-
ic
cobingtontes
rativonffectiveness, and analytical learning capacity of the
process. Dedicated tools for
application that aims to address such drawbacks and improve the
day-to-day practices andmanagement of safe-ty inspections.
Evaluation results indicate the usefulness and practicality of the
application and identify innova-tive uses not previously
envisioned. Furthermore, the developed tool allows consistent data
collection that caneventually be used to aid the development of
advanced safety and health data analysis techniques.
dustries [1]. According to the United States (US) Bureau of
Labor Statis- than those that did not. By analyzing the total OSHA
recordable injury
nd widely used strate-ection process lacks aaccompanied by
inef-tance, during a typical
Automation in Construction 48 (2014) 5363
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Automation in
j ourna l homepage: www.e lssuch as regular safetymeetings,
substance abuse programs, task specicsafety training, and
pre-project safety planning. Among these commonapproaches,
conducting regular and frequent construction site safety
safety inspection, a safety specialist looks for violations on
site andtakes notes to record observed issues. However, inspection
notestaken by different safety specialists may vary greatly for the
same typefrom the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA), re-quire that employers provide their employees with safe
and healthyworking environments free from recognized hazards. To
meet this re-quirement, contractors typically adopt a mix of safety
approaches,
Although safety inspections are a successful agy for improving
safety in construction, the inspcomprehensive and structured
procedure and isfectiveness and inefciency throughout. For instics,
more than 1000 work-related fatalities took place each yearbetween
1994 and 2011 in the US construction industry on
average.Furthermore, construction consistently ranks as one of the
top threemost dangerous industries in the US, with the greatest
total number ofwork-related fatalities among all industries.
In the US, safety regulations, in particular the General Duty
Clause
rate of 59 projects, the Construction Industry Institute [5]
concludedthat the practice of checking safety inspection records on
a regularbasis is generally associatedwith projects that have
better safety perfor-mance. Kaskutas et al. [7] determined that
safety inspections couldmeasure the risks of observed projects.
Aksorn andHadikusumo [6] sug-gested that safety inspections are
very effective in preventing accidents. Corresponding author. Tel.:
+1 206 616 1915.E-mail addresses: [email protected] (K.-Y. Lin),
meng
[email protected] (U.C. Gatti), [email protected] (J. Je-Chian Lin(C.-H.
Lee), [email protected] (S.-C. Kang).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2014.08.0120926-5805/ 2014
Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.ss global construction in-ed a
survey concluding that the injury and illness incidence rates
ofcompanies that performed safety inspections were signicantly
lowerWorkforce safety is an important topic
acroKeywords:Construction safetySafety inspectionSite
inspectionField inspectionSafety auditField data
collectionUser-centered designInformation and communication
technologySafety technologyResearch to practice
1. Introduction 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
inspections is particularly important [2,3]. Abudayyeh et al.
[4] conduct-Accepted 27 August 2014Available online 16 September
2014
up
ser-centered information and communications technology could
signicantly reduce such drawbacks. Thisaper discusses the use of an
original two-step user-centered design approach to develop and
evaluate an iPadReceived in revised form 16 August 2014 that hinder
the efciency, eA user-centered information and communto improve
safety inspections
Ken-Yu Lin a,, Meng-Han Tsai b, Umberto C. Gatti c, Jaa
Department of Construction Management, College of Built
Environments, University of Washb Center for Weather Climate and
Disaster Research, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwac
Department of Construction Management, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA, United Stad Department of Civil Engineering, National
Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
a b s t r a c ta r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:Received 14 August 2013
Occupational safety is impethat help enforce job
[email protected] (M.-H. Tsai),), [email protected]
technology (ICT) tool
Je-Chian Lin d, Cheng-Hao Lee d, Shih-Chung Kang d
n, 120 Architecture Hall, Box 351610, Seattle, WA 98195, United
States
e in construction, and safety inspection is among the most
common practicessite. The safety inspection process, however,
suffers from several drawbacks
Construction
ev ie r .com/ locate /autconof issues, making it difcult to have
a systematic understanding of theobserved issues. Current practices
do not take advantage of the timeand resources that safety
professionals have already committed duringsite inspections.
Therefore, repetitive steps are taken to transform eldnotes into
ofce les and then administrative reports. In addition,
-
54 K.-Y. Lin et al. / Automation in Construction 48 (2014)
5363inspection results are rarely analyzed further to serve as
performanceindicators for administrative and management use or to
reveal the un-safe patterns on site.
These limitations may severely reduce safety specialists'
effective-ness and efciency in collecting and compiling eld
observations, andas a result may hamper their ability to monitor
site safety performance.However, dedicated information and
communication technology (ICT)tools, such as portable tablets
capable of retrieving applicable safetyprocedures, rules and
regulations, and software capable of automatingrecurring activities
(e.g., creation of violation statistics and reports),could
signicantly improve the day-to-day practices and managementof
safety inspections.
Numerous ICT tools have been benecial for the construction
indus-try. Goodrum and Haas said, Many industries have spent
considerabletime and money studying how technology inuences
productivity.These studies have led to sizeable gains in
productivity and prot mar-gins [8]. Furthermore, the Construction
Industry Institute [9] stated,Advances in technology have many
benets. Among the most oftencited are improved quality and
productivity. ICT tools also provide ben-ets to workforce safety
and well-being. For instance, ICT innovationsallowing the
industrialization and automation of work tasks wereconsidered to be
one of the main factors preventing a signicant in-crease of injury
rate in the US construction industry during the 1990s[10]. The
importance of ICT-enabled automation in improving safetywas also
supported by Kim and Cho [11] and Cinkelj et al. [12]. Hanet al.
[13] and Sulankivi et al. [14] implemented building
informationmodeling (BIM) and a 4D model for safety planning. Chi
et al. [15],Teizer [10], and Walia and Teizer [16] employed 3D
imaging sensorsto reduce the occurrence of collisions within a
construction site. Wuet al. [17] used a radio-frequency
identication (RFID) sensor networkto create an autonomous real-time
tracking system of near-missaccidents and Yang et al. [18] applied
the same technology to identifyaccident precursors.
However,many innovative technologies that have been proven to
bebenecial are not commonly adopted by construction
practitioners.There are different reasons for this. First, it is
well known that the con-struction industry is considered reluctant
regarding the adoption andimplementation of innovations [19,20].
Koningsveld and van derMolen commented that As we look at the pace
of innovation in otherbranches of industry, the building and
construction industry should becharacterized as most conservative
[21]. Furthermore, ICT tools havetraditionally been developed by
adopting a technology-centered design[22]. A technology-centered
design occurs when researchers develop anew technology or apply an
existing technology to a different eld,without considering users'
needs and capabilities. Thus, a technology-centered design forces
users to adapt to the new technology and even-tually fosters the
occurrence of errors. According to Rogers [23],
atechnology-centered design also implies that innovative
technologiesare developed without considering factors that can
signicantly affectinnovation diffusion and acceptance. Such factors
include relative ad-vantage (the degree to which an innovation is
perceived as being bet-ter than the idea it supersedes [23]),
compatibility (the degree towhich an innovation is perceived as
consistent with the existing values,past experiences, and needs of
potential adopters (p. 15)), complexity(the degree towhich an
innovation is perceived as relatively difcult tounderstand and use
(p. 15)), trialability (the degree to which an inno-vation may be
experimented with on a limited basis (p. 16)), and ob-servability
(the degree to which the results of an innovation arevisible to
others (p. 16)). Several studies have demonstrated thatwhen an
innovation has relatively higher advantage, compatibility,
sim-plicity, trialability, and observability, the innovation also
has a higherchance to be extensively and rapidly accepted [24]. In
fact, Mitropoulosand Tatum [25] suggested that uncertainty in
obtaining benets or com-petitive advantages from using innovative
technologies is among thebarriers that impede the introduction and
development of innovative
technologies in construction.To mitigate technology-centered
design issues and limitations,innovative ICT tools should be
designed and developed through auser-centered (also known as
human-centered) approach [26]. Whena user-centered design is used,
researchers develop a new technology,or apply an existing
technology to a different eld, by adapting it tousers' needs and
capabilities and understanding how users interactwith it [27,28].
The employment of user-centered design principleshas been shown to
be successful [29] and the importance of user-centered design is
also emphasized by the fact that the InternationalOrganization for
Standardization [30] issued a specic standard foruser-centered
design. The limitations of current safety inspection proce-dures
can be addressed by dedicated ICT tools, but introducing
innova-tive ICT tools in construction cannot be successful without
a user-centered approach.
To this end, the objectives of this study are twofold. First,
through auser-centered approach, this study aims to verify the
technological re-quirements that correspond to the safety
inspection procedures andtheir management implications. Second,
based on the veried techno-logical requirements, this study intends
to develop an iPad (Apple) ap-plication for potential users to
experience how the tool can effectivelysupport the day-to-day
practices and management of safety inspec-tions. Echoing
Mitropoulos and Tatum's suggestion [25], adopting auser-centered
approach as themain research strategy is expected to re-duce user
uncertainty about the technology and illustrate the competi-tive
advantages of using the technology.
2. Background: The safety inspection process
Based on eld observations, the safety inspection process can be
di-vided into three phases. These are the project information
collectionphase, the recording of observed violations phase, and
the administra-tion of inspection results phase. The conceptualized
safety inspectionprocess is illustrated in Fig. 1.
After the details of a project are mostly settled and as the
projectcommences, safety specialists responsible for the project
begin to con-duct inspections at the project site. Generally, the
site inspectionfrequency depends on the scale and importance of the
project. Duringa site inspection, a safety specialist typically
takes notes of any violationsand safety issues identied and
communicates with workers on site toexpress observed concerns. Upon
returning to the ofce, the specialistthen recaps and compiles the
inspection results into a report. Inspectionresults are often
further discussed during regular project managementmeetings to
prevent similar issues from recurring, to target specicareas for
training, and to raise safety awareness among all employees[31].
Eventually, the inspection results can be used to identify strong
in-dicators for safe (or unsafe) projects and improve site safety
perfor-mance by identifying and understanding the trend of unsafe
workingconditions/behaviors. The inspection results can also
potentially beused to establish relationships between project
safety and other aspects,such as schedule, productivity, and cost
of the project. An integrated ap-proach that examines the results
of safety inspections and productivityhas been explored [32] and
such efforts could inform organizations onhowprojectmanagement
factors inuence each other. In addition, inte-grating safety
inspection results with other aspects of the project hasproved to
be benecial in reducing accident rates and improving pro-ductivity
[33].
The safety inspection process, however, is ineffective and
inefcientbecause of several drawbacks in current practices. The ve
main draw-backs are described in the following paragraphs.
Drawback 1: Lack of Process StandardizationA safety inspection
is expected to identify safety issues related to thevarious trades,
means, methods, and materials of construction, afterconsidering all
applicable safety standards [34]. However, the vol-ume of
applicable safety standards is sizable and it is impossible
for safety specialists to verify whether all applicable
standards are
-
o
ecand
owit
ordla
s of
55K.-Y. Lin et al. / Automation in Construction 48 (2014)
5363satised. Alternatively, safety specialists use their experience
tocheck the overall site surroundings and identify the most
alarmingissues on site. The inspection process lacks standardized
proceduresand is prone to errors and bias. This could explain why
the inspec-tion results are not always recorded and why corrective
actions arenot taken every time [31].Drawback 2: Lack of
Standardized DocumentationIn discussing how to develop effective
quality, environmental, andsafety management systems, Abudayyeh et
al. [4] suggested thatpreparing and implementing standard
inspection checklists can beextremely benecial in improving poor
safety performance.Withoutstandardization of inspection
documentation, ineffectiveness canoccur owing to arbitrary
descriptions of observed safety issues(e.g., face and eye
protection violation versus missing weldingshield) or inconsistent
references to the same project information(e.g., Project at Pine
Street versus Pine Tower). Consequently,the quality of inspection
outputs is reduced, making it difcult to
Project and project
parcipant informaon
Bid informaon Site Inspec
Idenfy and rviolaons
issues
Discuss violaand issues
workers
Phase 1: Collecng Project Informaon
Phase 2: RecObserved Vio
Fig. 1. The procescompile inspection records for
analysis.Drawback 3: Restricted Access to InformationSafety
specialists have to walk around the construction site to checkfor
safety issues. However, research indicates that the
inspectionprocess is not well-prepared [35]. On-site personnel
and/or docu-mentation often cannot provide timely information
(e.g., the nameof a particular subcontractor or trade involved),
thus requiring addi-tional efforts to locate the required
information and making therecording process inefcient. Furthermore,
it may be difcult forsafety specialists to provide specic
regulations to workers whendiscovering safety issues on site as
applicable safety rules or trainingmaterials might not be
immediately accessible or retrievable.Drawback 4: Repetitive Data
PreparationPoor accident recordkeeping and reporting systems are
the majorproblems that cause ineffectiveness for safety management
[36].During safety inspections, there are multiple recordings of
thesame inspection results across several mediums (e.g., paper
note-books, inspection reports, and spreadsheets). Thismakes the
processmore prone to documentation errors, such as those introduced
bymultiple and manual entries of the inspection results. In
addition,pictures taken on site separately from the eld inspection
noteshave to be integrated with the notes. Such integration
generates anadditional complicated and time-consuming task that may
fostermistakes and inaccuracies during data compilation.Drawback 5:
Limited Availability of Safety SpecialistsThe number of safety
specialists that a contractor employs dependson the company's size.
For a small- to medium-sized company, itssole safety specialist
often has to oversee many projects at thesame time. It was found
that there are not enough on-site safetypersonnel to bear the
workload [6] and safety specialists can onlyconduct site
inspections sporadically [34]. This may decrease the ca-pacity of
safety inspections when it comes to the identication of is-sues and
violations. For example, the limited availability of a
safetyinspector spread across multiple projects might lead to
simplica-tion of the inspection process or ignorance of
someviolations. To fur-ther challenge the limited availability of
safety specialists, there is ageneration gap between novice and
experienced safety specialists.This may be due, for instance, to
economic decline and the loss oftalented employees who turned to
other industries for employment.
n
ord
ns h
Violaons and issues are compiled in a report and/
or tracked
ing ons
Phase 3: Administrang Inspecon Results
The collected data can be: Analyzed to improve
safety performance Integrated with other
project data (e.g., producvity)
Etc.
safety inspection.Experience is a key factor for recognizing
violations [37] and there-fore improving the availability of
experienced safety specialiststhrough better work efciency and
training is critical.
These ve main drawbacks negatively affect the inspection
processand its mission to identify and record eld issues and
violations. Thelack of standardized documentation and the
repetitive data preparationparticularly affects the management of
inspection results by hindering,for example, the further
investigation of safety performance and the in-tegration of safety
data into other aspects of project performance. Thereis an obvious
need to streamline the safety inspection process andmax-imize the
effectiveness and efciency of safety inspections.
2.1. Information and communication technology tools for safety
inspections
Given the issues and limitations affecting the safety inspection
pro-cess, contractors have turned to ICT for remedial solutions.
ExistingICT tools for safety inspections are mostly developed
onmobile devices,from PDAs and smart phones to tablets, for
portability purposes andeld applications. Existing ICT tools can be
classied into threemain cat-egories: (1) safety auditing tools,
such as iAuditor from Safety Culture;(2) eldmanagement tools, such
as BIM360 Field fromAutodesk, Pervidifrom Techs4Biz, and Pocket
Jobsite Inspector from PDAge; and (3) dataanalysis tools, such as
SafetyNet from Predictive Solutions. Although all
-
these tools are intended to support safety specialists in
recording ob-served issues and violations during site inspections
and administratinginspection results, they provide signicantly
different functions.
Safety auditing tools mainly provide functions for recording
theinspection results. For instance, iAuditor presents templates of
site inspec-tion checklists for user selection and customization,
and creates inspec-tion reports that can be printed or saved in a
digital format. A typicalinspection report contains an overall
safety score to indicate the safetyperformance of a project.
However, iAuditor does not support integratedcommunication with
subcontractors, and cannot analyze the collecteddata (e.g., to
identify trends of unsafe working conditions/behaviors) ormerge
them with other project performance measurements.
Field management tools provide comprehensive functions for
qualityand safety management. For instance, BIM 360 Field consists
of a seriesof eld data management applications that allow
construction projectactivities to be recorded and stored in a
centralized cloud database.Since project participants can access
this database, it can support inte-grated communication between
project managers and subcontractors.BIM 360 Field can also store
the collected data and generate summaryreports to assess delays,
rework, and punchlist items. However, BIM360 Field does not have an
integrated application to further analyzethe collected inspection
records.
Data analysis tools provide powerful applications to perform
com-prehensive and statistical analysis. For instance, SafetyNet
provides
data learning algorithms to analyze the collected data in order
to iden-tify and examine safety-related issues. This tool
specically aims to pre-dict workplace injuries by determining
leading indicators and can beused to record issues and violations
identied during site inspections.
2.2. Key functions of information and communication
technology
By analyzing (1) the specic steps involved during safety
inspec-tions, (2) the ve drawbacks in current practices, and (3)
the availablefunctions of existing ICT tools, the authors conclude
that any ICT toolmust provide a series of key functions to
effectively support the safetyinspection process. The authors used
a bottom-up approach to linkmajor functions of existing ICT tools
with the three inspection phases.Information from tool vendors'
websites and available trial versionsprovided insights into the
existing ICT tools. The identied key functionsare described below
and divided according to the three main safety in-spection process
phases, with Fig. 2 further illustrating how these keyfunctions
correspond to the recognized drawbacks:
Phase 1. Collecting project information: Pre-congured lists of
project and project participant information. In-
formation about a project (e.g., project name and location) and
itsparticipants (e.g., subcontractor names and performed tasks)
canbe incorrectly reported in the documents generated during
safety
Hardware portability
Photo capturing
Project and project parcipant
informaon pre-congured lists
Safety score
ccee sand
ndeola
Phase 1: Collecng Project Informaon
Phase 2: Recording Observed Violaons
Phase 3: Administrang Inspecon Results
gec
Integraon with other project data
gen
S
(For drawbacks 1, 3 & 5) (For drawbacks 3, 4 & 5)
bac
ack
bac
ack
56 K.-Y. Lin et al. / Automation in Construction 48 (2014)
5363Aapplicabl
st
Remirelated vi
Pre-consafety ch
Le
BIM 360 Field iAuditor
(For draw
(For drawb
(For draw
(For drawbFig. 2. Comparison of current ICT toProject
administraon
communicaon
Integrated communicaon
with project parcipants
Analysis of violaons trends/
paerns
ss to afety ards
r for ons
ured klists
d
afetyNet None of the tools provide the funcon
ks 4 & 5) (For drawbacks 4 & 5)
s 1, 2 & 5) (For drawbacks 1 & 5)
ks 3 & 5)
s 1 & 5) (For drawback 5)ol functions and key functions.
-
in the Seattle area in late 2012, 85% of them still resorted to
the pen-and-paper approach for conducting safety inspections, even
though in-tegrated project or quality management solutions
generally have aplaceholder for safety records. As such, the safety
inspection processcontinues to suffer from the drawbacks outlined
above.
3. Methodology
In this section, the authors explain the user-centered approach
theyadopted in the development of an ICT tool, which incorporates
thetechnological requirements from Section 2 so that potential
users canexperience how the tool can support the day-to-day
practices andman-agement of safety inspections. Although
user-centered design has beenextensively discussed in several
publications, no preferred method hasbeen advocated. For instance,
the International Organization for Stan-dardization [30] determines
the overarching process and phases(Fig. 3) but does not detail the
exact methods.
By applying user-centered design principles and the ow chart
inFig. 3, two main development phases were performed (Fig. 4).
First,the authors designed a paper prototype based on actual safety
inspec-tion procedures and administered two evaluations (i.e.,
interim and ex-pert evaluations) using mock-up violation scenarios
and an evaluationquestionnaire. Second, the authors developed an
application prototypebased on the rened paper prototype and
consulted safety specialiststo evaluate the application prototype
through eld tests. The develop-ment and evaluation stages were
heavily informed by user inputs andare described in detail in the
following sections.
57K.-Y. Lin et al. / Automation in Construction 48 (2014)
5363inspections, or require additional efforts for verication.
Therefore,ICT tools should provide pre-congured lists to contain
reusableproject and participant information.
Phase 2. Recording observed violations: Hardware portability. To
allow safety specialists to use an ICT tool
during site inspections and instantly record the observed
violation,ICT tools should run on a portable device.
Photo capturing. Pictures of identied violations can be a
powerfulinstrument in recording and describing the violations.
Therefore,ICT tools should integrate a photo capturing
function.
Pre-congured safety checklists. Having pre-congured
safetychecklists stored in the ICT tool would ease site inspection
proce-dures and improve process and documentation
standardization.
Access to applicable safety standards. It is extremely unlikely
that asafety specialist will carry a paper copy of all the
applicable safetystandards and regulations during inspections.
Therefore, ICT toolsshould store a digital copy of such safety
standards and regulations,and allow safety specialists to quickly
locate applicable rules fordiscussing with workers on how a
violation or issue should beaddressed.
Reminder for related violations. Some violations are generally
con-current with other violations. Therefore, ICT tools should
automat-ically remind safety specialists to investigate certain
violationswhen related violations are identied.
Phase 3. Administrating inspection results:
Safety score. ICT tools should provide a site safety
performancecomprehensive measure, such as a safety score, based on
the in-spection results. In fact, such a measure could provide the
projectmanagement team with an easy-to-relate indication of the
sitesafety level and eventually suggest directions for
improvement.
Integration with other project data. The collected safety data
can beused to analyze the relationship between safety and other
projectaspects, such as schedule, productivity, and cost.
Therefore, ICTtools should allow the data to be exported to other
tools capableof integrating and synthesizing the different
data.
Integrated communication with project participants. Integrating
in-spection results into the communication protocols among
projectparticipants (e.g., general contractor and subcontractors)
can in-crease participant awareness of the safety issues and ensure
thatno issues are overlooked. Therefore, ICT tools should
supportsuch integration.
Analysis of violations trends/patterns. The analysis of
historical datacollected across several sitesmay identify
trends/patterns betweenspecic causal factors and the occurrence of
violations, accidents,and injuries. Understanding these casual
factors helps to minimizeor prevent the occurrence of related
violations, accidents, and inju-ries. Although this function does
not specically address any of theve drawbacks, it is essential to
the establishment of a proactivesafety and health culture and
should be included in the intendedICT tools.
Project administration communication. Providing corporate
leader-ship with a high-level overview of the inspection results is
imper-ative to the success of overall business management, but it
is oftendeferred until monthly or quarterly meetings with the
leadership.Therefore, ICT tools should allow safety specialists to
communicatethe results obtained to the project management in a
timelymanner.
As shown in Fig. 2, not all the key functions are fully
supported bythe current ICT tools even if they are integrated into
one solution andthere does not seem to be reported efforts on the
unfullled functions.Some tools are also too costly or bulky for
small- to medium-sized con-tractors. Furthermore, by considering
the general reluctance of con-struction practitioners in adopting
innovations and the lack of ICTtools providing a user-oriented
experience, it is not surprising to see
that when the authors surveyed 20 medium-sized general
contractors3.1. Informed design of the template
The rst step of the development and evaluation of the ICT
safetyinspection tool was to initiate a paper prototype that can
help com-municate and reect the process of safety inspection. The
draft de-sign of the paper prototype was informed by the experience
of oneof the co-author faculty internship with a general contractor
fromthe greater Seattle area [38]. A single internship cannot serve
as theonly point of reference but is a good starting point with the
exibility
User
-cen
tere
d de
sign
phas
es Understand and specify context of use
Specify user and organizaonal requirements
Produce design soluons
Idenfy need for user-centered design
Evaluate design against requirements
Does the design sasfy user and organizaonal
requirements?
START
END
YES
NOFig. 3. General user-centered design ow chart.
-
to allow subsequent changes. Specically, formats, content,
andrecording logic of desirable data for the preservation of site
inspec-tion results were identied.
also reviewed to reveal additional common precautions (e.g.,
policy)for inclusion in the paper prototype. Finally, the
topological structure ofthe US OSHA's construction safety standards
was applied to adjust and
Fig. 4. Development and evaluation process.
58 K.-Y. Lin et al. / Automation in Construction 48 (2014)
5363Safety issues of different types, as indicated by the host
company's in-ternal site inspection records, were clustered to
reveal major types(e.g., Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
related violations) and sub-types of safety issues under each theme
(e.g., missing safety glasses).Safety inspection resources from
different general contractors were
ScaffoldFall HazardsGuardrailFall ProtectionOther, please
specify:
TrenchingElectrical
CordOther, please specify:
Ladder SafetyPPE (Personal Protective Equipment)
Face ShieldSafety GlassesHard HatGlovesOther, please
specify:
Hazardous Chemicals
Fuel GasOther, please specify:
Fig. 5. Initial draft of thcomplete the base paper prototype
design. Fig. 5 illustrates the violationtypes (e.g., Scaffold and
Fall Hazards) and subtypes (e.g., Guardrail)dened in the base
design. At this point, the paper prototype was essen-tially a
static inspection form for organizing and recording all
possiblesafety issues on site.
Tool SafetyPowder Actuated Tool
Power ToolMachine GuardSaw GuardOther, please specify:
PolicySmokingHeadphonesOther, please specify:
House KeepingEquipment Operation
CraneScissor LiftForkliftsVehiclesOther, please specify:
Work and PublicOther, please specify:
e inspection form.
-
classication and terminologies used in the form; and (3)
prototyperevision and improvement required. It took each
practitioner about
59K.-Y. Lin et al. / Automation in Construction 48 (2014)
53633.2. Mock-up violation scenarios and evaluation
questionnaire
By utilizing pictures of common site violations, 20mock-up
viola-tion scenarios were compiled and equally divided into two
sets(i.e., basic and advanced). Violations in the basic set were
morestraightforward and easier to spot whereas violations in the
ad-vanced set were generally more ambiguous or involved more
thanone major hazard.
In addition to the violation scenarios, a questionnaire for
evaluatingthe paper prototype was drafted. In particular, the
questionnaireassessed four areas that the paper prototype could
support in the site in-spection process, including the form's
effectiveness (i.e., does the formhelp to describe the given
violation scenarios?), coverage (i.e., doesthe form cover most of
the on-site violations?), ease of use (i.e., is theform easy to
understand and work with?), and other potential usecases of the
form.
Once the violation scenarios were compiled and the
evaluationquestionnaire was drafted, they were pre-tested by two
Universityof Washington construction management graduate students.
Thestudents had more than 3 years of experience in the construction
in-dustry and were not involved in drafting the violation scenarios
orthe evaluation questionnaire. As a result of this process,
unforeseenevaluation problems (e.g., violation scenario pictures
being unclear)and confusing questions in the questionnaire were
identied andaddressed.
3.3. Interim evaluation
In order to obtain a consensus on how various safety issues
shouldbe grouped in the paper prototype tomake sense in the eyes of
potentialusers, an interim evaluation of the general organization
of prototypecontent was conducted with 65 University of Washington
undergradu-ate students taking a class on construction safety. The
students weretasked with performing mock site inspections for the
basic set of viola-tion scenarios using the paper prototype. This
helped verify if the group-ing structure of the safety issues in
the prototype was logical. If moststudents in the class could
assign the same violation to a particular cat-egory, then the
category was considered logical. Since not all studentshad
construction experience prior to the test, those who recorded
agiven violation scenario under an obviously inapplicable type ve
ormore times were considered outliers and their responses were not
con-sidered. The outlier determination threshold came from the most
com-mon number of incorrect violation recordings conducted by
studentswho possessed no prior construction experience. Out of the
65 studentswho participated and the 650 violations recorded, only
52 violations(about 10%) were recorded under inappropriate
categories, with scaf-fold, housekeeping, and tool safety being the
top three problematiccategories for inexperienced students. The
interim evaluation resultsimplied that the structure of the
violation categories was logical forthe most part.
After the evaluation, students further completed the
evaluationquestionnaire and their responses indicated that the
formwas effective,comprehensive, easy to deploy, and additionally
served as a checklist.After the interim evaluation, three main
changes were made to rectifyor clarify the terminologies used.
Specically, Face Shield was re-placed by Respirator under PPE,
Fencing and Otherwere incorpo-rated into the subtype Work and
Public, and the subtype Policywasrenamed to Company Policy. The
entire interim evaluation lastedabout 30 min.
3.4. Expert evaluation
The purpose of the expert evaluation was to conduct a more
in-depth examination on the paper prototype in order to further
reneand conrm how safety issues should be organized in a
standard
recordkeeping form that makes sense to industry practitioners.
For70 min to complete the process.Although the number of
participating practitioners was limited
owing to the nature of the interview approach, the researchers
wereable to obtain consistent feedback from the six practitioners.
The mostsignicant input from these experts was about the coverage
of safetyissues. This contradicted the student input, which could
be explainedby the safety knowledge these experts had accumulated
as their frameof reference when they evaluated the
comprehensiveness of the paperprototype. As a result, additional
violation types and subtypes wereidentied. Two new types, Fire
Protection and Required Documents,and their related subtypeswere
added to the paper prototype. New sub-types under existing
violation types including Scaffold, House Keep-ing,
Trenching/Excavation, and Ladder Safety were also added.Finally,
the names of some violation types and subtypes were also re-vised
(e.g., Work and Public to Worker and Public Safety). For
theprocess-related recommendations, expert feedback further
indicatedthe hidden relationships between some violation types
(e.g., if theviolation is related to Electrical, then it has a high
chance of alsobeing a Tool Safety violation). These relationships,
if built into the pro-totype, could help potential users perform
site inspections more rigor-ously. Some also suggested that the
violation types and subtypes benumbered for easy reference. These
recommendationsweremore relat-ed to the inspection process andwere
considered during the tool proto-type development and evaluation.
Compared to the initial paperprototype, the total number of
violation types increased from 13 to 15and the total number of
subtypes more than doubled, increasing from25 to 51. The rst 14
types categorize the most common violations,whereas type Other (15)
allows the recording of rare issues. As a re-sult of this process,
the framework of how safety issues should be orga-nized and
described in order to practically support the
recordkeepingrequirement during site inspections was shaped. Two
requirements onwhat an ideal inspection tool should do to
streamline the inspectionprocess were also identied.
3.5. Application prototype development
The purpose of the application prototype is to embed
criticalfunctions in the safety inspection process in order to
carry out user-oriented testing and solicit feedback in the
anticipated environment ofthe application. The application
prototypewas developed as an iPad ap-plication since, according to
Johnson [39], an iPad is still by far themostprevalent mobile
technology for eld applications in the US construc-tion industry.
In particular, the application prototype was developedusing
FileMaker Pro from FileMaker.
The authors developed the application prototype based on the
nal-ized paper prototype and it included all the ICT tool key
functions iden-tied and listed in Fig. 2, except for access to
applicable safetystandards. Themissing function is planned to be
added in a future ver-this purpose, both the basic and advance sets
of violation scenarioswere used. Six eld practitioners from ve
companies, including onesafety consulting rm and four general
contractors from the greater Se-attle area, participated in the
expert evaluation. Among the six partici-pating practitioners, one
was a superintendent and ve were safetydirectors. Together, these
practitioners had over 60 years of experiencein construction site
safety, with one practitioner having between 5 and10 years of
experience and theothers eachhavingmore than 10 years ofexperience.
Each expert recorded the 20 given violation scenarios usingthepaper
prototype, responded to the evaluation questionnaire, and an-swered
additional open-ended questions. The additional questionswere
intended to collect concerns about (1) the current safety
inspec-tion practices, the forms used for such practices, and
existing analyticalapplications of the inspection data records; (2)
the applicability of thesion of the application as the function
itself calls for a substantially
-
different scope of investigation and expertise in text
classication. Keyfunctions included in the application prototype
are as follows:
Pre-congured lists of project and project participant
information.After aproject commences, trades involved on site,
names of subcontractorsemployed, project title and prole number all
become available infor-mation. Therefore, the application prototype
allows the input of suchinformation in pre-congured lists (Fig. 6)
so that users do not have tomemorize or key in the informationwhen
they are conducting inspec-tions.
Hardware portability. Since the most important function is
portabilityduring site inspections, the authors developed the
application proto-type in a way that it can be hosted on iPad
tablets.
Photo capturing. The photo capturing function utilizes an iPad's
cam-era, allowing users to take and save violation pictures and
includethem as a part of the inspection records. In particular, a
user cantake up to four photos of each observed violation (Fig.
7).
Pre-congured safety checklists. The authors incorporated the
paperprototype's pre-congured safety checklists into the
applicationprototype (Fig. 8). The checklist interface design
required thoughtfulconsideration on how to best organize the
checklist informationwhile minimizing the number of clicks it takes
to work through thechecklists.
Reminder of related violations. Different violations may be
strongly re-lated to each other. Therefore, the application
prototype shows poten-tially related violations if certain
violations are entered. For example,when an electrical violation is
chosen, the bottom of the interface
tem allows safety specialists to email inspection reports to
relatedproject participants (e.g., subcontractors).
Analysis of violation trends/patterns. To identify possible
violationtrends, the application prototype is capable of presenting
differentcharts about the violations. Users can choose to view
violation distri-butions by projects or by subcontractors and
understand the viola-tions over different aspects.
Project administration communication. This function supports
users inkeeping track of the violation statistics and provides the
related viola-tion pictures in the cloud. The application prototype
shows the overallviolation distribution of all the projects, and
the site safety statisticsdisplayed in the charts would change
immediately when a new viola-tion is recorded. This gives
administrators or the leadership immedi-ate feedback.
3.6. Field evaluation
After the application prototype was completed, it was evaluated
tosee if it satised the practical needs of site inspection and at
the sametime exhibited the potential to support future data
analysis. Three safetyexperts from different construction companies
participated in the eldevaluation. Two of the three experts were
the heads of their respectivesafety departments while the third
expert was a senior safety ofcer.Two safety experts used the
application prototype for 2 weeks whereasone used it for over 6
months. Each safety expert was instructed to, at aminimum, use the
application prototype to record violations in the eld(Fig. 10) and
administer inspection results (e.g., generate violation re-ports
for meetings and investigations). Members of the research team
60 K.-Y. Lin et al. / Automation in Construction 48 (2014)
5363will show Please check Tool (09) for related violation in red
toremind users that there could be a potentially related hazard.
Thisfunction differentiates the application prototype from existing
soft-ware and could eventually be congured to benet and learn
fromcollected inspection records over time.
Safety score. This function allows users to enter an overall
score for theconducted inspection.
Integrationwith other project data. To allow integrationwith
other datasources, the application prototype can export the data
into a spread-sheet le, which is compatible with many common
software applica-tions (e.g., Microsoft Excel). Although a shared
schema for integratingFig. 6. Project information
interface.inspection records with other project data was not
explored, as thistopic was outside the user-centered focus of this
study, the existingdata-exporting capability engages end-users to
brainstormpotentiallybenecial data fusion scenarios.
Integrated communication with project participants. The
applicationprototype provides cloud capabilities (Fig. 9) by
hosting an online da-tabase operable through FileMaker's services.
Furthermore, the sys-
Fig. 7. Photo capturing interface.participated in several site
inspections with the safety experts to
-
61K.-Y. Lin et al. / Automation in Construction 48 (2014)
5363introduce them to the application prototype, assess their user
experi-ence, and collect their feedback through interviews.
As a user provides feedback, the application prototype improved
thesafety inspection process by minimizing repetitive data
preparationtasks and increasing work efciency, thus addressing
issues caused by
Fig. 8. Scaffold safety checklist interface.the limited
availability of safety specialists. For instance,many of the
ap-plication prototype functions helped to reduce the overall
amount ofpaperwork required (e.g., integrated communication with
project par-ticipants) and the efforts that safety specialists take
to collect project in-formation (e.g., pre-congured lists of
project and project participantinformation), record observed
violations (e.g., hardware portability,photo capturing), and
administer inspection results (e.g., projectadministration
communication). Repetitive data preparation-related is-sues were
reduced by the functions related to communication, becauseonce
inspection records are generated, they can be reused in
differentcommunication formats, such as emails.
Fig. 9. Data management interface.Theeld evaluationwas also
extremely benecial because it enabledthe authors to envision new
uses of the application prototype that hadnot previously been
considered. First, the prototype application allowedsafety experts
to provide immediate feedback to the superintendents.For instance,
safety experts can show violation pictures to site superin-tendents
before leaving the inspected sites and discuss with themwaysto
prevent similar violations in the future. Second, a
constructioncompany decided to use the data collected through the
application pro-totype to rate subcontractors' safety performance
as a basis for futureproject prequalication. The company also used
the data to assess su-perintendents' safety performance in order to
determine their yearlybonus.
Furthermore, through eld evaluations, the authors identied
threeproblems in the application prototype. First, the iPad 2 was
used as aplatform and the iPad camera was not good enough for
taking violationpictures in low-light situations. As pictures serve
as good evidence forrecording violations, the issue with the tablet
camera can only be im-proved when its manufacturer upgrades the
specications. Second,even though the iPad is a portable device, use
of the tablet on site isstill far from ideal. Users had to be
mindful with the device to avoidrain, scratches, and falls.
Providing a full protection case for the devicecould minimize this
problem, but also makes it difcult for users totype or check the
violation box on the device. Third, the existing processof site
inspection is mostly paper-based and different companies
havedifferent paper templates for their safety inspections.
Therefore,
Fig. 10. A safety expert using the prototype tool for site
inspection.connecting the application prototype with the existing
processes re-quired additional research (i.e., a study of data
schema) to integratesafety and health data into the larger business
management practices.
Additional evaluation was performed in the form of an expert
work-shop in the summer of 2013, with 10 participating subject
expertswhosemain job tasks are related to construction safety and
healthman-agement in the industry. In the workshop, experts learned
about theapplication prototype through hands-on interactions and
then lledout a two-page survey to indicate their level of agreement
with givenevaluation criteria. A 5-point Likert scale measured the
level of agree-ment with 1 being Disagree and 5 being Agree.
Results fromthe survey are summarized in Table 1. Since the
workshop, 10 privateentitiesfour specialty contractors, four
general contractors, oneconsulting rm, and the Associated General
Contractors of America(Western Washington District)have signed the
evaluation licenseagreement with the University of Washington and
obtained free accessto the tool.
Although a quantitative eld evaluation was not conducted
duringthe reported research stage, the authors considered the
collected quali-tative feedback to help support the intended
research objectives andguide the research into its next phase. In
the future, the research team
-
cation prototype. For example, the ability to edit the
pre-conguredsafety checklists is desirable for contractors who want
to design safety
62 K.-Y. Lin et al. / Automation in Construction 48 (2014)
5363checklists specic to each project and/or special clients.
However, a con-sistent schema for labeling violation data will be
hard to create, makingplans on recruiting a larger group of eld
users and taking quantitativemeasurements to document the user
experience.
4. Discussions
The developed ICT tool has proved to be benecial in improving
theefciency and effectiveness of the safety inspection process for
thesubject experts studied. In fact, the most noticeable benets
identiedin the eld evaluationwere the reduction of paperwork and
faster com-munication between project participants. In addition to
addressing thelimited availability of safety specialists and
repetitive data prepara-tion-related issues, implementing the ICT
tool minimizes other draw-backs in the safety inspection process.
For instance, the use of pre-congured lists of project and project
participant information allowssafety specialists to store and
quickly retrieve project data and, there-fore, improve their access
to project information. Then, functions suchas pre-congured safety
checklists, reminders of related violations,and integrated
communication with project participants can improveprocess
standardization by making these steps an automatic part ofthe
process. Finally, the lack of standardized documentation can
bereduced by the use of pre-congured safety checklists.
Although the ICT tool functions were developed to support
safetyspecialists, some functions have both positive and negative
impactsand, as a result, not all the possible featureswere
integrated in the appli-
Table 1Survey results for the application prototype
evaluation.
Criteria Avg. agreementlevel
1. The prototype can reduce the challenges you face
whenperforming safety inspections.
5.00
2. The prototype can improve your current approach to
safetyinspection.
5.00
3. The prototype is compatible with your company's businessvalue
and needs.
4.71
4. The design of the prototype aligns with your
inspectionpractices.
4.50
5. The prototype is easy to understand and use. 5.006. The benet
of using the prototype can be easily
communicated to your peers.4.87
7. The benet of using the prototype can be easilycommunicated to
your boss.
4.87it difcult to analyze violation data for trend and pattern
recognition.Thus, as an informed design decision, the application
prototype doesnot allow users to customize the pre-congured safety
checklists. Toprovide users with a certain level of customization
without affectingthe quality and consistency of the collected data,
the application proto-type has a place in the pre-congured safety
checklists where users canadd options that are not already in the
list.
The collection of consistent and high-quality eld safety
inspectiondata can have a tremendous inuence on the development of
advanceddata analysis techniques. For instance, a statistical
report of the resultscan reveal the most frequent violations in the
eld and direct furtherresearch to understand the relationships
between weather conditions(e.g., temperature) and violation
features (e.g., trade type involved).Eventually, it will be
possible to develop ICT tools capable of autono-mously identifying
the priority inspection items and presenting the po-tential
workplace safety issues based on the site weather, worker, and/or
trade information. Therefore, although additional uses of the
collect-ed data beyond recordkeeping applications still need to be
explored,this research established a structured safety inspection
process andincluded related functions in the preliminary process to
facilitate ad-vanced data analysis. This enhances our systematic
understanding ofthe inspection process and provides researchers as
well as practitionersthe opportunity to explore and experience
potential benets, echoingMitropoulos and Tatum's suggestions [25]
on minimizing uncertaintywhen introducing and developing innovative
technologies for construc-tion applications.
Regardless of all the possible benets, the integration of an
innova-tive ICT tool with existing procedures and business
practices remainsa critical challenge. In fact, one safety
specialist who participated inthe eld evaluation decided to stop
using the application prototypetool because the integration was an
additional workload for him. Thegeneral resistance to change and
technology in the construction indus-try remains an additional
barrier. Although a user-centered design ap-proach was used in
developing the application prototype, anothersafety specialist
involved in the eld evaluation demonstrated a clearreluctance to
shift their inspection process from paper to ICT. Therefore,best
practices in the use of technological innovations for eld safety
in-spections should be established in order to showcase success
stories andprovide incentives for adopting innovations within the
industry. Suchbest practices need to highlight how technological
innovations benetnot only day-to-day practices and safety
inspection processes but alsooverall safety management.
Finally, it is important to point out that the implementation of
auser-centered design approach in the reported study was
extremelybenecial. By working with industry practitioners closely,
the authorscaptured and understood the end-users' business needs,
preferences,practices, and objectives. Similarly, by participating
in the researchstudy, the industry partners better understood the
technological capa-bilities andweremotivated to envision new ICT
tool uses not previouslyconsidered.
5. Conclusion
Safety inspection is imperative for reinforcing and promoting
jobsite safety. However, it is often undermined by the inefciency
andineffectiveness of the process. The authors concluded that the
safety in-spection process is hampered by several drawbacks,
including lack ofstandardized processes and documentation,
restricted access to infor-mation, repetitive data preparation, and
limited availability of safetyspecialists. Among other negative
impacts, these drawbacks preventcurrent practices from generating
consistent and high-quality inspec-tion records and therefore limit
the potential of advanced safety andhealth data analysis.
By analyzing the features of the safety inspection process, its
draw-backs, and available ICT tools, the authors determined a
series of keyICT functions that can improve the safety inspection
process. A two-step user-centered design approach was implemented
to investigatethe requirements of these functions with the goal of
embedding themin an ICT tool for evaluation in the intended area of
application. In therst step, the authors developed and evaluated a
paper prototype. Inthe second step, the research team developed and
evaluated an ICTapplication prototype running on an iPad and
containing most of thekey functions. In particular, this research
carried out user-orientedtesting and feedback solicitation in the
anticipated environment of ap-plication. The use of such a
user-centered design approach positively in-uenced the research
activities and enabled the authors to identifysafety specialists'
needs and practices. The user-centered approachalso enabled the
participating safety specialists to understand the ICTtool's
capabilities and to envision innovative ICT-based procedures forthe
eld.
iSafe, the iPad application developed, can now be accessed
forfree under the evaluation licensing agreement at the University
ofWashington's Safety and Health Advancement through Research
andEducation (SHARE) in Construction Management Lab's website
at
http://cm.be.washington.edu/Research/SHARE.
-
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the nancial support for
thisresearch received from the University of Washington's Royal
ResearchFund. The authors would also like to recognize their
construction indus-try partners from the greater Seattle area.
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A user-centered information and communication technology (ICT)
tool to improve safety inspections1. Introduction2. Background: The
safety inspection process2.1. Information and communication
technology tools for safety inspections2.2. Key functions of
information and communication technology
3. Methodology3.1. Informed design of the template3.2. Mock-up
violation scenarios and evaluation questionnaire3.3. Interim
evaluation3.4. Expert evaluation3.5. Application prototype
development3.6. Field evaluation
4. Discussions5. ConclusionAcknowledgmentsReferences