Investigation into Road Construction Safety Management Techniques

Rwanda is undergoing rapid development in transportation through constructing new roads and upgrading existing ones. During implementation of these projects, many accidents for road workers, road users and environment issues are raised due to unsafe road construction management techniques. This existing problem was carried out within the City of Kigali for three ongoing road construction projects namely road Ruliba-Karama-Nyamirambo, Kigali Urban Road Upgrading Projects of Agatare and the Sonatube-Gahanga-Akagera road, in order to investigate about the road construction safety management techniques. From the findings, 64.28% results showed that the maintaining of health and safety policy in the road construction sites is applied and there exist different means of maintaining safety, such as the provision of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) to the workers at the level of 57.14% as per the project managers; but from the field observations, it is alarming, and many workers do not wear as required. It was also found that 50% of accidents occurring in excavation works among all work performed during road construction are due to lack of adequate safety measures. The paper indicated that 85.71% of the concerned workers do conduct training and induction in their road safety construction sites, but on the other hand the level of accidents due to lack of safety recorded in the road construction sites is still high at the level of 78.57%. The mostly affected are unskilled laborers and this observation begs the question about the training and induction of workers in road safety and its effectiveness of on the concerned workers. The paper suggests some different safety measures to apply for providing safe road working environment according to the standard and gives some key recommendations for Rwanda.


Introduction
The importance of providing safe workplace has been reiterated by various related studies because of the intrinsic hazard and risk factors that undoubtedly underlie every work situation and their negative impact on a company's overall performance [1].
The safety of road-workers is a high priority for occupational health and road safety authorities and, especially, for the workers themselves and the organizations which employ and represent them. There are substantial risks involved in undertaking road construction in close proximity to moving traffic, and compromises between traffic flow, acceptable risk exposure levels, and equipment and resource levels associated with such tasks [2].
Construction safety involves defined safety procedure that is related to the construction industry or construction sites and aims to ensure that a construction site or the industry as a whole is not the cause of immediate danger to the public around a construction site, or the workers at a construction site, as well as making sure that the finished product of construction meets required safety standards.
In Rwanda, specifically in the City of Kigali, there is a need of improving transportation routes through constructing and upgrading roads. During road construction, safety management is needed in order to reduce injuries and fatalities on construction sites, but in some road construction projects, safety is not being used as it has been highlighted in Figure 1 and Figure 2.
That is why an investigation to safety management techniques was conducted in order to have a better understanding to the prevailing situation on some selected works for Nyarugenge sector (Agatare) infrastructure upgrading, road construction of Ruliba-Karama-Nyamirambo and Road construction of Sonatube-Gahanga-Akagera in the City of Kigali.

Materials and Method
One of the most crucial factors in road construction site is the safety of road users and the construction workers as well as working environment. This paper main objective was to investigate the safety management techniques, issues, problems and compared to the standard ones as per the Indian Standard [3] and specifically assess the existing safety measures being used in Rwandan road construction industry, look at the reason behind the negligence of safety measures in some road construction projects and highlight the benefits of achieving safety measures to the public.

Description of the Study Area for Roads
The study was conducted on three ongoing road construction projects within the City of Kigali by that time named Ruliba-Karama-Nyamirambo (6.9 km); Agatare Road of Kigali urban roads upgrading projects (5 km) and Sonatube-Gahanga-Akagera road of (13.8 km).

Research Design, Population and Sampling
The study was a descriptive survey as the method of gathering information by administering a questionnaire for selected samples [4]. The descriptive survey study was used because it was best favorable to answer the "why" and "what" research questions in the study.
A stratified sampling method was used to dispatch hundreds of copies for assessing how the workers and users are dealing with the road construction environment. In addition to that from field observation the following information were noted down including the use of Personal protective equipment (PPE), use and availability of road temporary signs during construction works.

Data Collection Techniques and Analysis Procedure
Data collected from questionnaires were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively and data from field observations were noted down systematically. After field work, some of the data collected were edited, matched to the questions and organized basing on responses.

Secondary Data Findings
Referring to the Rwandan guidelines [

Discussion
As per the findings 64.28% of the results showed that that concerned construction companies maintain health and safety policy in their road construction sites and stated that different means of maintaining safety, are provided at the level of 57.14% to the workers. Figure 3 stated about the Population Structure about data collection on three selected sites. Figure 4 gives a pictorial understanding about the health and safety management systems found on visited construction sites and the health and safety system is at the level of 64% described as interesting. Figure 5 proposes some measures that could be implemented in order to deal with health and safety management effectively on construction sites as per the respondent views.  Figure 10 from the field observations. In addition to that, the secondary data suggest that during compaction operator must have a hard hat (helmet), ear plugs, work gloves and steel -toed safety boots and as shown in Figure 11 an operator has only the safety boots but from the field observations is quite different. Figure 12 illustrates the field situation of the lack of adequate signs to warn about parked machines and equipment on road construction site and exposes the danger about non-covered and protected manholes.
The safety measures of the road construction projects were found to be very weak due to the fact that most of 50% of accidents occur in excavation works among all work performed during road construction due to negligence.

Conclusions
It is clear that Rwanda has guidelines to be followed during road construction

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.