OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY

Gerbang Perintis S/B (GPSB) is a building contractor. In past five years, a lot of accidents happen due to fall related to height. Due to government concerns to enforce safety and health regulation, GPSB recruited a professional safety engineer, Mr. Balvinder Singh who is an accredited safety engineer and an active member of the local safety organization, NIOSH.

Balvinder did a study to solve this problem. He conducted a lot of trainings to educate workers to identify hazards, remove hazards and use PPE. He also has developed a good safe working on roofs and at heights procedure. He trained supervisors on how to use the procedure. In addition, he developed an inspection procedure and form to ensure that safety plan is implemented. Last year, GPSB proudly informed that accident related to fall has been reduced significantly from 20 injuries/200,000 man-hours/year to 1.5.

Due to this success, Balvinder was awarded as the "Safety Man" of the year by NIOSH. A few months later, he was elected as the chairman of the Shah Alam chapter of the association. As a chairman, Balvinder has a lot of assignments -- he has to seriously maintain the members and activities of the association. He has done a lot of contribution such as developing handbooks and guidelines related to Occupational Safety and Health. Of course, this took a lot of his time, and he had to use much of his working time to deal with association matters.

Eight months after he was elected as the chairman, a serious problem happened on one of GPSB's construction sites. Five workers died on the site! They fell from 10^th floor. After investigation, the investigator reported that they were assigned to install a roof steel trust without adequate protection. Balvinder felt guilty about this case because he thought that he had fixed the problem by creating excellent safe work procedure and training, and he was confident that accidents related to fall will never happen to this company again.

Sub-questions:

1. Discuss this accident from at least 2 perspectives (theories) of accident causation - feel free to make reasonable assumptions of your own.
2. What are your recommendations to avoid similar accident in the future?