Reducing Falls from Heights through BIM: A Dedicated System for Visualizing Safety Standards

Abstract

Falls from height (FFH) are common safety hazards on construction sites causing monetary and human loss. Accordingly, ensuring safety at heights is a prerequisite for implementing a strong safety culture in the construction industry. However, despite multiple safety management systems, FFH are still rising, indicating that compliance with safety standards and rules remains low or neglected. Building information modelling (BIM) is used in this study to develop a safety clauses visualization system using Autodesk Revit’s application programming interface (API). The prototype digitally stores and views clauses of safety standards, such as the Operational Health and Safety Rules 2022 and Introduction to Health and Safety in Construction by NEBOSH 2008, in the BIM environment. This facilitates the safety manager’s ability to ensure that the precautionary measures needed to work at different heights are observed. The developed prototype underwent a focus group evaluation involving nine experts to assess its effectiveness in preventing FFH. It successfully created a comprehensive safety clause library that allows safety managers to provide relevant safety equipment to workers before work execution. It also enhances the awareness of construction workers of all safety requirements vis-à-vis heights. Moreover, it creates a database of safety standards that can be viewed and expanded in future by adding more safety standards to ensure wider applicability.