Design and development of construction safety planning model for BIM in Hong Kong construction industry

Abstract

Safety planning is essential if construction projects are to be completed on time, on the budget, and without experiencing accidents or injuries in construction site. Under F&IU (Safety management) regulation, self-regulatory safety management approach is enacted. However, most contractors find it difficult to develop an effective safety planning due to its flexibility and increase in project’s complexity. As a result, general safety plans are commonly found. However, every construction project is unique in nature. Without identifying all possible risks and hazards right at the planning stage, construction site safety cannot be secured. Furthermore, safety planning has always been ignored by design planners and architects. Previous research reveals that a higher priority shall be given in designing to eliminate or avoid a hazard than simply controlling the hazard or protecting the workers from the hazard. So, concern on safety should start at the design stage and throughout the whole project. Under such background, safety planning model, i-SPM 2013 was developed in this study. i-SPM Model not only acted as a useful supplementary guideline of safety planning for construction safety professionals, but also assisted them to integrate it into the BIM in this technological world. By integrating it into BIM, it can arouse both safety professionals and design planning team’s awareness on design for safety (DfS) issue at the start of the design level. Visually shown all potential risk and hazard in construction site, BIM helped the concerned safety professionals and parties to plan effective construction safety prevention measures with reference to i-SPM 2013 integrated. i-SPM 2013 was constructed in three stages. In the first stage, 24 importance factors in safety planning were identified and classified into Policy, Personnel, Process and Incentive Aspects from Literature Review. Then, importance on the derived factors was prioritized through questionnaire survey among safety professionals. Verification on the model was carried out through interview as the final stage. Finally, i-SPM 2013 model with 23 factors was developed. The survey’s findings reflected that most respondents recognized risk assessment as an important component in safety planning. They also showed their awareness and positive attitude on implementing BIM-safety in construction project. To successfully integrate i-SPM 2013 into BIM, strong communication between safety and construction technology experts, together with continuous evaluation on the model were required.