Causes Of Falls And Heat Stress In Construction Industries And The Need For A Fall Protection Plan

Current Problem

Employees mostly engaged in precast construction work and in the residential construction work needs conventional system of fall protection as a safety hazard to develop fall protection plan. The plan for fall protection is considered as a broad concept that basically includes trainings, procedures, methods, systems, and rules that are included in protection plan to save the workers from any kind of fall hazard in construction industry.

The problem that is faced recently in construction industries is falling hazard faced by the workers due to heat stress (Lee et al. 2017). Due to increasing of climate temperature and long hours of outside work, the construction industries are facing hazard. Heat discomforts, thirst, and sweating are the main signs of increasing heat along with heat stroke.

The objective of this research paper is to find out the causes of heat stress in construction industries and need of Fall Protection Plan for the employees working in those industries. This research paper also deals with the ways that can mitigate the fall due heat stress in construction industries.

H1: High impact of heat stress fall protection in the construction industries.

H2: Low impact of heat stress fall protection in the construction industries.

Heat stress is the disturbance that is caused by heat in construction industries. These heat stress increases the fall fatalities in the industry that the workers faces.

The research articles that are taken in this research paper are mostly taken form scholarly articles. In the taken articles, the authors have clearly defined the impact of heat stress in construction industries and the need of Fall Protection Plan in the construction industries to provide protection to the employees. 20 scholarly articles are taken in this research paper to review the results and find out the analysis that different authors had made in different journal/articles.

Title of Article	Publication Number & Publication Date	Description of Article	Difference Between Research & Article
Safety in green building construction projects in Singapore: Performance, critical issues, and improvement solutions	Published Online May 30, 2017	Contains critical issues of construction and improvement solution in Singapore construction industries	Issues are taken from this article related to the construction process.
Making the Fall Protection System Fit the Workplace	2016	Fall protection plan in construction industries.	Only the fall protection plan is taken into account.

Employees in Construction Industries faces heat stress in construction sites due to which they faces many accidents. This research paper deals with Fall Protection Plan in the construction industries that have taken place mainly due to heat stress. All such mitigation plan that can decrease the accidents due to heat stress are also defined in this research paper.

To conduct this research paper, all the ethics related to social, professional, and economical ethics will be followed. No humans will be forced to share their views on research questions and the analysis will be done from scholarly articles.

Research Objective

Falls are main fatalities cause in the construction industries that accounts to about one-third of total fatalities in industrial sectors. There are outdoor hazards that are the main environment hazard of illness risks that are related to heat and also the indoor workers suffers risk from extreme temperatures (Wong et al. 2016). Heat stress are caused because of longer hour outdoor work and the increasing level of climate temperatures in the construction sites. Due to heat stress, heat stroke, heat discomfort, heat sweating have increased which has affected the employees in the construction industries.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a report was published in the year 2015 from where it can be analyzed that there were almost 291 fatal falls to lower levels in the construction industries in year 2013 from a total of 828 fatalities occurred in the construction industries.

Stress are also caused because of the equipment that are used in the construction industries. There are many equipment that releases heat due to which the employees get stressed and experience illness due to heat stress (Kramer et al. 2015). There should be proper protection provided to the worker working with heat equipment to decrease the fall fatalities in the construction areas.

There are mainly three types of heat stress that are possible due to heat in construction sites.

1. Heat Cramps- Heat Cramps include painful cramps that occurs in legs and includes moist and flushed skin problems (Hwang, Shan and Phuah 2018).
2. Heat exhaustion- This includes muscles cramps, moist skin and pale skin, having high fever, vomiting, headache, weakness, diarrhea, faint feeling, nausea and anxiety.
3. Heat stroke- Heat stroke involves warm and dry skin, usually high fever, confusion, agitation, decrease in heart rate, lethargy, stupor, and death because heat.

Heat stress index is the relation between the total amounts of evaporation required related to average person to perspire of an average person. The heat stress index can be measured by thermocouples, omega engineering device, infrared sensors, bimetallic devices and many more.

There are mainly three types of research method. Descriptive, associational, and intervention method. This this research paper, the mixed research method will be used that include descriptive as well as intervention research method.

To carry out the research analysis, questionnaire will be made consisting 30 questions. The respondents included in the analysis are taken from three construction industries of Singapore. Mainly workers aged from 22 to 60 years are considered for this survey.

From three research design that is from explanatory, descriptive and exploratory research design, exploratory and descriptive research design is used to carry out this research paper.

There are two methods of data collection to carry out a research analysis. The data collection procedures are primary data collection as well a secondary data collection. In this research paper, both types of data collection method is used including primary as well as secondary data collection.  

Research Hypothesis

Both qualitative as well as quantitative data are used for analyzing the data in this research paper. Information will be gathered by carrying out survey among the workers in the construction industries and qualitative data are taken from scholarly articles.

The expected results will show the process about how to mitigate the fall fatalities due to heat stress in the construction industries.

Task Name	Resource Names	Cost
Project schedule		$15,260.00
Chapter One: Introduction		$3,270.00
Background	Member 1, Member 3, Member 4, Member 2	$640.00
Current Problem	Member 1	$160.00
Research Question	Member 1, Member 2	$480.00
Research Objective	Member 3, Member 4	$320.00
Research Hypothesis	Member 3	$80.00
Definition of Terms	Member 2	$80.00
Past related Research Articles	Member 1, Member 3, Member 4, Member 2, Online Resource[1]	$1,430.00
Rationale of research	Member 3	$80.00
Chapter two: Literature Review		$1,440.00
Concept of Heat Stress	Member 3, Member 4	$320.00
Statistics of Injuries on Heat Stress	Member 1, Member 2	$160.00
Heat effects Working near Heat Emitting Equipment	Member 3, Member 4, Member 2	$480.00
Types of Heat Stress and Injuries	Member 3, Member 4	$320.00
Types of Measurements on Heat Stress Index	Member 2	$160.00
Chapter Three: Research Methodology		$2,920.00
Types of Research Method	Member 3, Member 4	$640.00
Respondents Analysis	Member 1, Member 3, Member 4, Member 2, Survey[1]	$520.00
Technique of Research Design	Member 3, Member 4	$160.00
Technique of Data Collection	Member 3	$160.00
Technique of Data Analysis	Member 1, Member 2	$640.00
Expected Results	Member 4	$800.00
Chapter Four: Project Timeline		$1,440.00
Project Cost Budget	Member 1, Member 2	$800.00
Project Schedule	Member 3, Member 4	$640.00
Chapter Five: Conclusions and Recommendations		$3,630.00
Evaluation of Data	Member 1, Member 3, Member 4, Member 2, Online Resource[1], Survey[1]	$2,590.00
Conclusions	Member 3, Member 4	$320.00
Documentation of Learning Outcomes	Member 1, Member 2	$320.00
Recommendations	Member 3	$400.00
Research Closure		$2,560.00
Complete All Activities in Research	Member 1, Member 3, Member 4, Member 2	$320.00
Documentation of Entire Research	Member 1, Member 4	$1,600.00
Validation of the Research and Learning	Member 3, Member 2	$320.00
Team Sign Off	Member 1, Member 3, Member 4, Member 2	$320.00

Table 1: Project Cost Budget

(Source: Created by Author)

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish
Project schedule	74 days	Mon 7/9/18	Thu 10/18/18
Chapter One: Introduction	14 days	Mon 7/9/18	Thu 7/26/18
Background	2 days	Mon 7/9/18	Tue 7/10/18
Current Problem	2 days	Wed 7/11/18	Thu 7/12/18
Research Question	3 days	Fri 7/13/18	Tue 7/17/18
Research Objective	2 days	Wed 7/18/18	Thu 7/19/18
Research Hypothesis	1 day	Fri 7/20/18	Fri 7/20/18
Definition of Terms	1 day	Mon 7/23/18	Mon 7/23/18
Past related Research Articles	4 days	Fri 7/20/18	Wed 7/25/18
Rationale of research	1 day	Thu 7/26/18	Thu 7/26/18
Chapter two: Literature Review	9 days	Fri 7/27/18	Wed 8/8/18
Concept of Heat Stress	2 days	Fri 7/27/18	Mon 7/30/18
Statistics of Injuries on Heat Stress	1 day	Tue 7/31/18	Tue 7/31/18
Heat effects Working near Heat Emitting Equipment	2 days	Wed 8/1/18	Thu 8/2/18
Types of Heat Stress and Injuries	2 days	Fri 8/3/18	Mon 8/6/18
Types of Measurements on Heat Stress Index	2 days	Tue 8/7/18	Wed 8/8/18
Chapter Three: Research Methodology	21 days	Thu 8/9/18	Thu 9/6/18
Types of Research Method	4 days	Thu 8/9/18	Tue 8/14/18
Respondents Analysis	1 day	Wed 8/15/18	Wed 8/15/18
Technique of Research Design	1 day	Wed 8/15/18	Wed 8/15/18
Technique of Data Collection	2 days	Thu 8/16/18	Fri 8/17/18
Technique of Data Analysis	4 days	Mon 8/20/18	Thu 8/23/18
Expected Results	10 days	Fri 8/24/18	Thu 9/6/18
Chapter Four: Project Timeline	9 days	Fri 9/7/18	Wed 9/19/18
Project Cost Budget	5 days	Fri 9/7/18	Thu 9/13/18
Project Schedule	4 days	Fri 9/14/18	Wed 9/19/18
Chapter Five: Conclusions and Recommendations	16 days	Fri 9/7/18	Fri 9/28/18
Evaluation of Data	7 days	Fri 9/7/18	Mon 9/17/18
Conclusions	2 days	Tue 9/18/18	Wed 9/19/18
Documentation of Learning Outcomes	2 days	Thu 9/20/18	Fri 9/21/18
Recommendations	5 days	Mon 9/24/18	Fri 9/28/18
Research Closure	14 days	Mon 10/1/18	Thu 10/18/18
Complete All Activities in Research	1 day	Mon 10/1/18	Mon 10/1/18
Documentation of Entire Research	10 days	Tue 10/2/18	Mon 10/15/18
Validation of the Research and Learning	2 days	Tue 10/16/18	Wed 10/17/18
Team Sign Off	1 day	Thu 10/18/18	Thu 10/18/18

Table 2: Project Schedule

(Source: Created by Author)

Conclusions

The above proposal states the details of heat stress fall protection plan in the construction industries. This paper describes the background of the fall protection plan in construction industry and literature review related to the topic chosen. There are research questions and objective defined in this paper that will help to analyze the result of the research paper.

There are many ways to mitigate the fall fatalities in construction industries. All the mitigation methods due to heat stress are to be followed by the workers working the construction industries.

References

Alshebani, M.N. and Wedawatta, G., 2014. Making the construction industry resilient to extreme weather: lessons from construction in hot weather conditions. Procedia Economics and Finance, 18, pp.635-642.

Chew, M.Y.L., 2017. Construction technology for tall buildings. World Scientific.

Dong, X.S., Wang, X., Largay, J.A., Platner, J.W., Stafford, E., Cain, C.T. and Choi, S.D., 2014. Fatal falls in the US residential construction industry. American journal of industrial medicine, 57(9), pp.992-1000.

Hwang, B.G., Shan, M. and Phuah, S.L., 2018. Safety in green building construction projects in Singapore: Performance, critical issues, and improvement solutions. KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering, 22(2), pp.447-458.

Jia, A.Y., Rowlinson, S., Loosemore, M., Xu, M., Li, B. and Gibb, A., 2017. Institutions and institutional logics in construction safety management: The case of climatic heat stress. Construction management and economics, 35(6), pp.338-367.

Kramer, D.M., Tenkate, T., Strahlendorf, P., Kushner, R., Gardner, A. and Holness, D.L., 2015. Sun Safety at Work Canada: a multiple case-study protocol to develop sun safety and heat protection programs and policies for outdoor workers. Implementation Science, 10(1), p.97.

Lee, W., Lin, K.Y., Seto, E. and Migliaccio, G.C., 2017. Wearable sensors for monitoring on-duty and off-duty worker physiological status and activities in construction. Automation in Construction, 83, pp.341-353.

Li, X., Zhang, X., Hadjisophocleous, G. and McGregor, C., 2015. Experimental study of combustible and non-combustible construction in a natural fire. Fire Technology, 51(6), pp.1447-1474.

Saurin, T.A., 2016. Safety inspections in construction sites: A systems thinking perspective. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 93, pp.240-250.

Wong, L., Wang, Y., Law, T. and Lo, C.T., 2016. Association of root causes in fatal fall-from-height construction accidents in Hong Kong. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 142(7), p.04016018.