Safety Climate in Large Construction Enterprises

Abstract

Recent studies on safety climate in large construction enterprises show a decrease in accident rates at work sites. Their severe accident rates are significantly lower in relation to their share in the construction industry. The research objective is assessing and exploring the various parameters affecting the safety climate in large construction enterprises. A safety climate model based on the Fishbone diagram was developed, implemented, and validated. The model divided the safety climate factors into four core categories: workers, equipment and technology, organizational environment, and work site environment. The data for the developed model was gathered using a field survey answered by 20 foremen at 20 different construction projects of large construction enterprises. The survey included 45 questions that established an indication of the four factor groups. It also documented the projects' accident ratio based on their severity, in addition to near-miss incidents. To validate the model, accident analysis was conducted on two sub-groups of projects containing five projects each, representing the characteristics of the model in its two poles, and between the two projects with the lowest and highest safety climate characteristics. The results show that there is a correlation between project size and its safety climate, in most cases, the larger the project, the better its safety climate. The core factors of safety climate in large construction enterprises are the organizational safety environment, physical environment management, equipment safety and operation, and workers’ training and skill. The model can be implemented through preventive actions that focus on these core factor groups. The validation shows that the average accident ratio is lower in the sub-group with high safety climate. However, the average number of near-miss incidents was higher. The project with the highest safety climate had significantly lower accident ratio than the one with the lowest safety climate.