6,032 Fatal Accident Cases Become a Pre-Work Risk Check Tool

Accident cases have become searchable material

The Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency (한국산업안전보건공단), Korea’s public workplace-safety agency, compiled and released 6,032 serious accident cases that occurred from 2016 to 2023. Construction accounts for 3,459 cases, while manufacturing and other industries account for the remaining 2,573. More than half are therefore relevant to small construction and equipment-installation businesses.

The material includes the industry, an outline of the accident, the objects and equipment involved, work situations that could lead to death or serious injury, the conditions and actions that contributed to the accident, and examples of risk-reduction measures. It is less like a news report that only describes an outcome and more like material for finding what to check before work begins.

The important change is that this is not limited to downloading an Excel file. After applying to use the Public Data Portal (공공데이터포털), Korea’s government open-data platform, another web service can search and retrieve the cases it needs. Development applications are automatically approved and free of charge. The development account shows an available traffic limit of 1,000, so before launching a live service, check the required number of API calls and the approval conditions for an operating account.

The query service is marked as updating in real time. By contrast, the downloadable Excel file is one-off material provided from time to time. A service that repeatedly shows current content is therefore better suited to the query service.

The material is reference material for prevention and education, and some details may differ from the actual accident situation. The downloadable file carries attribution and no-derivatives conditions, while the query service is marked as having no usage-permission restrictions. If you plan to summarize, re-edit, or sell the original content, it is safer to obtain written confirmation from the agency about what is permitted.

A morning changes for a 12-person installation team

Consider a first user: the owner of a window-installation business with 12 employees. The owner moves between multiple sites and oversees window transport, lifting, and work at height, but may not be able to employ a dedicated safety staff member.

The current situation can also become a concrete hypothesis to test in customer interviews. The owner copies the work instruction received the day before onto a paper checklist, writes the morning briefing again in a group chat, and stores corrective-action photos separately. Even after entering the same job name two or three times, it is not connected to similar past fatal accidents. It can also be difficult to find out later whether issues such as slippery floors or missing guardrails were actually resolved.

In a new tool, the owner chooses only the industry, today’s task, and the work location on the first screen. The service searches and retrieves cases from the agency’s query service, then shows similar accidents and risk factors with the original source. The owner selects only the items that apply to today’s site.

Selected risks become a pre-work checklist. For example, checks such as installing guardrails, inspecting lifting equipment, and controlling access to the work area can be assigned an owner and deadline. Site photos and completion status are kept in one place. Unresolved items do not disappear just because they were submitted; they remain at the top of the owner’s screen.

Human judgment still remains necessary. Public cases cannot identify today’s floor condition or equipment defects, and a person responsible who knows the site must decide whether a measure is sufficient and whether work can begin. The service must not claim to determine the cause of an accident or legal liability.

The first potential payers are owners of window-installation, electrical, and equipment-installation businesses with 10 to 20 workers who manage pre-work paperwork themselves. Rather than charging workers, the owner could pay for the team. If an external safety manager handles several businesses, that manager could also be tested as a bundled payer.

There is no need to find the first ten businesses nationwide. Start by testing an access route through specialist contractors working across two or three sites for one main contractor, or ten businesses managed by one external safety manager. First check whether they are getting by with paper, document files, and group chats. Then use the tool for three recurring jobs over two weeks and see whether corrective actions are recorded through completion and whether they are willing to pay.

Outside Korea, customers pay for connecting records to action

Discount Drainage, a plumbing and civil-construction contractor in New Zealand, moved the paper safety forms used by eight employees to mobile checklists in Site App Pro. It combined multiple-choice selections, voice input, site guidance, and accident and hazard alerts in one place. In the vendor’s case study, participation in safety activities was reported to have increased to three times its previous level.

The starting point in this case was not a large safety-management system. It began with moving what eight people wrote on paper to mobile phones and sharing accident and hazard alerts in real time between the field and the office. The participation figure is self-reported in a vendor customer case study, so it should not be treated as evidence of fewer accidents.

In the United States, DiSabatino Construction adopted Safesite while 70 employees operated 10 to 15 sites. It assigned site managers weekly records of hazards and observations, daily checklists, and a weekly toolbox meeting, while tracking photos and unresolved items together.

Four months after adoption, the safety team saved four hours per week. This is also a figure from a vendor customer case study, but it shows that customers may pay less for case search itself than for closing overlooked actions and viewing multiple sites at once.

An Australian field study found no evidence that a short pre-work checklist completed on paper or a mobile phone alone improved work planning or accident risk. A Korean service should therefore not stop at checklist submission. It needs to continue through risk identification, assignment of a responsible person, corrective-action photos, and confirmation of completion.

Four small things to build now

1. Find accidents that resemble today’s work

• A service that shows relevant original fatal-accident cases and risks to check when a user selects an industry and job name.
• It is for owners of 10- to 20-person window-installation, electrical, and equipment-installation teams without dedicated safety staff.
• It has become easier to build now because users can retrieve only the needed cases through the query service instead of reading all 6,032 cases themselves.
• Put three fields for today’s task, location, and equipment, plus a button to view similar accidents, on the first screen.

2. A photo-based risk-action inbox

• A service that attaches job type and risk markers to site photos, then keeps the responsible person, deadline, and completion photo together.
• It is for external safety managers or site managers who oversee several small construction teams at once.
• Risk factors and risk-reduction measures from the agency’s cases can be linked beside each photo record in the original wording.
• Put unaddressed photos, items due today, and items needing completion confirmation in that order on the first screen.

3. A morning safety-training library by industry

• A service that selects an original accident case and three questions for today’s work, runs a five-minute morning training session, and keeps attendance records.
• It is for supervisors of interior, plumbing, and electrical construction teams whose work changes every day.
• The 3,459 construction cases from the past eight years can become training material organized by industry and hazardous situation.
• Use one start button on the first screen: select today’s work, then move to the original accident case, check questions, and attendance signatures.

4. A repeat-notification tool for managing ten businesses

• A service that sends a risk notice set once to several contractor businesses, then collects read status, action requests, and completion status.
• It is for external safety managers or main-contractor site safety staff responsible for around ten specialist contractors.
• With the query service, users can link the original searched case rather than copying the same accident text every time.
• Show only unconfirmed notices and overdue actions by business first.

Why this matters where you are

Korea’s conditions here are specific: a public workplace-safety agency has released accident cases through an API, with stated update and usage conditions. In your market, check whether comparable incident data is searchable, how it can be reused, and whether small construction teams already document corrective actions across paper, files, and group chats. The transferable product question is whether a record can be carried through to an assigned and verified action.

Open one company’s real documents today

Sit down with one owner of a window-installation or equipment-installation business for 30 minutes and review a recent pre-work checklist and corrective-action photos. If they are copying the same work details more than once, cannot immediately find unresolved items, and say they would test the tool on the next site and decide whether to pay, the first product is worth building. If they only say it sounds useful but cannot name a test site or the person who decides on payment, they are not yet the first customer.