The Future of Construction: Investigating the Latest Trends & Innovations in Off-Site Construction Solutions for Worker Safety in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

One of the riskiest industries for workers is construction, which has the highest death rate when compared to other industries. With the potential for falls, being struck by things, electrocution, and getting trapped between objects, safety is a major issue for those working in the construction business. Therefore, improving workers safety in controlled environments is a fundamental requirement within the construction industry that is growing in the United Arab Emirates. Although prefabrication and modular construction are now continuing to have increasing trends in the construction industry and have a significant response to increasing the efficiency, nevertheless, it is feared that this new construction approach would bring new threats to worker’s safety or can have its positive effect on safety. Accordingly, this research aims to evaluate the influence introduced by the new prefabrication technology on workers safety within construction sites. A questionnaire was used to gather data from the relevant parties, which included project managers, project engineers, safety engineers, site engineers and workers. The questionnaire was divided into three primary sections: Training & Education, Safety Compliance, and Incident Rates. 106 participants from various construction companies in the United Arab Emirates provided the pertinent data, which was then analyzed using three-way ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) technique to examine the relationship between the three mentioned variables. The gained results showed that the Incident Rates, Safety Compliance, Training & Education were all statistically significant. The interaction between all three variables showed no combined effect on the safety score.