Factors Influencing Fire Safety on Building Construction Sites: A Fire Officer’s Perspective
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 147, Issue 10
Abstract
Fire safety on building construction sites as an important part of on-site safety management has rarely been studied for construction sites. To fill the knowledge gap, this research was conducted to identify important influencing factors on fire safety on construction sites, as well as their relationships, through a questionnaire administered to 1,492 fire officers in South Korea. The authors divided the questions into three factors (building, fire, and human) to distinguish factors affecting construction site fire safety. For the majority of the factors, there was high agreement on the importance level of factors affecting fire safety during construction between administrative and field firefighters. However, perception disparity did exist. The authors identified the interrelationships between factors through path analysis and structural equation modeling. The paths of factors showed the highest direct relation between building and fire factors, and the human factor played a mediator role between human and fire factors. The study contributes to the overall body of knowledge by providing officers’ insights into the factors contributing to fire safety on construction sites, as well as the quantification of the interrelationship among the factors, which will serve as the basis to develop effective safety measures, such as policies and regulations at both the project level and industry level, to address fire safety on construction sites. The SEM model developed in this study can also be used as a base model for future related studies.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or codes that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 147 • Issue 10 • October 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 13, 2021
Accepted: May 10, 2021
Published online: Jul 26, 2021
Published in print: Oct 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Dec 26, 2021
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