A Partnership Between Academia and Industry

1. A Partnership Between Academia and Industry Ashleigh, Bussey, Putsman and Townsend Research into Construction Safety

2. Safety is no longer improving Graph from ‘Safety Can’t Be Measured – Townsend, 2013

3. Rationales and Stats • Most safety research world wide is un-triangulated • There have been no ‘designed research’ studies to cross check conclusions • There have either been statistical studies with no supporting rationales, or • Rationales with no supporting statistics

4. Rationales and Stats Examples • Heinrich’s pyramid/Bird’s triangle not followed up – accident ratios do in fact change • Logic diagrams not matched with actual data • Safety regulation has ‘stood the test of time’ • ‘New thinking’ (Dekker, Hollnagel, Hummerdal et alia)

7. The Objectives • To develop new understanding of what causes accidents in construction • To do so with supporting statistical body of evidence • To explain it in language that makes sense to the man in the street

8. Methodologies Borrowed from other disciplines... • Modelling from social/management sciences • Statistical skills from community medicine • Observation and diagnostic skills from medicine

9. Progress to date • Techniques tested with dummy data • Preliminary data being collected • ‘Prelims’ by end Sept

10. Needs Short term... • Anonymous volunteer interviewees • Volunteer reviewers of ‘plain English’ • Understand ‘significance testing’ and ‘confidence limits’ • Understand ‘triangulation’ • Industry funding Medium term... • Access to company databases Long term... • ‘Partial paradigm shift’

11. Lest I forget – without these guys I could not have built projects