ADEQUACY AND UTILIZATION OF SAFETY FACILITIES IN BUILDING CONSTRUCTION SITES IN FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY ABUJA AND NIGER STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study was designed to determine the Adequacy and utilization of safety facilities in building construction sites in Federal Capital Territory Abuja (FCT) and Niger State, Nigeria. Six research questions and four null hypotheses guided the study. A descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The study was conducted in FCT Abuja and Niger State, Nigeria. The sampled population for the study was 225 respondents comprising of 20 Contractors, 88 Builders, and 117 Tradesmen. 196 items researcher designed structured questionnaire, titled building construction site safety facilities, developed from the literature reviewed for the study, was used to collect data from the respondents. The instrument was face validated by three experts. The reliability of the instrument was determined to be 0.88 using Cronbach alpha method. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the four research questions; while ANOVA was used to test null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings on the adequacy of safety facilities produced a grand mean (x̅ = 2.66) which revealed that safety facilities such as protective clothing and fire extinguishers were adequate. Findings on the utilization of safety facilities had a grand mean of (x̅= 2.44) which showed that facilities such as safety basket for cranes and safety helmet were not being adequately utilized in the building construction sites. Findings on the safety practices adopted in building construction sites had a grand mean of (x̅ = 2.68) which revealed that safety practices such as wearing safety boot while working and proper positioning of scaffolding before work are not being adopted in building construction sites. Findings on the challenges affecting the utilization of safety facilities produced a grand mean of (x̅ = 3.42) which revealed that improper supervision and lack of safety training hamper the effective utilization of safety facilities in building construction sites. Furthermore, the grand standard deviation for various sections of the research questions were found to be 0.73, 0.71, 0.73 and 0.60, which were all less than 1.96. This means that the respondents were close to one another in their responses. It was therefore recommended among others that contractors, builders and tradesmen required appropriate training/induction regularly on using the safety facilities in building construction site based on their peculiarities. There should be appropriate information concerning the applications, dissemination and diffusion on using personal protective equipment (PPE) at work, such as the use of safety helmet while working above 3m, ammonia detecting device, safety boot and fire extinguishers in order to prevent accident from site. Working environment should always be cleared and kept free from all objects that can cause harm or injury to the workers in building construction sites.