Occupational health and safety improvement throughout knowledge management

Occupational health and safety is still a critical problem for the European countries, especially in the construction field, where the size of the companies and the danger of most of the activities make the yet strict regulations not sufficient to sensibly reduce accidents. Knowledge Management (KM) has certainly an important role in increasing company know-how and improving the knowledge updating and sharing processes; this characteristic proved to be very effective in supporting an Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) management system implementation. On these considerations, the study aims at collecting and classifying all safety requisites and particular problems for the construction sector and provides a specific knowledge management tool. In the first part of the research, the appropriate risk assessment and risk prevention procedures for a construction company OHS management system have been outlined; according to these results, a knowledge management software have been developed to support workers training and technical education.