Construction Safety - Good News or Bad

August 22nd, 2008 by Hal

Beware of headlines. ENR reports: Fatalities Fell in 2007, Labor Dept. Reports. The story leads by telling us construction deaths were down 5% in 2007. Shall we celebrate? I think not. Have a look:

Fatalities	Construction*	Other Industry
2007	1,178 (p)	3,778 (p)
2006	1,239	4,081
2005	1,192	4,022
2004	1,234	3,995
2003	1,131	3,912
p: Preliminary Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, * as reported by ENR

You don't have to be a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt to see that the latest results are consistent with the expected results. The mean for the five years is 1,195 deaths and the standard deviation is 44. The latest year is within 1 standard deviation of the mean. A more accurate headline might read
No Change in Construction Fatalities. But the situation is worse than the headline suggests.

ENR goes on to report that construction deaths on commercial building contruction is up in the last year. They also report that the fatal-injury rate in construction is 10.3 in 100,000 workers…one of the worst for all industries.

The balance of private industry was also stalled for the prior four years, although fatalities decreased by more than 7% in 2007. That's something to celebrate. Why? Because the mean is 3,958 and the standard deviation is 117. The change was almost 2 standard deviations from the mean. It's not a trend, but the result is less likely than the so-called improvement in construction deaths.

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One Response to “Construction Safety - Good News or Bad”

Bob Wells Says:
August 23rd, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Nice catch Hal.

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