Causes of accidents and evaluation of safety system in Northern Iraq construction projects

Abstract

Construction work involves some of the most complex operational actions, where many activities require to be carried out at the same time and place. The nature of this type of work, subsequently, makes it an extremely hazardous environment for workers. By constructing sophisticated and intelligent safety systems to make construction work and sites safer, and bypasses any unforeseen costs caused by accidents that can occur during the construction work.  To construct such systems, it is required to know the causes behind accidents. So that, to improve the overall safety performance, there is a need to investigate the causes of construction accidents and to evaluate the current safety systems used to give a picture of the weak points in systems currently adopted. The awareness of these things can be used in formulating safer working environments for construction work. This paper identifies the causes of the accident and evaluates the present safety systems in different construction projects in Northern Iraq. The study has been conducted by reviewing literature from articles and books, plus applied quantitative approaches to collect data by applying a questionnaire survey prepared for this study to collect data from the sites’ users. The results of the current study show that the overall evaluation of the safety system is in poor condition, also found that there are many causes behind accidents. The most severe cause is considering safety as a second priority, and the study classified the causes into, unsafe actions and unsafe conditions.