Developing Safety Climate Indicators in a Construction Working Environment
Publication: Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction
Volume 22, Issue 4
Abstract
Safety climate has been widely used as a leading indicator of safety performance across multiple high-risk industries, including construction. Despite extensive efforts to measure the safety climate on construction projects, few tools incorporate environmental factors to address construction-industry-specific or project-site-specific indicators. This research focused on identifying the context-specific construction indicators that affect safety climate on construction sites. A literature review was used to develop the framework of safety climate environmental factors of construction sites. Then two focus-group discussions with 17 safety experts were conducted to identify and validate the safety climate factors and indicators specific to the construction context. The results reveal a framework of dynamic and environmental safety climate indicators that could influence on-site safety and be captured through safety climate survey methods. Twenty-five environmental safety climate indicators, across four categories of environmental safety topics not addressed by currently used safety climate tools, were identified by the focus-group discussions. These indicators address the dynamic environment of construction sites and the unique concerns emerging from evolving trade interactions. The results serve to advance the value and application of safety climate assessments to improve proactive approaches for identifying and mitigating safety risks specific to the construction industry.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the industry experts who participated in this research. In addition, the funding for this work was provided through the Partnership for Achieving Construction Excellence.
References
Abdelhamid, T., and Everett, J. (2000). “Identifying root causes of construction accidents.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., ), 52–60.
Beus, J., Payne, S., Bergman, M., and Arthur, W. Jr., (2010). “Safety climate and injuries: An examination of theoretical and empirical relationships.” J. Appl. Psychol., 95(4), 713–727.
BLS (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). (2014). “National census of fatal occupational injuries in 2013.” Washington, DC.
Carter, G., and Smith, S. (2006). “Safety hazard identification on construction projects.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., ), 197–205.
Chen, Q., and Jin, R. (2013). “Multilevel safety culture and climate survey for assessing new safety program.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 805–817.
Chen, Q., Jin, R., and Soboyejo, A. (2013). “Understanding a contractor’s regional variations in safety performance.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 641–653.
Chi, S., Han, S., and Kim, D. (2013). “Relationship between unsafe working conditions and workers’ behavior and impact of working conditions on injury severity in U.S. construction industry.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 826–838.
Choudhry, R., Fang, D., and Lingard, H. (2009). “Measuring safety climate of a construction company.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 890–899.
Christian, M., Bradley, J., Wallace, J., and Burke, M. (2009). “Workplace safety: A meta-analysis of the roles of person and situation factors.” J. Appl. Psychol., 94(5), 1103–1127.
Ciavarelli, A. (2003). Organizational risk assessment: The role of safety culture, NASA-Ames Research Center, Human Performance Laboratory, Moffett Field, CA.
Clarke, S. (2006). “The relationship between safety climate and safety performance: A meta-analytic review.” J. Occup. Health Psychol., 11(4), 315–327.
Cooper, M. (2000). “Towards a model of safety culture.” Saf. Sci., 36(2), 111–136.
Flin, R., Mearns, K., O’Connor, R., and Bryden, R. (2000). “Measuring safety climate: Identifying the common features.” Saf. Sci., 34(Feb), 177–192.
Fredericks, T., Abudayyeh, O., Choi, S., Wiersma, M., and Charles, M. (2005). “Occupational injuries and fatalities in the roofing contracting industry.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., ), 1233–1240.
Geller, S. (1997). The psychology of safety: How to improve behaviors and attitudes on the job, CRC, Boca Raton, FL.
Glendon, A., and Litherland, D. (2001). “Safety climate factors, group differences and safety behaviour in road construction.” Saf. Sci., 39(3), 157–188.
Guldenmund, F. (2007). “The use of questionnaires in safety culture research-an evaluation.” Saf. Sci., 45(6), 723–743.
Hallowell, M., Hinze, J., Baud, K., and Wehle, A. (2013). “Proactive construction safety control: Measuring, monitoring, and responding to safety leading indicators.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 04013010.
Hinze, J., Huang, X., and Terry, L. (2005). “The nature of struck-by accidents.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., ), 262–268.
Hinze, J., Pedersen, C., and Fredley, J. (1998). “Identifying root causes of construction injuries.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., ), 67–71.
Hobday, M. (1998). “Product complexity, innovation and industrial organisation.” Res. Policy, 26(6), 689–710.
Jannadi, O., and Almishari, S. (2003). “Risk assessment in construction.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., ), 492–500.
Krueger, R. A., and Casey, M. A. (2009). Focus groups: A practical guide for applied research, Sage, Los Angeles.
Lingard, H., Cooke, T., and Blismas, N. (2010). “Properties of group safety climate in construction: The development and evaluation of typology.” Constr. Manage. Econ., 28(10), 1099–1112.
Lingard, H., and Rowlinson, S. (2005). Occupational health and safety in construction project management, Spon, New York.
Luo, X., Li, H., Huang, T., and Skitmore, M. (2016). “Quantifying hazard exposure using real-time location data of construction workforce and equipment.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 04016031.
Mitropoulos, P., Cupido, G., and Namboodiri, M. (2009). “Cognitive approach to construction safety: Task demand-capability model.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 881–889.
Mohamed, S. (2002). “Safety climate in construction site environments.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., ), 375–384.
Morgan, D., Krueger, R. A., Scannell, A. U., and King, J. A. (1998). Focus group kit, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Niu, M., Leicht, R., and Rowlinson, S. (2016). “Overview and analysis of safety climate studies in the construction industry.” Construction Research Congress, ASCE, Reston, VA.
Rozenfeld, O., Sacks, R., Rosenfeld, Y., and Baum, H. (2010). “Construction job safety analysis.” Saf. Sci., 48(4), 491–498.
Sanvido, V. (1988). “Conceptual construction process model.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., ), 294–310.
Scharf, T., et al. (2001). “Toward a typology of dynamic and hazardous work environments.” Hum. Ecol. Risk Assess., 7(7), 1827–1841.
Singer, S., Meterko, M., Baker, L., Gaba, D., Falwell, A., and Rosen, A. (2007). “Workforce perceptions of hospital safety culture: Development and validation of the patient safety climate in healthcare organizations survey.” Health Ser. Res., 42(5), 1999–2021.
Sparer, E., Murphy, L., Taylor, K., and Dennerlein, J. (2013). “Correlation between safety climate and contractor safety assessment programs in construction.” Am. J. Ind. Med., 56(12), 1463–1472.
Timlin-Scalera, R., Ponterotto, J., Blumberg, F., and Jackson, M. (2003). “A grounded theory study of help-seeking behaviors among white male high school students.” J. Couns. Psychol., 50(3), 339–350.
Zohar, D. (2002). “Safety climate: Conceptual and measurement issues.” Handbook of occupational health psychology, J. Quick, L. Tetrick, and L. Levi, eds., American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 2, 2017
Accepted: Apr 24, 2017
Published online: Jul 25, 2017
Published in print: Nov 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Dec 25, 2017
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.