Concrete slump project report
The purpose of the project was to undertake an initial scoping exercise to gather information and make recommendations in relation to the manual tasks hazards associated with the commercial construction industry's current use of a default slump value of 80 mm during concreting activities.
There are a number of manual tasks associated with the workability of concrete which affect concreting activities. In late 2007 the Concrete Industry Association Queensland (CIAQ) established an industry working party. The purpose of the working party was to instigate an industry change from a default slump value of 80 mm to 100 mm for commercial flat work. This was driven by industry concerns regarding the musculoskeletal injury risks associated with lower slump values.
The higher the slump value, the higher the amount of water therefore, the mixture is more workable and requires less muscular effort to manipulate. The slump test is a method used to determine the consistency of concrete and to check its uniformity from batch to batch.
Concreting involves many high risk manual tasks with a range of risk factors that are predominantly impacted on by design issues.
This technical ergonomics report (PDF, 321 kB) identifies the risk factors associated with concreting tasks and includes information and recommendations targeting the musculoskeletal injury risks associated with the commercial construction industry's current use of a default slump value of 80 mm. The report highlights that to effectively target a reduction in musculoskeletal injury risk associated with concreting tasks, all the manual task risk factors identified are targeted during the construction project's planning and design stages.
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