Analysis of accidents in shift work in container terminals in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Being one of the most competitive industries in globally, the port industry requires high efficiency rate at all levels of operation. In such circumstances, container terminals play a leading role. The competition among container terminals demands a high productivity and mainly it is achieved by increasing the efficiency of labor force. As a result, shift work has been functioning in container terminals at all levels of operation. However, it has been founded that shift work has a negative impact on health and safety of employees. It affects the accident frequency in work places. Therefore this study focuses on finding the impact of shift work on accidents in container terminals in Sri Lanka. At first, a comprehensive literature review was carried out to investigate the knowledge on the research area. Consequently, occupational health and safety management at work places, container terminal operation, prevailing hazards in terminals, shift work and effects of shift work for the accident frequency in different work places were reviewed. A mixed approach was adopted to capture quantitative and qualitative data for this study. Therefore, quantitative data was collected from AIR (Accident Investigation Report) data base of ABC container terminal for a period of five years from 2012 to 2016 and expert interview survey was carried out in order to capture the qualitative data. Finally, the quantitative data was analyzed using statistical techniques while qualitative data was analyzed via logical reasoning to identify relationships between accidents, activities relevant to accidents, impacts, severity, causes of accidents and work groups and further to investigate the relationship between shift work and accident frequency. Research findings asserted that, there is an effect of shift work on accidents in container terminals. But it was unable to quantify the effect using available data. However, there is a potential to do a further study on workers, who have been identified to be responsible for high accident frequency.