An analysis of safety practices for small, medium, and large construction projects: A resilience engineering perspective

Abstract

The varied nature of the construction industry, involving projects of different sizes, poses significant challenges to improving its Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) performance. The existing literature identifying strategies for improving the performance of small construction projects has focused on a deterministic and reactive view of safety. However, recent theoretical advancements in safety criticize this view. Alternatively, a Resilience Engineering (RE)-based perspective is deemed suitable for construction projects to be adaptive in managing safety. However, none of the previous studies analyzed the prevalence of RE-based attributes within the construction industry and across projects of different sizes. This study has adapted a RE-based questionnaire to which 180 survey responses from site professionals were obtained. A concurrent triangulation mixed method was used to analyze this data, supplemented with 16 interviews and field observations from 27 building construction projects in India. The 'contract value' was used as a metric to aggregate the responses for three project types, i.e., 'small', 'medium', and 'large'. The study results indicate that most practices promoting RE-based attributes, such as Monitoring, Learning, and Anticipating, are neither prevalent in the industry nor are significantly different among projects of various sizes. The findings show that small and medium-sized projects may exceed larger projects in several RE-based safety practices, suggesting that pathways to improve safety for smaller projects may not necessarily be limited to emulating larger projects, as typically recommended in the literature. The study advances the understanding of RE-based safety practices and supports safety initiatives in all construction sites.