Statistical Results on Incidents for Formwork Safety in Concrete Structures: Fid-Bau Portal

Statistical Results on Incidents for Formwork Safety in Concrete Structures

Haduong, Alan / Kim, Joseph J. / Balali, Vahid

Formwork construction often poses significant threats to workers’ safety because of its temporary nature. Formwork collapses during concrete construction causes injuries, loss of life, property damage, and construction delays. Due to the varied nature of formwork construction, accidents may be a result of several different causes, yet companies need specific areas to focus upon to most effectively improve their safety records. A comprehensive analytical study on these types of accidents would greatly benefit companies that utilize formwork and other temporary structures. Thus, this paper presents statistical analysis results on accident data regarding formwork construction to address whether safety in modern formwork construction is still a problem and what are the main causes to the injuries and fatalities during formwork construction. 435 incidents were obtained from 1984 to 2016 from occupational safety and health administration accident case reports. The data was analyzed to examine causes using ANOVA and Gabriel’s multiple comparisons. Based on the statistical results, the accidents caused by either formwork design or the failure to properly install formwork per design were statistically significant causes for injuries. For fatalities, the statistically significant cause was the failure to properly install formwork as specified in the designs. While these finding contribute to the body of knowledge from the research perspective, companies that utilize formwork or temporary structures could see immense benefits from this analysis, as it could be used to generate the necessary tools and practices to mitigate onsite accidents.