Towards a procedure to manage safety on construction sites of rockfall protective measures

Construction sites represent ones of the most dangerous workplaces, due to the huge number of hazards related to the performed activities that can cause discomfort, health diseases, and even death to workers. These issues might be even more amplified in construction sites of structures aiming at preventing or protecting against natural hazards. Among these lasts, rockfall represents one of the most unpredictable and dangerous. In these sites, the inherent added hazard is represented by the occurrence of the event against which the protection is required to be installed, i.e. the detachment of a rock block. As in the other situations, workers might be aware of the danger to which they are subjected and all the possible measures to mitigate the risk should be implemented. To address these issues and increase safety of workers, this paper proposes a quantitative risk assessment method to compute the probability of death of workers due to the occurrence of a rockfall event in the considered work duration. In addition, preliminary suggestions to improve safety of workers are delineated.