Abhisek Behera
Industrial safety Engineering
June 2025
Thermal power plant construction contains some of the highest risk activities that bring severe safety issues, such as working at height, hot work, entry into confined spaces, and crane operations. The traditional safety measures still result in accidents and near misses since the conventional safety measures are reactive in nature. This paper aims at exploring the use of systematic safety engineering tools, namely Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (HIRA) matrix, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to identify, determine and rank hazards and control measures in thermal power plant construction projects. The results indicate that chimney erection is associated with the extreme risk of height-related falls, boiler erection presents considerable risk of gas leaks and equipment operation, and generator erection presents workers with the risk of fire, burns, and incidents involving cranes. Most of the high and extreme risks were successfully mitigated to moderate or low by the application of structured control strategies, as well as, the use of multi-criteria decision-making tools. The study is a databased, predictive model of enhancing occupational safety, assuring compliance, and instilling a culture of prevention in risky industrial construction worksites.
176- 192
© Airo Journals 2021
