Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Safety Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/safety Preventing falls: Choosing compatible Fall Protection Supplementary Devices (FPSD) for bridge maintenance work using virtual prototyping Carlos M. Zuluaga ⁎ , Alex Albert North Carolina State University, Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, 2501 Stinson Drive, Raleigh, NC 27607, United States ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Bridges Guardrails Fall protection Safety management Construction safety 3D modeling ABSTRACT Apart from struck-by safety incidents, fall-related injuries are a major concern in bridge maintenance work. To protect against falls from bridge decks, maintenance workers largely rely on existing bridge guardrails. However, a large number of bridge guardrails do not comply with the regulatory height requirement of 42 ± 3 in. for sufficient fall protection – although appropriate for vehicular traffic. To address this fall protection issue, a few departments of transportation (DOTs) have adopted Fall Protection Supplementary Devices (FPSDs). These devices are temporarily installed on existing bridge guardrails to sufficiently increase the barrier height while work is performed on bridge decks. However, not all FPSDs are compatible with every bridge guardrail. Therefore, to provide sufficient protection, DOT decision makers are tasked with identifying FPSDs that are compatible for each guardrail application. This generally has involved physically installing FPSDs and assessing compatibility on a trial-and-error basis. The use of such inefficient techniques have resulted in significant errors, wasted resources, productivity losses, and an increased likelihood of struck-by safety incidents. To address this issue, the objective of this study is to propose an efficient, cost-effective, and safe approach to assessing com- patibility using virtual prototyping methods. In addition, to illustrate the use of the proposed method, a case example of the compatibility testing between two bridge guardrails in North Carolina and three separate FPSDs is presented. It is expected that the proposed method will provide a useful mechanism for DOTs to select suitable FPSDs to protect their workforce. 1. Introduction Workers involved in the construction and maintenance of trans- portation infrastructure such as highways and bridges are highly sus- ceptible to occupational injuries. Estimates reveal that over 20,000 transportation workers are injured every year during work (Federal Highway Administration, 2015). Apart from struck-by safety incidents (∼35%), transportation workers suffer a disproportionate number of fall-related injuries (∼20%) (Lincoln and Fosbroke, 2010). This is especially true among bridge maintenance workers who spend ex- tensive time working at heights. For example, more than 80% of fall- related fatal incidents occur when work is performed on bridge decks (Pegula, 2013). Apart from the emotional and physical distress, these injuries result in substantial injury cost and economic loss (Zou and Sunindijo, 2015). To prevent fall injuries while working on decks, bridge workers have traditionally relied on existing bridge guardrails as a safety bar- rier. However, a large number of bridge guardrails in the United States – designed based on the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) standards – do not provide suffi- cient protection as required by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). More specifically, most bridge guardrails do not provide the regulatory barrier height requirement of 42 ± 3 in. above the working level for sufficient fall protection. To address this issue, some departments of transportation (DOTs) have begun to install Fall Protection Supplementary Devices (FPSDs) to temporarily increase the barrier height while work is performed on bridge decks. However, a significant challenge experienced by DOTs is that a large number of manufactured FPSD systems are not compatible – or do not firmly attach to all bridge guardrails. Therefore, DOTs are often tasked with evaluating the compatibility of individual FPSDs with specific bridge guardrails prior to initiating work. This has traditionally been achieved by procuring potential FPSD systems and physically testing its compatibility with specific guardrails. Unfortunately, the manual trial-and-error based approach is ex- tremely tedious, ineffective, and uneconomical. For example, the pro- cess requires the transportation and installation of FPSD systems to assess compatibility prior to initiating work. In many cases, when the http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2017.08.006 Received 22 February 2017; Accepted 3 August 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: cmzuluag@ncsu.edu (C.M. Zuluaga), alex_albert@ncsu.edu (A. Albert). Safety Science xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0925-7535/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Zuluaga, C.M., Safety Science (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2017.08.006