Kirsten Jørgensen

Building defects in Danish construction: project characteristics influencing the occurrence of defects at handover

Defects in construction have gained much attention from both the public and academia. Danish construction is no exception and a number of political initiatives have been established to address the unsatisfying amounts of defects. One of the political initiatives, benchmarking, collects and provides information from building projects on defects at handover to clients and on a number of project characteristics. This article utilizes the substantial amount of data from the benchmarking initiative to examine which project characteristics differentiate building projects with none or few cosmetic defects from those with many and/or serious defects. The article reviews the results from studying two quantitative data sets: (I) benchmarking data from 329 building projects and 621 contracts and (II) questionnaire data from an electronic survey comprising 130 contractors. This study provides in-depth knowledge about correlations between project characteristics and the extent of defects measured at handover. Results show statistically significant differences between building projects characterized by no or few defects compared with building projects with many and/or serious defects. Determining characteristics are the planning of budgetary conditions, time schedules and early, continuous quality control. Furthermore, this study also indicates collaboration between stakeholders plus skills and safety initiatives as having a positive influence on the performance measured as defects at handover.

Absence from work due to occupational and non-occupational accidents

Aims: The aim of the present study was to investigate absence from work in Denmark due to occupational and non-occupational accidents. Background: Since the beginning of the last decade, political focus has been placed on the population’s working capacity and the scope of absence due to illness. Absence from work is estimated at between 3% and 6% of working hours in the EU and costs are estimated at approximately 2.5% of GNP. Methods: Victims of accidents treated at two emergency departments were interviewed regarding absence for the injured, the family and others. All answers were linked to the hospital information on the injury, so that it was possible to examine the relation between absence and injury type, and cause of the accident. Results: In total, 1,479 injured persons were interviewed. 36% of these reported absence from work by themselves or others. In mean, an injury caused 3.21 days of absence. Based on this the total absence due to injuries in Denmark was estimated to 1,822,000 workdays, corresponding to approximately 6% of the total absence from work due to all types of illness. Non-occupational injuries resulted in more absence than did occupational injuries. Conclusions: Absence due to accidents contributed to a considerable part of the total absence from work, and non-occupational accidents caused more absence than did occupational accidents.

Demonstration of risk profiling for promoting safety in SMEs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and assess the risks and potential risks that may lead to accidents. It aims to look at how to improve risk assessment within SMEs for the benefit of all staff.Design/methodology/approach – The research included results from a Dutch project which identifies accident risks and safety barriers that are presented in a huge database and risk calculator. The method was first to develop a simple way of accessing this enormous amount of data, second, to develop a tool to observe risks and safety barriers in SMEs and to investigate the usefulness of the developed tools in real life, third, to collect data on risks and safety barriers in SMEs for two occupations by following 20 people for three days each and to create a risk profile for each occupations.Findings – The result is a simple way to go through all types of risks for accidents – a tool for risk observations for external safety experts, and useful for SMEs and for risk profiles for two occupations. Finall...