An Analysis of Construction Worker Safety during Building Decommissioning and Deconstruction Tanyel Bulbul, PhD 430C Bishop-Favrao Hall, Department of Building Construction, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA 24061. Phone: (540) 231-5017; E-mail:
[email protected] An Analysis of Construction Worker Safety during Building Decommissioning and Deconstruction Abstract: This paper reports the initial findings from our pilot research on understanding construction worker safety issues in building end-of-lifecycle operations specifically decommissioning and deconstruction. Although deconstruction is more environmentally friendly than demolition, it is more labor intensive and it requires more careful planning for critical health and safety issues. The data for this study comes from four buildings surrounding the World Trade Center. The buildings were damaged after September 11 and needed to come down. Keywords: building deconstruction, worker safety, building decommissioning 1. Introduction A building’s end-of-lifecycle operations include various activities from decommissioning and remodeling to deconstruction and demolition. According to the United States Energy Information Administration (US EIA) 74% of all commercial buildings in the US are built before 1990 and 17% built before 1945 (CBECS, 2003). Similarly, 76% of all the housing units are built before 1990 and 19% is built before 1950 (RECS, 2005). Since the US building stock is relatively old, demolition or deconstruction of buildings to open space for new construction or, building renovation for new purposes have a significant impact on the construction industry. For example, in 2006, residential and commercial building renovation activities cost 36% ($438 billion) of the all building construction activities ($1.22 trillion) (DOE, 2006). Building end-of-lifecycle operations also cause the construction industry to produce one of the largest shares of waste in the US.