Impact of health and safety management implementation on cost performance of construction projects in Abuja, Nigeria

Abstract

Construction activities lack understanding of health and safety management implementation and perceived safety cost as a burden. Stakeholders, especially contractors within the construction industry believe that investment in health and safety management system increases overall construction cost, and therefore, tend to neglect relevant accident prevention activities on construction sites. Therefore, this study has the following objectives: it assesses the impact of health and safety management implementation on cost performance of construction projects in Abuja, Nigeria; identifies health and safety management practices adopted by construction sites and to assess the cost implication associated with the implementation of health and safety management practices within the selected construction sites. Data were collected using structured questionnaires and analyzed using simple percentile and mean item score. The study identifies 35 elements of health and safety management implementation on cost performance of construction sites, under 4 major components out of which safety manager on site with the mean score 4.51, onsite safety inspection 4.25, safety helmet 3.95 and tool – box talk 3.89 were the most important under each component of health and safety management system. The result reveals that the cost of implementing health and safety programme is a major challenge facing Nigerian contractors and companies in terms of high-cost involvement in the area of injuries and hazard on site. This tends to increase the overall cost of the project. Therefore, the paper recommends that adequate cost control measures be adopted to checkmate health and safety expenditure during construction process instead of total avoidance of health and safety programme.