Health and safety improvement through industrial revolution 4.0 : Malaysian construction industry case

Abstract

Safety on construction sites is now a top priority for the construction industry all around the world. Construction labor is often seen as hazardous, putting employees at risk of serious accidents and diseases. The use of Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0 advanced technologies such as robotics and automation, building information modelling (BIM), augmented reality and virtualization, and wireless monitoring and sensors are seen to be an effective way to improve the health and safety of construction workers at the job site, as well as to ensure construction safety management in general. The main aim of this research was to analyze the IR-4.0-related technologies for improving the health and safety problems in the construction industry of Malaysia by utilizing the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique. IR-4.0-related technologies show great potential in addressing the construction industry’s existing health and safety problems from the perspective of civil engineering practitioners and industry experts. This research adopted the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) for quantitative analysis of data collected through the survey questionnaire approach. The findings of the study indicate that from matrix multiplication, the highest importance among the criteria and the alternatives was for BIM with a score of 0.3855, followed by wireless monitoring and sensors (0.3509). This research suggests that building information modelling (BIM) and integrated systems had the greatest potential as advanced technology and should be prioritized when it comes to introducing it to the construction industry to improve the current health and safety performances.