Safety first: a case study of incident and accident reporting in a company within the construction and civil engineering industry

Abstract: The construction industry is an exciting and community developing industry, but it is also very much talked about because of the high injury frequency that the industry is characterized by. As a part of preventing accidents at work, the employer conducts systematic work environment work to detect risky parts of the work and to remedy these. Despite the elimination of risks at work, accidents and incidents - so-called deviations in the working environment - occur. Deviations in the working environment must be reported immediately to the employer. Within the company that is subject of this study, the deviations are reported and stored a system called BIA. BIA enables, based on the deviation reports, to create statistical data for the company with respect to different parameters. This report is based on this deviation statistics with regard to accidents and incidents, produced from the reporting tool BIA. The study has investigated in which stages/phases incidents and accidents occur, which work operations that cause incidents and accidents, as well as injury risks and causes of injury behind accidents and incidents. The majority of the company's incidents and accidents occur during construction projects, production and land work. Incidents are caused by work tasks such as excavation work, work at/with passing vehicle traffic and movement within the area. Accidents are caused by work at/by machine, manual handling of material / product and work at/with handheld work equipment. The damage risks in the event of incidents are vehicle accidents, hit by falling or flying objects and stuck or clamped between objects. The causes of injury caused by accidents are damage by self-handled objects, fall at the same level and contact with sharp objects. Fall from height and fall at the same level are the cause of damage in a large part of the accidents. The result of the study also shows that the information given in the event reports in BIA, either lacks of information or that the information is inadequate.