Improving safety performance in construction using safety climate factors

Data from a number of industrialized countries show that construction workers are 3 to 4 times more likely than other workers to die from accidents at work. In the developing world, the risks associated with construction work may be 3 to 6 times greater. Construction is one of the world’s biggest industrial sectors, including the building, civil engineering, demolition and maintenance industries, and in Oman it accounts approximately 10% of the total GDP. Statistic indicates that a total of 723000 residents including 91% foreigners were working in 100000 construction organizations in 2014 and have the second largest rate of occupational injuries after manufacturing industry with an estimated cost of 3.7 M US$ per year. Construction workers are exposed to a wide variety of hazards on the job, including dusts and vapours, asbestos, awkward working positions, heavy loads, adverse weather conditions, work at heights, noise, vibration from tools, and therefore closer to occupational accidents. In recent years the awareness of the importance for safety performance of organizational, managerial and social factors, has increased. Safety climate is an aspect of organizational climate, offers a route for safety management, complementing the often predominant engineering approach. While the composition of workforce and cost of accidents are discussed here, this paper further present the research in progress on using safety climate factors for improvement of safety performance in construction organizations. Eight key factors which influence safety climate are identified by a thorough review of published literatures including twelve safety climate questionnaires having 55 different factors. The process on how to measure these factors among workforce of a construction project is discussed. The result of safety climate factors will help construction organization to improve their safety performance using different ideas and by making short mid and long term plans to achieve the required level of maturity for each safety climate factor