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International research overflows with studies looking into the causes of construction accidents. Hundreds of studies by postgraduate students in the past 20 years focus on identifying and assessing risks contributing to accidents on Greek construction workplace sites. Many base their work on results from questionnaire surveys that collect the opinions of construction site professionals or on the analysis of data from actual accident records or statistics. Consequently, this study seeks to determine if the data source leads to differing conclusions by using two techniques to synthesize individual results and rank the accident-contributing factors investigated in the original studies. The first utilizes their relative importance index (RII) values, and the second uses their overall ranking index (ORI) to execute meta-analyses. The professional opinion concludes that factors related to operative behavior are the most significant accident-contributing factors. At the same time, actual accident statistics point to site risk factors of the construction process itself as the most important, indicating that expert opinion of Greek professionals should be considered in conjunction with data from actual accident records to provide the focus points for mitigation and assurance of safe construction sites in Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  In the present study a new classification method for the assessment of ease of excavation of rock masses is proposed, based on the Geological Strength Index and the point load strength of the intact rock. The data originate from excavation sites in Greece in sedimentary and metamorphic rock masses. A wide variety of rock structures were considered, ranging from blocky to disintegrated, and different excavation methods have been used (blasting, hydraulic breaking, ripping and digging). The proposed method cannot be applied to heterogeneous rock masses and soft rocks/hard soils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]