Exploring the perceived influence of safety management practices on project performance in the construction industry

Although safety management is known to be vital to construction projects, very few studies have solicited views from construction practitioners about their perceptions of which safety management practices (SMPs) are important to construction projects and related to project performance. An empirical study was undertaken in Hong Kong in order to shed more light on this topic. In the study, the importance levels of 15 popular SMPs and five project performance criteria were rated by 232 respondents. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted, and three SMP categories - information, process, and committees - were extracted. Of these three categories, safety management process was perceived by the construction practitioners as being the most important, followed by safety management information and committees. Moreover, the effect of the three SMP categories on a composite project performance variable was tested using hierarchical regression analysis. Results indicate that the “information” and “committees” categories were associated with project performance positively and significantly. One of the major conclusions of the study is that the construction industry has paid relatively less attention to safety management committees, which were empirically analyzed as having a strong perceived impact on project performance. In order to improve project performance, construction companies should promote the criticality of safety management committees.     

Does company size matter? Validation of an integrative model of safety behavior across small and large construction companies

Introduction: Previous safety climate studies primarily focused on either large construction companies or the construction industry as a whole, while little is known about whether company size has significant effects on workers' understanding of safety climate measures and relationships between safety climate factors and safety behavior. Thus, this study aims to: (a) test the measurement equivalence (ME) of a safety climate measure across workers from small and large companies; (b) investigate if company size alters the causal structure of the integrative model developed by Guo, Yiu, and González (2016). Method: Data were collected from 253 construction workers in New Zealand using a safety climate measure. This study used multi-group confirmatory factor analyses (MCFA) to test the measurement equivalence of the safety climate measure and structure invariance of the integrative model. Results: Results indicate that workers from small and large companies understood the safety climate measure in a similar manner. In addition, it was suggested that company size does not change the causal structure and mediational processes of the integrative model. Conclusions: Both measurement equivalence of the safety climate measure and structural invariance of the integrative model were supported by this study. Practical applications: Findings of this study provided strong support for a meaningful use of the safety climate measure across construction companies in different sizes. Safety behavior promotion strategies designed based on the integrative model may be well suited for both large and small companies.     

Change in frontline supervisors’ safety leadership practices after participating in a leadership training program: Does company size matter?

Introduction: The majority of construction companies are small businesses and small business often lack the resources needed to ensure that their supervisors have the safety leadership skills to build and maintain a strong jobsite safety climate. The Foundations for Safety Leadership (FSL) training program was designed to provide frontline leaders in all sized companies with safety leadership skills. This paper examines the impact of the FSL training by size of business. Methods: Leaders, defined as foremen or other frontline supervisors, from small, medium, and large construction companies were recruited to participate in a study to evaluate the degree to which the FSL changed their understanding and use of the leadership skills, safety practices and crew reporting of safety-related conditions. We used linear mixed modeling methods to analyze pre-post training survey data. Results: Prior to the training, leaders from small and medium sized companies reported using safety leadership skills less frequently than those from large ones. After the training, regardless of business size, we observed that the FSL training improved leaders understanding of safety leadership skills from immediately before to immediately after the training. Additionally, leaders reported greater use of safety leadership skills, safety practices, and crew reporting of safety-related conditions from before to two-weeks after the training. However, those from small and medium sized companies reported the greatest improvement in their use of safety leadership skills. Conclusions: The FSL training improves safety leadership outcomes regardless of the size company for which the leader worked. However, the FSL may be even more effective at improving the safety leadership skills of leaders working for smaller sized construction companies or those with lower baseline levels of safety leadership skills. Practical applications: The majority of construction companies employ a small number of employees and therefore may not have the resources to provide their frontline leaders with the leadership training they need to be effective leaders who can create a strong jobsite safety climate. The Foundations for Safety Leadership (FSL) training can help fill this gap.     

建筑施工企业建立OSHMS安全管理绩效分析

在对24家建筑施工企业安全管理绩效的系统调查的基础上,从通过职业安全健康管理体系认证企业建立之前与之后的纵向对比以及未建立、正在建立及已通过认证企业之间的横向对比,分析探讨了其差异产生的原因,表明建立职业安全健康管理体系有利于提高建筑施工企业安全管理绩效及管理水平     

基于《施工企业安全生产评价标准》的水利水电施工工程项目重大危险源评价

水利水电施工工程项目重大危险源不同于其他危险化学品等行业重大危险源的评价.施工工程项目的安全性和可靠性既取决于施工工程各单元的危险性,还与施工现场安全管理和施工企业安全生产能力有关.目前,我国尚缺乏水利水电施工工程项目重大危险源的评价标准,为了研究水利水电施工工程项目重大危险源的评价,采用作业条件危险性分析方法,对施工工程的危险性进行评价,然后根据行业标准《施工企业安全生产评价标准》( JGJ/T 77-2010)的取值方法和权重标准对施工企业安全生产综合能力进行评价,使用企业安全生产综合能力评价因子作为管理抵消因子,最终确定施工工程重大危险源.结合某水利水电工程项目的实际,进行了应用分析,结果表明,该方法能比较准确、客观地描述施工类工程项目的重大危险源评价.     

石化企业安全文化建设

随着国企改制的不断深化,安全管理显现出许多薄弱环节,尤其是在能源勘探开发过程中发生的重特大事故,不断给安全生产发出了黄牌警告.近年来,多种因素导致员工"三违",造成恶性事故不断,其原因是由于企业缺乏安全文化氛围和员工缺乏必要的自我安全保护意识,盲目蛮干导致事故高发.因此,加强企业安全文化建设是提高全员安全意识的一种行之有效的方法,并可以进一步促进和提高员工的自我安全保护意识和安全技术素质.本文阐述了企业安全文化建设在新形势下的重要意义,并针对石化企业开展安全文化建设提出几点建议.     

Managing safety in hydropower projects in emerging markets – Experiences in developing from a reactive to a proactive approach

International companies investing in emerging markets need to address the management of safety under varying conditions. The paper presents an evaluation of the approaches taken by an international hydropower company in two different construction projects, one in India and one in the Philippines. In the first project, the company had to intervene as a reaction to poor safety and overall performance. Based on previous experiences, the company selected a proactive approach in the second project, involving use of the contracting process to ensure adequate conditions from the start of construction and onwards. The paper accounts for the safety performance results in the two projects and interprets them in relationship to external and internal influencing factors in the respective project. It is concluded that a proactive approach has the potential of delivering satisfactory safety results at moderate costs for follow-up. A reactive approach risks exposing the company to ethical and reputation risks due to a poor safety performance before the corrective actions have taken full effect. It is also resource demanding. Results demonstrate the feasibility of turning around a project’s safety performance also when preconditions are challenging.     

Understanding “communication gaps” among personnel in high-risk workplaces from a dialogical perspective

Our primary aim in this paper is to argue for a discourse analytical take on questions of how risk and safety are managed by personnel in high-risk workplaces, with a special focus on constructions of “us” and “them”. Thus, we approach the same issue investigated in many other studies, i.e., diverging safety-related understandings between people representing various occupational groups. We choose to examine so-called communication gaps as they are “talked into being” in discourse, meaning that we treat them as primarily socially constructed. A case analysis based on interviews will be used to illustrate how we can understand this phenomenon from a communicative perspective inspired by Linell’s (1998a) dialogue theory. While previous discourse and safety culture research emphasizes broad patterns and differences between entire professions and departments, we argue that researchers should hesitate to reinforce the notion of homogeneous groups. Instead, there is great value in demonstrating collective social construction processes and commonalities so as to facilitate inter-group solidarity and possibly productive change.     

The association between subcontractor safety management programs and worker perceived safety climate in commercial construction projects

Problem: Safety management programs (SMPs) are designed to mitigate risk of workplace injuries and create a safe working climate. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the relationship between contractors’ SMPs and workers’ perceived safety climate and safety behaviors among small and medium-sized construction subcontractors. Methods: Subcontractor SMP scores on 18 organizational and project-level safety items were coded from subcontractors’ written safety programs and interviews. Workers completed surveys to report perceptions of their contractor’s safety climate and the safety behaviors of coworkers, crews, and themselves. The associations between SMP scores and safety climate and behavior scales were examined using Spearman correlation and hierarchical linear regression models (HLM). Results: Among 78 subcontractors working on large commercial construction projects, we found striking differences in SMP scores between small, medium, and large subcontractors (p < 0.001), related to a number of specific safety management practices. We observed only weak relationships between SMP scales and safety climate scores reported by 746 workers of these subcontractors (β = 0.09, p = 0.04 by HLM). We saw no differences in worker reported safety climate and safety behaviors by contractor size. Discussion: SMP only weakly predicted safety climate scales of subcontractors, yet there were large differences in the quality and content of SMPs by size of employers. Summary: Future work should determine the best way to measure safety performance of construction companies and determine the factors that can lead to improved safety performance of construction firms. Practical applications: Our simple assessment of common elements of safety management programs used document review and interviews with knowledgeable representatives. These methods identified specific safety management practices that differed between large and small employers. In order to improve construction safety, it is important to understand how best to measure safety performance in construction companies to gain knowledge for creating safer work environments.     

基于EFQM的高危企业安全绩效评估模型研究

针对我国近年来高危企业恶性事故频发与安全生产水平低下的现状,构建一套安全绩效评估方法与模型,帮助高危企业实现安全绩效的自我评估与改进.通过可持续发展、以人为本、社会道德和融入文化等四个方面,提出借鉴EFQM的高危企业安全绩效评估模型的研究意义.基于模糊聚类分析法与层次分析法归纳安全绩效6项构成要素(领导、人员、资源设施、政策战略、生产过程和事故损失等)及其评估权重指标,并划分5个分级层次;构建基于构成要素之间逻辑关系的安全绩效评估模型结构;最后运用RADAR计分矩阵对安全绩效作出评估.     

基于突变理论的建筑企业安全管理评价研究

为减少建筑安全事故的发生概率,本文构建了建筑企业安全管理评价的指标体系,并将突变理论引入到建筑企业的安全管理评价中,应用该方法对建筑企业的安全管理状况进行了评价.示例表明,该方法合理可行,对保障建筑企业的安全生产具有重要意义.     

Evaluating safety management and culture interventions to improve safety: Effective intervention strategies

The Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment provided subsidy over the period 2004–2008 to a number of companies to introduce changes aimed at reducing accidents by changing their safety culture and aspects of their safety management. As part of the programme a scientific evaluation was set up to assess the effectiveness of the interventions in 17 of the projects, covering 29 companies. Before and after studies were made of the companies, documenting the state of their safety management and risk control efforts and their accident rates before the intervention, the changes made over the study period and the resulting changes in a range of measures aimed at assessing the success of the changes. The analysis led to a categorisation of the projects according to their degree of success.This paper describes the patterns of interventions distinguishing between successful and not successful projects and discusses the mechanisms lying behind them. Interventions bringing about constructive dialogue between shop-floor and line management, providing motivation to line managers and strengthening the monitoring and learning loops in the safety management system (SM) appeared more successful. The amount of energy and creativity injected by top managers and, above all, by the coordinator (safety professional) appeared also to be a distinguishing factor.     

Modeling the effects of production pressure on safety performance in construction projects using system dynamics

Introduction: Construction incidents occur due to system failures, not due to a single factor such as unsafe behavior or condition. Therefore, construction safety should be investigated using a systematic view capable of illustrating the complex nature of incidents. Construction projects are also often behind their planned schedule and suffer from various pressures caused by contractual deadlines or clients. Previous studies demonstrated that such pressures negatively affect safety performance; however, the process of how production pressure influences safety performance is not fully investigated. Method: The present research aimed to understand the feedback mechanism of how production pressure interactively affects safety performance and safety-related managerial components in a construction project. Ground theory method (GTM) is used to create a conceptual causal loop diagram that shows the relationship between incident rate and other variables such as labor hour, actual and planned progress, safety climate, rework, and safety training. Moreover, a power plant construction project was used as a case study to practically investigate the conceptual model; a case study is employed to build a System Dynamics (SD) model. The simulation model was then validated using behavior reproduction and sensitivity analysis. Results: The results of the inequality statistics show that the simulation model can be used to forecast trends in the incident rate.     

Implementation of safety management systems in Hong Kong construction industry – A safety practitioner's perspective

IntroductionIn the 1980s, the safety management system (SMS) was introduced in the construction industry to mitigate against workplaces hazards, reduce the risk of injuries, and minimize property damage. Also, the Factories and Industrial Undertakings (Safety Management) Regulation was introduced on 24 November 1999 in Hong Kong to empower the mandatory implementation of a SMS in certain industries including building construction. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate the effectiveness of the SMS in improving construction safety and identify the factors that influence its implementation in Hong Kong.MethodA review of the current state-of-the-practice helped to establish the critical success factors (CSFs), benefits, and difficulties of implementing the SMS in the construction industry, while structured interviews were used to establish the key factors of the SMS implementation.ResultsResults of the state-of-the-practice review and structured interviews indicated that visible senior commitment, in terms of manpower and cost allocation, and competency of safety manager as key drivers for the SMS implementation. More so, reduced accident rates and accident costs, improved organization framework, and increased safety audit ratings were identified as core benefits of implementing the SMS. Meanwhile, factors such as insufficient resources, tight working schedule, and high labor turnover rate were the key challenges to the effective SMS implementation in Hong Kong.Practical applicationsThe findings of the study were consistent and indicative of the future development of safety management practice and the sustainable safety improvement of Hong Kong construction industry in the long run.     

石油企业生产安全事故致因模型探讨

事故致因理论是企业安全管理工作首要研究的理论问题,是所有安全具体工作背后的理论依据。本文以中国石油天然气集团公司安全管理体系—HSE管理体系为样本,探讨了基于风险管理思想下的石油企业事故成因问题,并得出相对完善的石油企业事故致因模型,可对其它石油企业或其它工贸企业的安全管理工作提供借鉴。     

Assessment of perceived injury risks and priorities among truck drivers and trucking companies in Washington State

Problem

The trucking industry experiences one of the highest work-related injury rates. Little work has been conducted previously in the United States to assess the hazards, needs, and injury prevention priorities in trucking. Method: Two separate industry-wide surveys of 359 trucking companies and 397 commercial truck drivers were conducted in Washington State. Results: Trucking companies and drivers both ranked musculoskeletal and slip, trip, fall injuries as the top two priorities. Controlling heavy lifting, using appropriate equipment, and addressing slippery surfaces were frequently listed as solutions. There appears to be a gap in safety climate perception between workers and employers. However, driver and company priorities agreed with industry workers' compensation claims. There is room for safety program management improvement in the industry. The study findings detail opportunities for prioritizing and reducing injuries. Impact on Industry: This information can be used to focus and design interventions for the prevention of work-related injuries while improving industry competitiveness.