Determinants of Health and Safety Management in Construction Industry; the Case of Hengyang City, China

Abstract

The construction industry promotes the development of national social economy and provides necessary infrastructure and enhanced facilities for social comfort. However, it is the most hazardous industries due to high occupational risks and unsatisfactory state of occupational health and safety. This study ascertains and evaluates the factors affecting health and safety management in the construction industries in area undergoing fast infrastructure development, Hengyang city. Two categories of construction industry were chosen for the quantitative study for which stratified sampling procedure was applied and simple random sampling was further used to select the key project participants from the various professional groups. In addition to the actual on-site observation questionnaires and interviews, the interviewees, opinions can also be derived. Statistical technique Relative Importance Index (RII) and Microsoft excel software are used to analyze the data, while the Kendall’s coefficient of concordance is used as a measure of agreement of ranking among factors affecting health and safety management. The analysis shows that the RII and the rank of factors affecting health and safety management in construction industry are vary with in the company categories. Health and safety policy, work environment, and health and safety inspection were ranked as the first three important factors affecting health and safety management in construction sites, respectively. Therefore, relevant stakeholders need to consider the establishment of a valuable management system based on local conditions to provide a strong guarantee for the health and safety of workers and sustainability maintenance of construction projects. This study will inspire future works to be done on the role of owners and the development of further guidelines to lessen the accidents in construction sites.