Abstract

The construction industry is one of the most dangerous industries in the United States. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in five work-related fatalities in the U.S. occur in construction. Safety managers are frequently faced with a dilemma when making safety decisions and typically surrounded by overwhelming boundaries that affect their safety selections. Yet, literature does not provide safety practitioners with a sound decision-making system to be used during the process of specifying safety solutions that is not mainly based on subjective judgments using personal experience. Making sound safety decisions is crucial toward ensuring worker safety. This paper presents a detailed case study example of how a lean thinking concept called Choosing by Advantages (CBA) can be implemented on a construction project to make safety design decisions regarding the permanent features of a facility. In this case study, three fall-prevention measures on a one-story physical utility building on a medical facilities campus are examined. The present research builds upon previous research to extend the use of the CBA tabular method to the safety arena of the construction industry for the first time. The result indicates that CBA is a sound decision-making system that can be used by project teams to make safety decisions during early stages of design.

Founded in 1993, the IGLC is an international network of researchers from practice and academia in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) who feel that the practice, education, and research of the AEC industry have to be radically renewed in order to respond to the global challenges ahead.