Ahmad, R K and Gibb, A G F (2003) Measuring safety culture with SPMT: Field-data. Journal of Construction Research, 4(1), pp. 29-44. ISSN 1609-9451
Abstract
The safety culture of an organization is essentially a description of the attitude of personnel about the company they work for, their perceptions of the magnitude of the risks to which they are exposed and their beliefs in the necessity, practicality and effectiveness of controls. Safety culture, a sub-set of the overall organizational culture, is now believed to be a key predictor of safety performance. Organizations with good safety cultures have employees with positive attitudes towards safety practices. These organizations have mechanisms in place to gather safety-related information, measure safety performance and bring people together to learn how to work more safely. SPMT (safety performance measurement tool) is one such mechanism to measure safety performance on construction sites. It is an interactive CD currently developed to a beta level by the authors. It concentrates on proactive measures such as culture and behaviour. SPMT identifies safety factors that have the greatest potential to contribute to accidents. Most importantly, SPMT is able to identify the weaknesses in safety performance before an injury or accident actually occurs, thus enabling remedial actions to be planned. This paper discusses the results of site trials using SPMT on four live projects.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | safety culture; safety performance; measurement; proactive; safety control measures |
| Index terms: | safety culture, effectiveness, personnel, injury, construction site, safety factor, safety performance, organizational culture |
| Subjects: | performance management, management, health conditions and diseases, sociology, occupational health and safety management, work location, financial risk, health safety and environment |
| Topics: | Organizational Design, Site Management, Human Resources, Cost Management, Quality Management, Health and Safety |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
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