How can BIM help in improving the health and safety of workers while working on-site construction?

Earlier conditions of the construction industry were that it recorded many accidents on-site of the workers and did not have any safety measures to prevent hazardous incidents. As the construction industry is counted as more prone to accidents on-site and needs to implement new technologies to make the life of workers bit safe.

Due to the advent of BIM Services technology, it has provided many benefits to the construction industry to resolve the issue of safety of on-site worker construction with statistics. Construction managers and other professionals need to prepare measures to avoid any dangerous situations for their team workers.

Deaths or injuries are not rare in the construction industry that happens every year. The scope of BIM in health and safety measures is extensive, and it can be used in many stages such as safety planning, design for safety, training and educating the worker, investigate in accidents and maintenance safety purposes.

Issues of Health and Safety in Construction

There are lots of issues happening in the construction industry, which can delay the project by not implementing proper safety measures.

• More than 20,000 people around the globe are killed on the construction site as per the International Labour Organization and noting one death every 10 minutes. (Source: – http://www.ilo.org/global/lang–en/index.htm).
• More than three fatal workplaces have accidents taken place at the construction site, accounting over a rough estimation of 15% workplace deaths.
• Falls at the construction site is one primary reason for losing life while working on-site.
• Fall protection is violation standards and not precisely made to prevent falls at work site.

How does BIM play a vital role in taking health and safety measures?

BIM Services creates a virtual model of a construction project before the actual construction begins to reduce uncertainty, work issues, and analyze the potential impact. Virtual BIM Model helps to visualize the information from the construction site and legislation and valuable in a health and safety context. Construction companies use different BIM software packages that create safety points based on planning and BIM-based site layout.

Improving safety measures is the core benefit of the virtual 3D BIM Model. It displays wrong contacts and intersections such as structural frame and other building services such as HVAC Ducts, pipers, or wires. In the early design stage, it will help to depict clashes or conflicts and prevent them at the construction time. Clashes or conflicts in a 3D model are automatically checked in which, to great extent change orders and errors are reduced at design and shop drawing levels.

Health and safety measures are to be taken at every level, such as identifying issues at planning, opting for construction materials, and selecting design processes. All the design parameters are transparent, which stimulates BIM Health and Safety assessment in design processes. By this, we get to know how the building after completion is managed.

BIM Model and data used for the project development can be looked for any accident investigation and failure in a construction process. It can stimulate, examine, and test the construction process to reduce or avoid the risk of accident or injury that is well communicated to team members.

The implementation of safety in BIM is done in two phases:

Safety Tracking: – BIM can host the data of safety tracking of all the objects, crews, and construction processes. Complex situations access data such as working space accidents of the workers, congestions of the working area, machinery, and material issues that are captured by technologies through sensors and tags. All the information or data collected is used for monitoring safety models in BIM Coordination Services.

Constructing Safety Models: – Design model information or data is accurately collected which can be used for safety plans in BIM design and tools. Computational methods aid to create safety algorithms, dynamic plans are created to control safety aspects such as resolving space conflicts, identifying hazards on-site, etc.  All data can be used for designing models and dynamic safety plan in the future.

Smarter Risk Prediction: – Applying BIM in the early design stage can provide measures for safety. Safety by design concept can avoid any bottlenecks from the beginning. For instance, installing chimney on the roof can be done from inside rather than outside to prevent workers from fall.

Hazard Stimulation: – Construction process can be stimulated and made safer by adding great value to the construction site. Virtual navigation around the site to detect issues and prevent them. Different dangerous situations can be tested to implement safety strategy for making guidelines for workers.

Big Data Management: – Due to the amount of data available, it can make the construction project disruptive. If the construction data cannot be processed leads to make the whole project disturbing. A concern in processing the data is safety where big data management is carried out to prepare safety plans. By this method, the right information reaches out to the right people to make accurate decision-making.

Project Safety Awareness: – BIM can provide awareness of the hazards occurring around a construction project. Relevant data with information flow between different construction parties allows for effective monitoring of the project’s progress. It identifies numerous dangers of on-site and aids in better coordination and project planning.

Astute accident investigation: – Regardless of the safety measures taken but working in the construction industry can always be dangerous to which BIM can be the effective way of looking into the situations. All the project related information will be accessible to avoid any mistakes that led to an accident.

Conclusion

Construction Industry is more prone to get accidents and falls while working on-site. Precautions are taken but not adequately and still reports for worker’s death every year. With the advent of BIM process, it can stimulate to have a virtual tour at the design stage so that the safety design concept can apply in the project modeling.

BIM helps to stimulate designing model based on safety plans and measures taken for the workers through constant inspection done by automated model. BIM empowers safety and is good enough for the future of the construction industry.