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Cooke, T, Lingard, H and Blismas, N (2007) On-line OH&S risk assessment for construction designers: the 'toolshed' prototype. In: Boyd, D (Ed.), Proceedings 23rd Annual ARCOM Conference, 3-5 September 2007, Belfast, UK. Association of Researchers in Construction Management, Vol. 2, 441–50.

  • Type: Conference Proceedings
  • Keywords: knowledge-based systems; maintenance; OH&S; risk management; safe design
  • ISBN/ISSN: 978-0-9552390-0-7
  • URL: http://www.arcom.ac.uk/-docs/proceedings/ar2007-0441-0450_Cooke_Lingard_and_Blismas.pdf
  • Abstract:

     Many occupational health and safety (OH&S) problems encountered during the construction, operation and maintenance of a facility could be avoided by ensuring that sound risk management practices are adopted during the design stage. OH&S risks identified after the completion of the detailed design stage of a construction project are often more difficult to eliminate or reduce and can also result in unnecessary costs and delays to the project. While some effort has been made to assist designers to integrate OH&S into their decision-making, existing guidelines rely on the ability of the designer to identify, assess and appropriately control ’foreseeable’ risks. The effectiveness of the design OH&S concept is heavily reliant on a designer’s knowledge and competence in risk management. Not only do designers need to be aware of the features of their design that constitute OH&S hazards, but they need to know how to implement a risk management process to assess the magnitude of the risk presented by these hazards and make sensible decisions about how OH&S risks should be treated. A prototype web-based, knowledge-based system (KBS) has been constructed, that provides a step-by-step risk assessment consultation for construction designers. This consultation can be undertaken by designers with minimal understanding of risk management concepts. The program uses a simple but effective way of modelling expert reasoning in the assessment of OH&S risk and replicates the decision-making of experts in design OH&S, with input from experienced ’users’ of design outputs, i.e. constructors, facilities managers and maintenance personnel.