A System Dynamics Approach to Construction Safety Culture

Abstract

Throughout the world, the construction industry has had a poor safety record, and is disproportionately more dangerous when compared to other industries. The major cause of construction accidents is attributed to unsafe behaviours and work practices, which are viewed as the direct result of having a poor safety culture. The development of a mature safety culture has been recognized as a vital element in the achievement of high standards of safety, alongside an effective safety management system. A better understanding of how to improve safety culture greatly assists an organization to allocate appropriate safety resources, and thus improve its overall occupational health and safety performance. Recently, researches have been undertaken to measure the ‘health’ of construction safety culture in an attempt to plan for safety culture improvement. Those studies, however, have focused neither on the interactions among key safety culture elements, nor on the consequences of safety initiatives being undertaken over time. Importantly, construction organizations need to be able to measure their current safety culture maturity level, and identify areas for safety improvement, to enable them to progress through to higher maturity levels. Such actions are essential, as the implementation of safety initiatives that do not address prioritized areas for improvement, may add little value to the organization in its quest to improve its safety culture, and reduce costs in the long term. To address these issues, this study developed a model of construction safety culture, and investigated the interactions and causal relationships between the five enablers (what the organization should be doing) and Goals (what the organization aims to achieve), and their consequences over time. The ‘construction safety culture index’, developed through modelling construction safety culture, was used to measure the level of construction safety culture maturity in the organization, and identify areas for safety improvement...