Exploring the perceived influence of safety management practices on project performance in the construction industry
Highlights
► We examine the effect of safety management practices on project performance. ► Safety management committees contribute to project performance significantly. ► Safety management information contributes to project performance significantly. ► Safety management process has no significant relationship with project performance.
Introduction
The construction industry has long been considered to have high injury and fatality rates. For example, the US construction industry has a very high fatality rate of workers (Abudayyeh et al., 2006). In the UK construction industry, reported injuries continue to place the safety issue as a prime concern though fatal accidents were seen to fall recently to around 90 deaths per annum (Cameron and Duff, 2007a). Although the accident rate in the construction industry of Hong Kong is argued to decline in recent years due to improved safety measures, it still remains higher than that of other developed countries (Choudhry et al., 2009). Notably, many of these work-related deaths and injuries are preventable. As Williams (2000) advised, site safety should be enhanced since construction projects have become more complicated in recent times. Construction sites are crowded with workers who undertake numerous high risk duties such as operating at height and outdoors and with heavy machinery and equipment (Tam et al., 2004). Owing to the expected positive correlation between poor safety and injuries (not to mention the escalating costs of injuries), it is crucial to promote safe construction.
Human performance is arguably linked with safety (Bottani et al., 2009). Human errors are one of the major underlying causes of industrial accidents, and are perhaps the core component of various safety problems in high risk facilities (Jacobs and Haber, 1994, Llory, 1992). Hinze’s (1996) Distraction Theory suggests that workers who are distracted by physical hazards or mental diversions are at increased risk of accidents. One school of thought has established the Accident Causation Theory, which pinpoints the importance of error identification (human, site management, project management, or policy errors) in accident prevention (Suraji et al., 2001). Mitropoulos and Cupido (2009) also suggest that production practices can prevent production errors. Therefore, it is believed that safety practices can prevent human errors, thereby reducing the likelihood of accidents if these practices were shaped by the guiding principle and its associated strategies focusing on avoiding construction errors and rework.
The negative impacts of work related accidents call for the necessity to reposition the management role in safety practices. Although accidents caused by the uncertain environment may not be easily avoided, it is however possible to regulate and improve current safety management to safeguard workers from artificial work related hazards by instilling positive employee behavior (e.g., avoidance of premature acts, awareness of safety work) driven by an effective management system (Bottani et al., 2009, Krause, 1993). As Wilson and Koehn (2000) underlined, safety management is a method of manipulating on-site safety policies, procedures, and practices relating to a construction project. It entails a dynamic process accommodating small or large adjustments made to site operations in order for workers to work properly without facing unexpected disruptions to a construction project. Emphasis is placed on how accidents in a project can be reduced by effective safety management (Suraji et al., 2001). If safety performance can be enhanced, companies would benefit through improved performance (Jaselskis et al., 1996).
Although a safety management system has been found to improve safety performance (Bottani et al., 2009), most construction projects do not establish such a system on site (Benjaoran and Bhokha, 2010). As Häkkinen (1995) mentioned, a lack of commitment to safety management may lead to reduced safety awareness. Managing construction activities safely assures the success of the construction project. This is especially the case if organizations seek improvement in project performance by reducing the number of on-site accidents. Project performance is the measure of the extent to which a project is successfully completed. Thus, safety management has become an integral part of project management. However, recent construction safety research has been undertaken to mainly study the effect of factors on safety performance (e.g., Abudayyeh et al., 2006, Choudhry et al., 2009, El-Mashaleh et al., 2010, Yung, 2009, Zou and Zhang, 2009), explore the role of different parties, such as designers and owners, on site safety (e.g., Huang and Hinze, 2006, Seo and Choi, 2008), and examine the effectiveness of safety programs (e.g., Hallowell, 2010). The key safety management practices (SMPs) that lead to the desired project performance have not been empirically identified. In the study by Fernández-Muñiz et al. (2009), a safety management system that comprises elements of policy, incentives, training, communication, control, and planning was found to be significantly related to safety, competitiveness, and economic-financial performance. This further supports the proposition that the relationship between SMPs and project performance is worthy of investigation.
Due to high incidence of accidents on construction sites (Choudhry et al., 2009, Teo et al., 2005), the present research is intended to examine if the perceived importance of SMPs would affect project performance. The cognitive theory supports the view that perception is positively related to performance because perception shapes behavior, which in turn drives performance (O’Reily, 1973). It is expected that if one perceives that a safety practice is important, he or she will pay more attention to it, and that will result in fewer accidents and better project performance. Hence, this study sought to address three research questions: (1) which safety management practices (SMPs) are perceived by construction participants as relevant to construction projects? (2) To what extent are these practices essential to project performance? (3) What suggestions can be provided for effective safety management? For these questions, three research objectives are derived respectively: (1) to explore which categories of SMPs (derived through factor analysis) are perceived to be important to construction projects, (2) to examine which categories of SMPs are positively and significantly related to project performance, and (3) to reveal any potential improvement for the current SMPs in the construction industry and offer implications for other industries. In an effort to address the third research objective, findings from the first two research objectives are cross-examined. Detailed analytical strategies are presented in later paragraphs.
Section snippets
Survey
A survey was administered in Hong Kong. Prior to conducting the survey, the exploratory study approach was adopted to select local general practices. Given the exploratory nature of the study, such an approach was appropriate to generate the tested model specifying the hypothesized relationships (Cavana et al., 2001). Based on a review of the existing literature (e.g., Barraza et al., 2004, Cheng et al., 2000, Cheng et al., 2007, Jannadi and Bu-Khamsin, 2002, Langford et al., 2000, Sawacha et
Analysis
In order to achieve the research objectives, some strategies were adopted to analyze the findings. Firstly, three categories of SMPs were extracted from the factor analysis. If the importance level of an SMP category was higher than 3.00 (in the five-point scale), then this category was regarded as more important; otherwise it was less important. It is because at an importance level higher than 3.00, the category was said to be of some degree of importance (in accordance with the definition of
Results
A t-test was employed to examine if the respondents, whose projects were completed with varied performance, would have different perceptions on the three categories of SMPs. The sample was split into two groups according to the average level (=3.93) of the project performance: group A (below average) and group B (above average). As shown in Table 2, the findings indicate that the two groups had significant difference in their views on the importance level of the safety categories. Specifically,
Safety management information, process, and committees
Safety management information consisted of written safety policy (3.69), accident investigation and report (3.68), safety records (3.68), safety manual (3.67), safety checklist (3.63), accident statistical analysis (3.46), and formal safety organization structure (3.40). Many national health and safety management regulations have encouraged the establishment of a formal record of safety information for communication and sharing between construction parties (Baxendale and Jones, 2000).
Safety
Conclusions
The present study sought to elicit views from a cross section of construction practitioners on current SMPs and contributed to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence addressing the research questions. Results from the factor analysis indicated that three SMP categories, which were labeled as safety management information, safety management process, and safety management committees, were extracted from 15 SMPs. Among these three categories of SMPs, this study found that safety
Acknowledgements
The paper was financially supported by Southern Cross University under a departmental grant. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.
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