Abstract: In order to prevent and reduce construction accidents, a method combining accidents statistical analysis and the typical accident analysis was put forward to find out the critical causes of construction accidents. Firstly, a construction accident causation system model was built based on system thinking and accident causation theory, which contains six subsystems, 16 factors, and 39 sub-factors. Then the investigation reports of 812 accident cases from 2005 to 2017 in China were collected and causes of them were analyzed and counted. According to that, 39 sub-factors of accident causes were divided into four severity levels: critical, important, secondary, and normal. Finally, a collapse accident of Fengcheng power plant project in Jiangxi Province in 2016 was used as a case study to verify the effectiveness of the model. The results show that workers' wrong actions, inadequate safety inspection and safety engineer's mismanagement are three critical causes of construction accidents, which should be paid more attentions to and controlled.

Key words: building construction, safety accident cause, system thinking, statistical analysis, case study