Influence of Hazard Recognition Measures on Safety Performance of Building Workers in Abuja, Nigeria

Abstract

The construction industry has a track record of poor cost performance which has been attributed to the effects of risk. Yet clients expect early, firm estimates of what project will cost. The action of risk on project costs has been studied using the risk register methodology in some previous studies, but new and maintenance projects were not examined separately. The paper established the distribution of risks associated with costs of new building and building maintenance projects by focusing on the risk consequences that could be determined from the final accounts of projects only. Project Quantity Surveyors (PQS) were presented with checklists of 19 risk factors collated from the literature, and were asked to associate risk factors with changes to project costs of 69 projects that were found to be suitable for the purposes of this study. Using a 4-order polynomial trend line, it was found that the number of risk events encountered in new buildings peaked at 25% and 68% completion, as opposed to 15% and 45% in the case of maintenance projects. The study concluded that project consultants were responsible for the highest numbers of risk events (70%), and that the majority of additional project costs (81.8%) were associated with very few risks events that had large cost impacts (8.2% of all risk events). It was recommended that clients and architects need to finalize project briefs early in the project lifecycle such that changes to the brief during construction will be minimal.