Developing resilient safety culture for construction projects

Feng, Y and Trinh, M T (2019) Developing resilient safety culture for construction projects. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 145(11), ISSN 0733-9364

Abstract

Resilient safety culture is an organization's psychological, behavioral, and contextual capabilities to anticipate, monitor, respond, and learn in order to manage safety risks and create an ultrasafe organization. This study aims to identify the drivers of resilient safety culture in the construction environment. Data were collected using questionnaires from 78 completed building projects in Vietnam. The structural equation modeling technique was used to analyze the collected data. The results indicate that construction organizations can develop a resilient safety culture by systematically responding to regular threats, irregular threats, and unexampled events in the construction environment. Hazard prevention practice has a positive impact on contextual and behavioral resilience, error management practice has a positive impact on psychological resilience, and mindful organizing practice has a positive impact on contextual resilience. The findings of this study may advance the theories of resilient safety culture by providing insights into the mechanisms by which resilient safety culture can be created in a construction organization. It offers a framework that may guide the design of safety interventions in order to achieve a sustained improvement of safety performance of construction projects.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: construction; resilience; resilience engineering; safety culture; safety performance
Index terms: Vietnam, structural equation modelling, construction project, questionnaire, error management, safety performance, construction organization, safety culture, prevention
Subjects: financial risk, production management, Geography, health safety and environment, occupational health and safety management, statistical analysis, organization, data collection methods, project delivery
Topics: Cost Management, Business Strategy, Health and Safety, Project Management, Geographical Context, Research Practice
Descriptive scope: 3 PCA

N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here