Pre‐task planning for construction worker safety and health: Implementation and assessment

Compared to other industry sectors, construction workers experience a disproportionately high rate of occupational injuries and fatalities. As research findings suggest, most of these incidents could be prevented if hazards were proactively recognized and properly addressed. In the construction industry, pre-task planning (PTP) is a preventive process intended to describe each step of work, identify associated safety and health hazards, and recommend controls to eliminate or mitigate the hazards before work begins. Despite its importance, the construction industry lacks comprehensive guidelines to design and implement PTP in a consistent and effective manner. To fill this gap, this study pursued two objectives: (1) identify shortcomings in current PTP practices and explore recommended solutions from practitioners' perspectives and (2) translate research findings into an applied tool to help practitioners assess and improve the quality of their PTP process.