Explore the benefits of safety and compare factors affecting safety performance on construction sites between England and Thailand

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Explore the benefits of safety and compare factor affecting safety performance on construction sites between England and Thailand.

        In this day and age, many people are involved in accidents, especially in a construction industry. This is because they are not aware of health and safety. Although advanced technologies make us safer, the rate of serious accidents remains almost steady. This essay will describe the benefits of improving safety precautions; this will be followed by approaches to reducing the number of accidents in a construction industry, before moving on to a comparison of three factors affecting safety performance on construction sites between England and Thailand.

        It is true that a high safety standard has a highly beneficial effect on quality of life. It can decrease not only deaths and common injuries but also the outgoings of business, such as saving absence and insurance costs, saving recruitment costs, keeping a company’s reputation and boosting productivity. According to Aksorn and Hadikusumo (2008), the successful safety program prevents not only injury to workers but also physical damage to equipment and tools. Moreover, it avoids loss of market competition, project delays and damage to company’s reputation. Generally, one of the best ways to prevent accidents for construction workers is good practice. For example, a foreman should consider the activities of workers. They should not stay in one position for too long and lift loads without planning. This is because they will suffer from back pain or musculoskeletal disorders which cannot be cured by resting. By doing this, the workers can do their task for longer times without a health risk. Moreover, slips and trips are a general case which would lead to broken bones. This leads to high cost of health service and lost production. Employees should beware of wet floors and pick a suitable outfit for their work, such as footwear.  Most trips occur by reason of poor housekeeping. A good case study for improving housekeeping is “Japanese 5S management system”. It is called ‘5S philosophy’ which is based on 5 words (Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain). In many workplaces in Thailand (SIAM DENSO and manufacturing, TOYOTA), the 5S philosophy is the main rule for all employees. This philosophy not only solves the problem of slips and trips but also helps the company to reduce costs. This is because the employees remove clutter and eliminate the tripping hazard. Moreover, the maintenance problems can be identified in a short period with a low cost of mechanical breakdown. 

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The absence duration of Self-reported non-horrendous injury amongst workers who have worked in the last 12 months.

Source: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causinj/index.htm

        The bar chart shows the annual absence duration of workers who suffer from non-fatal injury at work between 2003 and 2010. As can be seen from the bar graph, although there was a significant decrease from 2003 to 2010, the number of non-fatal injuries was still high. Moreover, when the non-fatal accidents occur, workers had to take their time to get better. This would lead to many problems such as cost overruns and time delay. ...

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