Journal of Construction Engineering, Management & Innovation
2022 5(1):15-27
DOI 10.31462/jcemi.2022.01015027
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Correspondence Gürkan Emre Gürcanlı gurcanlig@itu.edu.tr
eISSN 2630-5771 © 2022 golden light publishing® All rights reserved.
Analysis of workday losses due to falls from scaffoldings in the
construction industry
Kemal Dirgen Tözer
1
, Gürkan Emre Gürcanlı
2
, Zalihe Yarkıner
3
1
Cyprus International University, Civil Engineering Department, Nicosia, North Cyprus
2
Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Civil Engineering Department, İstanbul, Türkiye
3
Cyprus International University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Nicosia, North Cyprus
Article History Abstract
Received
Accepted
03 December 2021
23 February 2022
The study aims to build a model for workday losses due to scaffolding accidents at
construction sites to know information about the worker and the accident, and
subsequently use the model for prediction, process optimization, or process control. The
accident investigations from the archive of the Labour Office were searched and ongoing
construction sites in North Cyprus were visited. Descriptive statistics were used to classify
the full archival and inferential statistics were carried out to construct a statistical model
using multiple linear regression (MLR) analysis to predict future workday losses
furthermore binary logistic regression (BLR) model was carried out to identify whether
the workday loss is considered to be a major workday loss or not. MLR model revealed
that a 4.5-fold increase in workdays lost for each additional 1 meter of fall height and
one year increase in workers’ age will increase the workday losses by 1.3 days.
Additionally, the BLR model concluded that when the age of the victim increased by one
unit, victims are 1.068 times more likely to have a major workday loss, and similarly,
when the height of falling increases by one unit, victims are 1.735 more likely to have a
major workday loss.
Keywords
Workday losses
Scaffolding accidents
Falls from heights
Construction industry
Occupational health and
safety
1. Introduction
Construction operations carry a high risk of
accidents by their nature, and the majority of the
construction activities are classified as dangerous
by experts [1-3]. Furthermore, the construction
workforce is specified as a labor group that has the
highest risk of workplace accidents [4].
In previous studies on accident types in the
construction industry, it has been reported that falls
from heights are the most frequent type of accident
in both fatal and non-fatal cases [5-9]. A study
carried out in North Cyprus [10] examined fatal
accidents and established that 53% of those
fatalities resulted from injuries due to falls from
heights. Another study in North Cyprus by Tözer
et al. [11] established that 40% of accidents
involving falls from heights resulted from wrongly
assembled or misused scaffoldings. Furthermore, it
has been observed that the injuries due to falls from
height on construction sites are more likely to be
fatal, or if they were not fatal, require a longer
recovery period compared to those sustained in
different types of the accident [12, 13].
This study aimed to assess falls from height-
related accident data from archival reports from the
North Cyprus Labour Office and evaluate these