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Introduction
The construction industry is perceived to be one of the more dangerous industries, which has a poor safety performance record globally. Singapore's construction industry, for only 29 per cent of the total number of industrial workers, accounted for 40 per cent of worksite accidents ([3] Chua and Goh, 2004). Moreover, the latest analysis of worksite accidents by Singapore's Ministry of Manpower revealed that the construction industry recorded the highest accident frequency and severity among all the industries in Singapore ([15] OSHD-MOM, 2006a). Hence, raising safety standards by introducing new laws and frameworks has been a goal, following a series of high profile construction accidents in previous years in Singapore.
The committee of inquiry into the Nicoll Highway collapse recommended that a strict weightage system should form part of the tender evaluation system ([12] Lian, 2005). The weightage system should include non-technical and non-commercial attributes such as safety records and culture of the bidder, and its core or corporate competency. Such a weightage system should apply even if the tenderer is a joint venture or a consortium. It was recommended to clients' project managers to adopt the quality-fee method (QFM) for tender evaluations, departing from the traditional lowest price method ([13] MND, 2005). According to the QFM, tenders are scored based on pre-defined weightings for both price and quality attributes. Quality attributes in a tender include safety management proposal, method statement, resources, programme and innovations. Then, apply a formula approach to combine price scores and quality scores as follows ([2] BCA, 2005):
- the lowest price tender obtains the maximum price-score and the highest quality tender yields the maximum quality-score; and
- the tender with the highest overall score would be selected.
The effective assessment of the safety proposal in a tender is one of the key aspects for project managers to implement the QFM. This study aims at developing a tool to facilitate project managers' task of assessing the safety proposals for building construction projects by means of assessing the potential accident risks given that the proposed safety management system is in place. The objectives of this paper are to:
- identify and explore the factors that lead to accidents in building projects;
- develop a methodology for estimating accident risks in building projects;...