Simultaneous assessment of health, safety, and environmental risks using William Fine and FMEA methods based on OHSAS 18001: 2007 standard in the Alborz tunnel, Iran

• Published in: Geomechanik und Tunnelbau 2023-02, Vol.16 (1), p.103-113
• Main Authors: Zahed, Mohammad Ali, Seidi, Fouad, Salehi, Samira, Pardakhti, Amirarsellon
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Drilling; Druckstollen; Eisenbahntunnel; Environmental risk; Evaluation; Failure analysis; Failure modes; FMEA; Health hazards; HSE; Identification; Industrial safety; International standards; Low level; Methods; Occupational health; Occupational safety; potential risks; Pressure tunnels; Railway tunnels; Risk; Risk assessment; Safety; Tunnel construction; Tunnels; William Fine
• ISSN: 1865-7362; 1865-7389
• DOI: 10.1002/geot.202100093

In this study, the critical risks and their effects on each other for the Alborz tunnel construction project, which is known as the longest road tunnel in the Middle East, have been evaluated on a case‐by‐case basis. In addition to covering all safety hazards in important tunnel drilling operations using the failure modes and effect analysis (FMEA) method, which is one of the risk assessment methods for operations and has been widely used in manufacturing, drilling, and tunneling industries, health hazards that affect employees and can cause a variety of job diseases have been studied and in order to identify, evaluate, and quantify the results, the William Fine method has been implemented. Also, all the risks have been identified and evaluated within the framework of OHSAS 18001 standard which was presented in 1999 due to the lack of an international standard regarding occupational health and safety and its last revision was done in 2007. Based on the research results, according to FMEA method, a total of 46 critical risks, 26 very high risks, 22 high risks, 8 medium risks, 34 low risks, 29 very low risks, and 8 insignificant risks in the field of safety have been identified and evaluated. In the field of job health, 165 high‐level risks, 28 medium‐level risks, and 57 low‐level risks were assessed and finally in the environmental field, 7 high‐level risks and 1 risk for each of the intermediate and low level have been inferred.