Abstract
The adoption rate of new technologies is still relatively low in the construction industry, particularly for mitigating occupational safety and health (OSH) risks, which is traditionally a largely labor-intensive activity in developing countries, occupying ill-afforded non-productive management resources. However, understanding why this is the case is a relatively unresearched area in developing countries such as Malaysia. In aiming to help redress this situation, this study explored the major barriers involved, firstly by a detailed literature review to identify the main barriers hampering the adoption of new technologies for safety science and management in construction. Then, a questionnaire survey of Malaysian construction practitioners was used to prioritize these barriers. A factor analysis further identified six major dimensions underlying the barriers, relating to the lack of OSH regulations and legislation, technological limitations, lack of genuine organizational commitment, prohibitive costs, poor safety culture within the construction industry, and privacy and data security concerns. Taken together, the findings provide a valuable reference to assist industry practitioners and researchers regarding the critical barriers to the adoption of new technologies for construction safety management in Malaysia and other similar developing countries, and bridge the identified knowledge gap concerning the dimensionality of the barriers.
Highlights
The construction industry is inherently reluctant to innovate, especially in developing countries (Yap et al, 2019)
Factor 1 accounted for 15.12% of the total variance explained, explaining the three most significant barriers concerning government policy and safety-related legislation on occupational safety and health (OSH) to ensure that construction is safe and well-planned
The construction industry has been lackadaisical in the adoption of technological advancements in comparison with other industries
Summary
The construction industry is inherently reluctant to innovate, especially in developing countries (Yap et al, 2019). 229) concluded that “the implementation of IR 4.0 within the construction industry is still lacking tremendously despite having the accessibility of these technologies.”. Forcina and Falcones’ (2021) systematic review collected and analyzed 68 articles from 2010 to 2020 to conclude that IR 4.0 enabling technologies can benefit safety management. These enable the smart factory (e.g., cyber-physical system (CPS), radio-frequency identification (RFID), internet of things (IoT), automation, modularization, robotics), simulation and modelling (e.g., building information modelling (BIM), augmented reality (AV), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR)), and digitization and virtualization (e.g., cloud computing, big data, mobile computing) across the entire construction value chain (Oesterreich & Teuteberg, 2016). The applications of new technologies for construction safety are mainly a
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