatigue rate than drivers who are paid on basis of
their work amount (The Conversation, 2013). Long haul truck drivers in Australia are found to

2WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY
have poor health due to prolonged driving and substance abuse which is eventually resulting in
fatigue. Owner truck drivers and drivers working at small firms are more likely to suffer accident
and crashes since they are paid on basis of their work amount. Employee drivers, who are paid
with respect to trip-based rate suffers less accident since their remuneration is higher than that of
the former. According to a majority of Australian drivers, the chef reason behind truck accident
is fatigue and they are compelled to drive for a prolonged period due to the low remuneration
rate (Quinlan 2014).
Another example of disastrous accident is the Texas City oil refinery disaster. On March
2005, the mentioned oil refinery suffered from a huge explosion due to ignition of a hydrocarbon
vapour. Due to this incident, 15 workers lost their life and 180 employees got injured (Hecker
and Goldenhar 2013). The Chemical Safety board reported that in the day of explosion, the 170
foot long blowdown drum was being refiled by a night employee who was a sufferer of extreme
fatigue due to extreme stress for working in 12 hour shifts for 33 days continuously. Not only the
employee, were two of the managers who were supposed to supervise the act also suffering from
fatigue due to 37 and 31 days of continuous work. According to research, high level of fatigue
had resulted in reduction and degradation of problem solving skills and efficient judgement that
in turn caused hindrance in the ability to understand the tower is being overfilled (‘Mindful
Leadership With References to BP Texas City’ 2010).
According to Nann.org (2015), nurses face high risk of both self and patient’s safety due
prolonged duty hours comprised of 12-13 hour per shift. Due to such prolonged work time and
high stress, a majority of nurses suffered from fatigue which results in hindrance to provide
efficient care to patients, which in turn causes active failure or even death of patients in some
cases.
The Conversation (2013), stated that an employee even may die due to excessive work
load in his/her workplace. In Japan, the phenomenon of death due to intense workload is known
as Karoshi and heart attack is considered to be one of the most common results of ‘Karoshi’.
According to research, fatigue in an individual, may develop due to absurdly over usage of
commonly desirable skill or overdoing physical exercise. Two examples of incidents where an

3WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY
individual died out of fatigue, for over usage of her planning skill and a man died for excessive
exercise can be given.
According to The Conversation (2014), employees working in different institution, specially in
building and construction industries, are getting inclined towards alcohol and substance abuse in
order to cope up with the fatigue developed due to excessive work pressure in the workplace.
Usage of alcohol to cope up with stress, anxiety and fatigue increases the risk of accidents and
injury along with active failure. Apart from this, alcohol and substance abuse amongst
employees is also resulting in decrement of employee productivity and employee turnover.
Considering the fact that fatigue results in various active failures, it is often seen that
employees are blamed for the unintended accidents. This imposes negative impact on the
psychological and physical health of employees. However, it can be clearly understood that lack
of proper management is the main reason behind the active failures. In the following paragraphs
the importance implementing ‘blame the system’ approach, instead of ‘blame the victim’
approach is critically evaluated.
According to Reason (2000), the human error problem can be viewed from the
perspective of two approaches, namely, person and system approach. The person approach, also
known as ‘blame the victim’ approach, chiefly focuses on the unsafe act performed by
employees of an organisation. According to this approach, the chief reason behind active failures
is inattention, forgetfulness and carelessness, lack of motivation and recklessness of an
employee. The person approach does not focus on the errors in the management of the
organisation and excessive workload faced by the employees. Therefore it can be clearly
understood that, according to this approach, the chief measure to reduce active failures is
reducing unwanted variability in human behavior. In order to reach the mentioned goal, this
approach implements various measures like threat of litigation, retaining, blaming, shaming and
naming the employees and imposing various disciplinary measures on them (Scott and Davis
2015). This approach believes in ‘just world hypothesis’, which includes treating error as moral
issues.
On the other hand, in system approach, popularly known as ‘blame the system approach’,
errors in the management of the workplace and lack of efficient managerial strategies are

4WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY
considered to be the major reason behind active failures (Hopkins 2005). According to this
approach, human beings, being human beings are fallible and faults are expected to happen.
‘Blame the system’ approach considers active failures as a consequence of excessive pressure,
stress and fatigue instead of carelessness of the employees. The measure suggested by this
approach is to implement proper managerial strategies that will prevent excessive pressure and
workload imposition on the employees and whenever a active failure will occur, the fault of the
management should be blamed instead of the employee.
Research says, most of organizations, specially the medical industry, are inclined towards
the ‘person approach’ instead of the ‘system approach’ (Quinlan, Bohle and Lamm 2010). The
chief reason behind this is the fact that for majority of organizations, blaming a particular
individual seems to be easier than assess and evaluate the fault of the organizations own
managerial system. However, this approach is crucially ill-suited in medical industry and
according to various surveys, if this approach is not changed, health care institution will suffer
from major threat that will hinder its development and safety. Effective reporting culture and
detailed analysis of incidents, mishaps and near misses is necessary to prevent recurrent error
traps. A good example of active failure due to absence of reporting culture is the Chernobyl
Disaster. Finally the two major weaknesses of ‘blame the victim approach’ can be pointed out for
the urge of rejecting this approach (Chryssolouris 2013). Firstly, the most efficient employee can
make a hazardous mistake and thus it can be understood that errors are not monopoly of few
unfortunate employees. Secondly, same circumstances are seen to provoke similar errors,
irrespective of the employees involved. Thus it can be concluded that ‘blame the victim
approach’ should be rejected in support of ‘blame the system approach’.
In this paragraph, the role of system approach in efficiently managing an organization is
evaluated. According to WHS theory, Duty of officers (section 27), organizations with ‘high
reliability strategy’ are always ready to accept the worst and equip themselves to deal with such
situations at all organizational levels (GUIDE TO THE MODEL WORK HEALTH AND
SAFETY ACT 2016). Besides that, this strategy also provides reminders and tools to the
employees to fight with difficult situations. This strategy focuses on making the system sturdy by
gathering experiences and knowledge from past disasters.

5WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY
According to Safeworkaustralia.gov.au. (2013), proper assessment of the risks due to
employee fatigue is the first step towards an ideal active failure managerial strategy. The second
step involves controlling the risk by properly scheduling work, maintain rosters and
implementing employee friendly working environment. Efficient work place fatigue policies
need to be implemented in the work place. The third step includes providing the employees with
training, instruction and information to prevent active failure. Finally, the management should
monitor, supervise an review the strategies in order to detect error in the system, if any.
According to WHS law (Section 28), workers being a part of the organization should also take
part in management strategies in order to reduce active failure. Employees should comply with
the policies and procedures of the organization. They should analyze their physical requirement
of rest and assess their own fitness before commencing work and seek medical advice whenever
needed (FATIGUE MANAGEMENT A WORKER’S GUIDE. 2013; GUIDE TO THE MODEL
WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY ACT. 2016).
From the above essay it can be concluded that, fatigue in employees, due to excessive
work load needs to be eradicated to prevent active failures. Several examples are described in the
essay, where disastrous incidents have taken place due to human error issues. While majority of
the organizations have the tendency to blame the employees for such active failures, the main
problem lies in management of the organizations. Managers in an organization require to
understand that blaming the employees, without changing the strategies will not prevent future
active failure and will hinder the safety and developments of the companies. Managers of the
organizations need to implement proper strategies and policies to prevent fatigue in employees.
However, the whole procure will require the support of the employees to work out efficiently.
With proper managerial strategies along with employee support, organizations can definitely be
able effectively reduce active failure in the future.

6WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY
Reference List:
‘Mindful Leadership With References to BP Texas City’ 2010 Produced by Richard
Sharma. Futuremedia,26 mins.
Chryssolouris, G., 2013. Manufacturing systems: theory and practice. Springer Science
& Business Media.
Hecker, S. and Goldenhar, L., 2013, June. Understanding safety culture and safety
climate in construction: Existing evidence and a path forward. In Literature Review
Summary for Safety Culture/Climate Workshop June (pp. 11-12).
Hopkins, A 2005, Safety, culture and risk: the organisational causes of disasters, CCH
Australia Ltd, Sydney. Chapter 1.
Nann.org. (2015). The Effect of Staff Nurses’ Shift Length and Fatigue on Patient Safety
and Nurses’ Health. [online] Available at:
http://nann.org/uploads/About/PositionPDFS/1.4.1_Effect%20of%20Staff%20Nurses
%20Shift%20Length%20and%20Fatigue%20on%20Patient%20Safety%20and
%20Nurses%20Health.pdf [Accessed 12 Jan. 2018].
Quinlan, M, Bohle, P and Lamm, F 2010, Managing occupational health and safety, 3rd
edn, Palgrave Macmillan, Melbourne. Chapter 2 esp. pp.90 – 102.
Quinlan, M. 2014, Ten Pathways to Death and Disaster, Federation Press, Sydney.
Preface ix –x and Chapter 1.
Reason, J. 2000, ‘Human error: Models and management’, British Medical Journal,
320(7237): 768 – 770.
Safeworkaustralia.gov.au. (2013). GUIDE FOR MANAGING THE RISK OF FATIGUE
AT WORK [online] Available at:
https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/system/files/documents/1702/managing-the-risk-
of-fatigue.pdf [Accessed 12 Jan. 2018].

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Scott, W.R. and Davis, G.F., 2015. Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural and
open systems perspectives. Routledge.
The Conversation. (2013). Explainer: how do you die from overwork?. [online] Available
at: https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-do-you-die-from-overwork-18023
[Accessed 12 Jan. 2018].
The Conversation. (2013). FactCheck: do better pay rates for truck drivers improve
safety?. [online] Available at: https://theconversation.com/factcheck-do-better-pay-rates-
for-truck-drivers-improve-safety-57639 [Accessed 12 Jan. 2018].
The Conversation. (2014). Drug and alcohol testing at work doesn't deter anyone, so why
do it?. [online] Available at: https://theconversation.com/drug-and-alcohol-testing-at-
work-doesnt-deter-anyone-so-why-do-it-51244 [Accessed 12 Jan. 2018].
GUIDE TO THE MODEL WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY ACT. (2016). [ebook]
Available at: https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/system/files/documents/1702/guide-
to-the-whs-act-at-21-march-2016.pdf [Accessed 14 Jan. 2018].