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By Akeem Aderibigbe
The article is intended to focus in details the hidden and unnoticed effectiveness of the digital technology in eliminating or preventing the so called Occupational Health and Safety related workplace accident and incident including the less focus area of occupational illnesses and diseases that take a long time before impacting workers’ wellness and wellbeing. One of the objectives of this article is to connect independent fields of studies such as Occupational Health and Safety, Human Factor Methods, Ethnography, Psychology, Sociology and other related fields in a methodological and empirical ways in managing an organization’s employees’ attitudes , tampers and behaviors when confronted with OHS work stress / challenges. There will be leverage on digital technologies although not cheap and not available in all cases to have a real time observation of workers at critical points including alarm system connected to break the trend that normally lead to accident while some intrinsic characteristics of such workers such as heart beat and confusion level can be monitored and tested and recorded for future analysis and advocacy for more effective control measures’ introduction / advocacy as well as risk prevention / mitigation as the case may be.
In fact, as an International expert / professionals in Health and Safety, I have reviewed reports of accident / incident investigation of critical accidents where work equipment led to hand amputation of the work equipment operator, work equipment collision with a worker that was standing near work equipment in operation and during lifting operations – case of a mobile crane dropping / ejecting a micro tunneling tunneling boring machine (TBM) of over 100 tons in weight into the micro tunneling pit / shaft luckily no worker was inside the pit etc.
This article’s interest and questions as far as the status of Health and Safety application / monitoring and assessment as well as regulatory framework in Nigeria and other African countries alike include:
1. Would the degree of safety factor or factor of safety in the growing application of ICT, high tech and emerging digital / robotic technology in oil and gas, medicine and aviation’s adoption in built environment / construction industry prevent accidents? For instance, technology has made medicine intervention in cases of cancer treatment promising and has been eliminating / minimizing the pains of the patients as well as the control room and flight data recorder impacting aviation positively and limiting aviation accident.
2. Is it reasonably practicable to optimize the application of ICT, high tech, and robotic technology in work equipment to the extent of making construction sites having intrinsically safe? For example, accident like amputation of operator’s hand by a moving conveyor was difficult to understand as the operator was confirmed to have all required training and why the work equipment – a paving machine at this age of emerging technology did not trip off when the operator hand was nearing the rotating part?
3. Are the equipment manufacturers doing enough other than pasting and posting safety warning signs near hazardous parts of work equipment?
4. Why not work equipment ‘s operators have monitoring cameras inside the cabins as well as alarm / warning system and workers have wrist bands powered with sensors that will indicate that they were standing at unsafe position or blind spot of work equipment especially incidents that have to do with equipment collision with the worker?
5. Why a control room for construction projects like aviation and oil and gas projects are not being regulated and mandated to have OptiTrack , CCTV cameras and installed
6.The call here is urgent and deliberate on the need /call that the government/regulator of health and safety at work of every country become more proactive in passing regulations that mandate workplace to embrace / incorporate in the regulations application of high tech and digital technology in requirements for work equipment manufacturers and all stakeholders in construction sites project implementation owing to the unquantifiable / inherent benefits of modern technologies in life saving at workplace.
AKEEM ADERIBIGBECMIOSH, CSP, IDipNEBOSH, Professional Member ASSP, EurOSHM
