Safety Practices in Railway Civil Engineering Construction Project

Abstract

The construction industry is known globally as one of the most dangerous industries due to the unique nature of its products and its array and network of stakeholders.  Thus, the purpose of this study is to assess the safety practices,to identify factors influencing safety practices in Lagos/Ibadan railway civil engineering projects.  The study made use of a survey research design.  Study population comprised the construction professionals and the artisans (non- professionals) on site.  The respondents were selected using a convenience sampling technique, due to the inability to access a comprehensive list of all the workers on the project.  Two hundred and seventy copies of questionnaires were distributed and two hundred and one retrieved comprising forty-eight construction professionals and one hundred and fifty-three non-professionals,thus giving a response rate of 74%.  Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS), version 21 was used to generate results using descriptive statistical tools such as frequency, percentage, and mean.  The findings showed that the government’s permissive and passive attitude towards employers who ignore health and safety laws, ignorance, long working hours per day/ enormous workload and stress were the factors influencing safety practices.  Major safety practices inherent in the railway project were the proper display of safety/caution signs, incident reporting and investigation (near-miss) and engaging resident safety manager.  In conclusion, the permissive and passive attitude of the government to employers who ignore safety laws, ignorance, and stress are the major factors that influence safety practices, while the display of signboards/caution signs, incident reporting and investigation, and engaging resident safety managers are identified as major safety practices available on the project.  The paper recommends that the federal government of Nigeria should be more active in ensuring that employers (CCECC/CRCC) adhere to health and safety laws.  To reduce stress and the effect of long working hours per-day/ enormous workload CCECC can introduce finish-and-go work or adhere strictly to 8hours per day, but disregard overtime and night work.