1.Introduction

1.1 Background

Safety signs and symbols are widely used for ensuring safety of employees in construction and other industries that involve risk of accident that can be damaging for health and safety of employees. The diverse safety signs are being used which convey different messages to personnel working with equipment (Zhou, Goh and Li, 2015). Regardless of this active reliance of safety messages and symbols, still there are chances of accidents if employees do not clearly understand those messages. Misinterpretation of safety messages has been considered as one an important issue for declining the effectiveness of safety signs in reduction of accident rate (Chan and Chan, 2011).

The prior studies on construction industry have highlighted that there lies an untested assumption that warning signs and symbols are equally understandable by people who have different background and have different language and culture (Tam et al., 2003). However, this assumption does not seem to be true and it is misleading. Given this view, proper education about safety warnings is required for reduction of accident rates (Chan, Chen and Chan, 2010). Along with this, selection of right safety symbol, signal word and colour of safety sign is also an important perspective for enhancing the effectiveness of safety warnings for reduction of health and safety risk in construction industry (Arphorn et al., 2003).

 1.2 Research Aim and Objectives

The main aim of this research is to investigate the association of safety signs and symbol recognition with prevention of accidents in construction industry of Australia.

The study will focus on achieving following key objectives;

• To focus on approaches of accident prevention for ensuring health and safety of employees in construction industry.
• To investigate the linkage of safety signs with accident prevention in construction industry of Australia.
• To investigate the association of safety symbol recognition with prevention of accidents in construction industry of Australia.
• To investigate the extent to which signal word and colour of safety warning can contribute to prevention of accidents in construction industry of Australia.

1.3 Research Questions

The research will seek the answers for following research questions.

• How rate of accident can be reduced in construction industry of Australia?

• To what extent safety signs and symbols can lower the accident rate in construction industry of Australia?
• To what extent proper signal word and colour of safety sign can contribute in prevention of accidents in construction industry of Australia?

1.4 Research Problem

Safety signs and symbols are mainly used as tools for ensuring the health and safety of employees at workplaces. Due to increasing accident rate in construction industry of Australia, current research will explore that how recognition of specific safety signs can draw attention of workers to health and safety hazards. The research is based on the notion that when employees are aware of the hazards around them and take the necessary precautions, the possibility of an injury, illness or other loss is minimized. It will draw attention of practitioners to the fact that in order to protect workers from health and safety issues at construction sites, they must be educated about different safety signs and symbols.

1.5 Project Structure

The research project will be structured in five sections. First section will be based on introduction of background information of research and it will also address aim and objectives of research. Along with this, research questions will also be extended in this section and significance of research will be mentioned. The second section will address relevant literature on the topic and it will highlight theoretical foundation of research issue. Third section will address research methodology, including population and sample selection, data collection and data analysis approach. Fourth section will analyse main findings of the research. Finally, discussion section will address findings of research in the light of relevant literature and it will also offer guidance for future researchers based on limitations of study. Implication of research findings for practice and theory will be presented in this section.

2.Case of Australian Construction Industry and theoretical Views

Occupational Health and Safety is related with protection of workers from the risk of injury, death and illness. Health and safety of employees is the responsibility of bu