Occupational health and safety in construction industry in Pakistan using modified-SIRA method

•Identification of the critical hazards in construction industry.•Prioritization the most critical and harmful criteria and alternatives, for the environment, society and economy.•Provide the policy recommendations to the construction industry and government of Pakistan.•Proposal of a new multicriteria methodology Modified-SIRA. For any industry, Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is a business strategy to foster a safe and healthy work environment. In the developed countries, the companies are focusing on the workplace safety in order to reduce the harmful results i.e. harmful impacts on the human health, environment, economy, productivity, society and reputation of a company. On the other hand, the construction industry (CI) in developing countries like Pakistan are not properly focusing on the OHS because of the high cost of personal protective equipment (PPE), safety trainings and activities. The objective of this research paper is to identify the critical hazards, its causes and consequences and to prioritize the most critical and harmful criteria and alternatives. For this purpose, a method called Modified-Safety Improve Risk Assessment (Modified-SIRA) was used. Within the Modified-SIRA, the criteria and alternatives are prioritized based on Risk Priority Number (RPN) and MCDM methodology called Fuzzy-TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution), respectively. The results of RPN shows that most of the accidents in CI of Pakistan occurs due to the deficiency of PPEs followed by Electrocution due to electrical equipment, improper way of using the available PPE and falling of personnel from elevated platforms. Similarly, the results of Fuzzy-TOPSIS shows that chemical and fire hazards are the most responsible for the accidents in CI of Pakistan.