Prevention of construction falls by organizational intervention

Abstract

Objectives: Determine if a university based (third party) intervention can improve construction contractor organizational performance to increase use of fall prevention practices and technologies.

Setting: Falls are the leading cause of worker injury and death in the construction industry. Equipment and practices that can prevent falls are often not used appropriately in the dynamic construction work environment.

Methods: A contractual partnership between a university and construction contractors created management systems to ensure use of fall protection measures. Audits by university faculty provided accountability for implementing the fall prevention system. Evaluation was conducted by quasiexperimental methodology comparing changes in audit score from baseline to fifth quarter from baseline for intervention and control contractors.

Results: Audit scores improvement was greater for intervention than for control contractor group.

Conclusion: A third party intervention can improve contractor fall prevention performance.