Keywords: SightSafety, radio frequency identification, management information system, construction plant, health and safety, accident management.

Accidents involving mobile plant and equipment have continually plagued the UK construction industry during the past decade [1]. This paper investigates application of information and communication technology (ICT) to improve the safety of workers who are working in close proximity to construction plant and equipment. The proposed ICT application (i.e. SightSafety), which incorporates the integration of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and mobile computing with plant management information system (MIS), demonstrates how the technology can be employed to deliver a range of safety information for health and safety management. RFID is one such technology which has mostly been utilised so far for material tracking and automatic data collection purposes. There is a need to investigate the potential of the application of RFID (which offers non-contact reading and has proved highly effective in hostile environments such as construction sites) for plant management, health and safety on construction sites and for accident management.

The integration of the aforementioned technologies has led to the proposal of scenarios where information requirements for safety managers and plant operators could be addressed. In addition, improved management of the operational envelope of machines could result in reduced accident rates. The proposed technology platform offers features which include: enhanced all-round awareness for plant operators; detection of operatives entering the machine's operational envelope; availability of employee training levels to site managers in all instances; accident information management; and accident trend generation. Practitioners evaluating the conceptual model of the proposed system [2] identified that such a system should share information among different software applications (such as project plans, personnel and training, audit and inspections, plant management and accident management) rather than each application maintaining its own subset of information.

The conclusions drawn here relate back to the initial research proposition that: "the employment of emerging ICT by the health and safety managers can improve the current health and safety process associated with construction plant management". The benefits highlight that process improvement can be achieved by: capturing safety related information only at the source; automation of activities related to the health and safety process and getting rid of non-value adding activities; paper free work environment where data (for workers in the operational envelope of machines, accident records, investigation outcomes etc.) is readily available. Finally, the feedback gathered during the scenario validation and the evaluation process has also demonstrated that practitioners were very interested in the application of SightSafety. Importantly, practitioners considered that SightSafety offers the industry a proactive system with improved safety, operator awareness and accident investigation capabilities.

1

HSE, "Construction", online, http://www.hse.gov.uk/construction, 2005.

2

Z. Riaz, D.J. Edwards, T. Thorpe, "SightSafety: A Hybrid Information and Communication Technology System for Reducing Vehicle/Pedestrian Collisions", Automation in Construction, 15(6), 719-728, 2006. doi:10.1016/j.autcon.2005.09.004

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