Safety coordination of clashing activities with Total Float allocation for the Covered Market of Forli case study

Construction Industry is a high hazard industry, therefore occupational health and safety investments can provide large benefits. The 92/57/EEC Directive on temporary or mobile construction sites aims at preventing safety risks by the implementation of the Health and Safety Plan (HSP). Construction Scheduling is a key component of the HSP, as indicates the sequence of construction activities and related safety provisions, including the installation of scaffoldings and other protective equipment. Organizational or system safety can be also tackled by the construction schedule as it can be used to detect and mitigate safety risks interactions among overlapping activities, i.e. time-space safety clashes between activities. Time-space overlapping activities can create new hazards for construction operations, as hazards can be transferred from an activity to another contemporary one, because of space overlapping or proximity. Critical Path Method and corresponding software applications, are most used tools to develop a construction project schedule and perform project control. As the project schedule is the basis for project control, construction schedules are also the basic tools for detecting safety organizational issues of construction activities. Time- space clashes can be avoided by activity sequencing and time shifts of overlapping activities. Therefore, they can be avoided by application of CPM network scheduling and Total Float usage. Total Float is the maximum admissible delay of a sub-critical activity without delaying project total duration. As known, critical activities do not have total float as any delay will be transferred to a delay in project completion. Delaying sub – critical activities to avoid time-space conflicts allows project manager of avoiding interference hazards without affecting project efficiency. The proposed approach was tested with the data of an actual case study, the renovation project of the Cover Market of Forli.