(1312) TEACHING OCCUPATIONAL RISK PREVENTION FOR UNDERGRADUATE COURSES IN CIVIL ENGINEERING

摘要

Due to the high accident ratio in the construction industry, teaching occupational risk prevention is akey issue in any university degree focused on building and civil engineering works. The School of CivilEngineering (Universitat Politecnica de Valencia) teaches the Bachelor Degree in Public WorksEngineering. In this program, there is a specific course entitled Occupational Risk Prevention inConstruction in the second academic year (spring semester). At that time (second academic year),students are not mature enough to approach this subject in a traditional way; furthermore, they stilllack some basic concepts on construction technology and methods. Therefore, the main goal of theteachers is to motivate the students, so prevention is ranked in their minds at the same level asproduction, management or quality. Other learning objectives of this course are to get familiar with thelegal regulations and the specific terminology of occupational risk prevention. In order to meet theseobjectives, the students are encouraged to do different practical works. One of them is theidentification of occupational risks at the construction site; every team has to choose a different oneaccording to a set of predetermined requirements, analyze the site and provide justifiedrecommendations for improvement. Another exercise deals with the selection of a real event, revealedin the public media; the students have to investigate the incident, analyze it, and propose themeasures that could have avoided it. Thus, through the study and analysis of real-life examples,students gain a greater awareness of the importance of risk prevention in the Spanish constructionindustry.