KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER OF SAFETY CRITICAL INFORMATION BY THE INTERNET

Poor management and dissemination of existing safety knowledge threaten the UK construction industry. Skill shortages and the retirement of the ‘baby boom’ workforce are leaving companies no alternative other than reliance on young less experienced engineers. This paper demonstrates how and to what degree safety critical knowledge can be transferred to the IT and internet literate new generation. A project overview of a case based reasoning (CBR) safety tool as developed by the University of Edinburgh is presented. The tool aids classification of work tasks then searches a database to retrieve a selection of control measures / hazard mitigations that have been used in similar past work tasks. The CBR tool has been populated with data from infrastructure construction and maintenance tasks. The role of online surveys in past research is highlighted and a case study using online volunteers is presented. Volunteers with a range of engineering experience were asked to read a ‘real life ’ method statement from a construction project and assign control measures with the aid of the CBR tool. Results and overall trends of the case study show what degree safety critical knowledge was successfully transferred. Lastly, the use of internet and CBR collaboration is argued for the purpose of education and training of engineers in the Construction Industry