International Labour Organisation (ILO) (2012) has made a statistic about the global health and safety performance of construction industry. The ILO has made an estimation which there is at least 60,000 fatal accidents a year on construction site around the world. That is one in every six work-related fatal accidents occur on a construction site. Besides that, there is more than 40% of work-related deaths occur on construction sites despite the sector only employing between 6% and 10% of total employment in industrial countries (International Labour Organization, 2012).
Construction industry contributes high rate of accident because of many factors, such as construction workers always work with potentially dangerous equipment and tools during a clutter of building material and so on. Hazards and exposures change daily and safety responsibilities not always clearly defined and hence, achieving a safe working environment on a construction site is a critical measure of the success of any construction project.
Risk management in the context of health and safety at construction site considered as an excellence in construction site in order to greatly minimise the accident rate in construction site. Nowadays, most of the construction project will implement risk management in their project in order to identify and eliminate the risk and keep the accident rate as low as possible. Accident is an unwanted and unexpected event which will lead to damage and harm on people or properties. Without implementing risk management into the construction project, the organisation will have the difficulty in indentifying the opportunities and threats.
Risk management is a process of planning, identifying, assessing, controlling and monitoring different kind of risks. Besides, risk management consists of five (5) key steps which are (1) establishment of the context, (2) risk identification, (3) risk analysis, (4) risk evaluation and (5) risk control. The five key steps of risk management should be included when dealing with risks in order to implement the process in the project efficiently. Besides that, Communication and Consultation, and Monitor and Review are the two important concepts and will be implemented to every step of risk management.
I have gained some valuable experience related to risk management during my industrial training and I have learned that there are several management theories involved in the current practices of risk management in the context of health and safety in construction site. The management theories that involved in the current practices of risk management have make the risk management system become the best and most excellence technique to indentify the risks or hazards in order to decrease the accident rate in construction site.
Establishment of the context of risk management
This is the very first step to implement an effective risk management in a construction project. I have completed my final year project in the second year of my Advanced Diploma which the title is accommodating the health and safety aspects in risk management in construction site. The current practices of health and safety risk management had been learned by me through the interview session with Safety and Health Officer (SHO) of two companies which made me opine that risk management is an excellence in construction industry.
In this step, bureaucratic management style had been implemented by the organisations in order to make sure that all the health and safety rules and regulations have been comply by the organisations. Bureaucracy management theory has been developed by a German sociologist, Max Weber (1864-1924). Cole (2004) states the distinguishing features of a bureaucracy were a definition of roles within a hierarchy, where employee appointed on merit, were subject to rules and were expected to behave impartially.
In the current practices of establishment of the context of risk management, the government have set a