Oswald D, S F S S (2013) Exploring factors affecting unsafe behaviours in construction. In: Smith, S D and Ahiaga-Dagbui, D D (eds.) Proceedings of 29th Annual ARCOM Conference, 2-4 September 2013, Reading, UK.
Abstract
Why do workers take a chance and work from height without any safety protection? Is it because of their age, inexperience or lack of training? Is it to do with their risk perception or desire for risk taking and thrill seeking? Is it bad management style, poor safety culture or a substandard design? Does this happen everywhere around the globe or is it just one particular culture? To help us understand why there are different behavioural responses to hazards (e.g. working at height) in construction, we must first understand the factors that have affected that individual’s decision-making. This paper presents early investigations taking place on a £1.6B project in the UK involving construction workers from many different backgrounds and nationalities. Through a process of literature exploration, a safety climate survey and focus group discussions, factors have been identified and explored to consider how they impact behaviours. The results suggest that time pressure, training, experience, risk perception, safety culture, culture and management are the factors most likely to be influencing behavioural responses of individuals. Time pressure is perhaps the most important factor as it was often regarded as having the greatest influence by the focus group. Survey results revealed 31% of 475 participants thought that alcohol and drugs were 'always' a factor in accidents, and hence this factor has somewhat surprisingly been identified as having a fairly significant influence. These factors will be further explored in future work using an ethnographic approach, which will yield significant insight from fine-grained, observational analysis on the project.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | behavioural safety; human response; time pressure |
| Index terms: | survey, risk perception, unsafe behaviour, safety climate, focus group, safety culture, management style, risk taking, alcohol, construction worker, investigation, exploration, decision-making, human response, observation analysis |
| Subjects: | health safety and environment, financial risk, management, decision-making and reasoning, behavioral psychology, environmental hazards, decision analysis, practitioner, data collection methods, data science, psychology, environmental resource management |
| Topics: | Sustainability, Roles and Professions, Risk Management, Research Practice, Cost Management, Health and Safety, Human Resources |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
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