Health And Safety Management In Building Construction Site
[A CASE STUDY OF IMO STATE]

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Health and safety is an important issue in construction works. A building construction site is a construction site where major construction activities take place, requiring the issue of health and safety to be taken into serious considerations. Hazards on building construction sites need to be defined and eliminated through effective health and safety measures.

Hazards as one of the characteristics nature of work on a construction site raises the issue of health and safety on building construction site as one of the numerous problems facing the building industry in Imo State. This problem may have directly or indirectly or negatively affected both human and material resources and may have also brought about perpetual agony and hardship to various families that are victimized by fatal industrial hazards.

Health, as defined by oxford dictionary of current English is the state of being free from illness or injury; a person’s mental or physical condition.

Webster’s dictionary of English language puts it that health is the state of fitness of the body or mind, it is the general condition of the body or mind with reference soundness and vigor.

Safety as defined by the Oxford dictionary of current English is the condition of being safe While Webster’s encyclopedia dictionary of English language defined “Safety” as the condition of being safe from risk or danger. It is the quality of averting or not causing injury, danger or loss.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Most building construction workers are exposed to some hazards through enormous power tools, falling of construction materials, defective scaffolding and electrical defaults. The building construction sites in Imo State harbor a greater number of quacks and unformed labourers and contractors who do not care about the health, safety and welfare of their workers. Moreover, these contractors are not registered with the government and the contractors registering body. These groups of contractors only seek for their own individual welfare and they are abound mostly in rural areas of Imo State and go mostly for minor building works whose contracts are most cases initiated orally. These quack contractors are predominantly, illiterates but comprise experienced operators who are retired to retrench in the civil service construction firms and their apprentices.

According to Eze (1990) to affect the health and safety measures on building construction sites, the associated hazards must be recognized and monitored with the view to adopting adequate and satisfactory protection measures to safeguard the lives of workers.

Accidents that occur during construction and demolition activities result in injury, mostly to employees on site. Accidents can occur even before works begin during survey and investigatory phase of a project and after works have been completed, because of faulty design or construction causing death or injury to those engaged on maintenance work and to members of the public.

1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The major aim of this project research is to critically examine and report on measures to be adopted to ensure that health and safety are regularly and adequately maintained on building construction sites in Imo State. The efforts of management staff in giving instruction to subordinates and setting down rules which should be monitored for strict compliance on the part of construction firms and operatives on building construction sites to be improved in Imo State.

1.3.1 OBJECTIVES

1. To assess the awareness of construction personnel on safety provisions in the various contract forms and regulations used in Imo State.

2. To determine the problems facing health and safety on the construction site in Nigeria.

3. To assess the level of implementation of the of health and safety regulations in construction industry.

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This study will be of immense importance to the construction companies in not only Imo State but other states as well and in Nigeria as a whole. This is because the study will open their eyes to the various measures that can be used to ascertain the various causes of hazards, their effects and solutions to their when it occurs on the building construction sites.

This project will help to reduce the bad reputation and perception of Nigeria construction industry, mostly in Imo State in particular as a result of shoddy performance during project execution and repair.

The health and safety of workers on construction sites in Imo State has to be monitored form time to time during construction to minimize or prevent injuries to persons during constructions processes.

The study will be significant to students who might wish to use it as a basis for further research. It will serve as a spring board form which further research might take-off. The data already gathered and documented in this project will serve as a source of information to students.