Effects of high ambient temperature on construction workers performance: A longitudinal empirical study

The construction industry is known to be of high-risk when compared to other industries. Ambient temperature can also exacerbate this risk, where hot weather conditions can lead to increased physical and mental fatigue, reduced performance, slower reactions and more human errors. Yet this issue is rarely researched objectively. This paper describes a longitudinal empirical study that aimed to assess how high ambient temperatures affect construction workers performance.

A sample of 120 randomly selected workers (age range 22-35 years) from a large construction company in Dubai participated in this study. Since construction workers performance cannot be directly measured due to the nature of work involved, performance of 60 participants was measured on a task battery involving single reaction time and choice reaction time in summer months before starting work and 5.5 h after starting work. Then the same procedure was repeated on 60 workers in winter months. Accident reports for one full year within the same company were also collected and analyzed.

Results show that performance on both tasks before starting work was significantly lower in summer than in winter months possibly due to accumulated fatigue resulting from the high ambient temperature in summer. Results also show that performance on both tasks significantly deteriorated during the first 5.5 h of work to a greater extent in summer months than in winter months. Results also indicate that accidents showed an increasing trend in summer months.

Accumulated fatigue due to high ambient temperature in Summer is thought to cause this drop in performance and increase in accidents.

Based on the findings, recommendations to enhance construction workers performance and reduce accidents are given.