Project Heatsafe
Categories: Action Line 1: Surveillance and monitoring, Integrated risks, monitoring, early warning, and GHG emissions tracking, Heat and cold
Country: Singapore
The intervention
An intervention study was conducted at an outdoor construction site in Singapore in May 2023. Findings from previous phases of the project, such as physiological and ethnographic profiling of outdoor construction workers, and the survey responses of site managers, were taken into consideration when designing the heat adaptation intervention package. Recommendations by the Singapore Workplace Safety and Health Council (key stakeholder for policy implementation) were also incorporated. The intervention package was designed to be scalable, sustainable and economically viable, and consisted of:
- Heat stress education – to increase supervisors’ and workers’ awareness about heat stress and heat-related injuries through an educational video delivered in workers’ native languages.
- Scheduled breaks – three additional 15-minute rest breaks under shade during the work day.
- Provision of cold water – increased access to cold water points and the use of an insulated bottle sleeve to keep workers’ bottles cold.
- Optimised work attire – provision of a set of work attire with enhanced heat dissipation properties.
- A within-participants crossover design was adopted, with workers participating in both a control (i.e., normal work routine, practices and attire) and an intervention condition, one week apart.
Success factors
While the physiological and perceptual responses of workers were similar between the control and intervention condition, workers in the intervention condition clocked a higher step count (+10%) and step rate (+14%) during the work shift. This suggests a possible increase in work productivity. Findings from the focus group discussions revealed positive perceptions of the intervention and workers were supportive of their implementation. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility and potential benefits of implementing a multi-component heat adaptation intervention package at construction sites in Singapore.
Recommendations
There is definite scope for more research to be conducted to continue the transformative work started in Project HeatSafe,and adapt it to other Southeast Asian countries and occupational workers facing the heat, such as gig workers and factory workers.