Focus on the fatal-four: Implications for construction hazard recognition

Much effort has been devoted to improving hazard recognition in the construction industry. One such effort is the training outreach program pioneered and promoted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) - commonly known as the Construction Focus Four or the Construction Fatal Four program. This program which is integrated in much of the training efforts offered in the construction industry seeks to promote hazard recognition and management by focusing on the four leading causes of fatal incidents - namely falls, caught-in/between, struck-by, and electrocution (i.e., fatal-four) hazards. Given the emphasis of these hazards in most training efforts, the objective of the current research was to explore if there are any performance disparities among workers in recognizing hazards that fall under the fatal-four and the non-fatal-four hazard categories. To accomplish this research goal, more than 280 workers were recruited from 57 construction workplaces in the United States to participate in a hazard recognition activity. The results of the study reveal that workers fail to recognize a disproportionate number of safety hazards in both the fatal-four and the non-fatal-four hazard categories. However, workers are relatively more proficient in recognizing hazards in the fatal-four hazard category than the non-fatal-four hazard category. More specifically, on average, the participating workers roughly recognized 57% of the fatal-four safety hazards while only recognizing 18% of the non-fatal-four safety hazards. Collectively, these findings suggest that apart from focusing on the fatal-four hazards, training efforts must also focus on the non-fatal-four safety hazards - given the relative poor performance.