Construction Safety and Occupational Health Education in Egypt, the EU, and US Firms
- 1 Professor and Head of Dept. of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, Cairo University, Egypt
- 2 Associate Professor, School of Engineering, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, USA
- 3 Department Chair, Construction Management Department, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, USA
Abstract
The construction industry has been considered an accident prone industry. Alarming statistics indicate thatthe construction industry accounts for 55,000 fatal injuries each year. That is because construction sites are often filled with potential hazards that can lead to serious injury or death. Responsibility for these injuries may be attributed to a variety of individuals including owners, contractors or subcontractors, engineers, equipment manufacturers, and architects. This mandated a new safety culture to emerge resulting in a decline in the incidence rate of all recordable nonfatal injury and illness for construction workers. This study explores the safety culture encountered in twolarge construction companies in the USA and Egypt, over the last five years. Comparison of the results recorded in both companies was also conducted. The study also investigated the benefits of focusing on the occupational health in the construction field in Egypt and USA. In addition to the literature review, the research methodology used for this study was inspired by the Contextual Design (CD) Methodology. The study indicated thepositive impact of implementing safety programs on significantly reducing the recordable injuries. It also showed the benefits of focusing on occupational health and wellness, training, and education of workers.
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