Strategic Safety Management in Construction and Engineering

Although the construction and engineering sector makes important contributions to the economic, social, and environmental objectives of a nation, it has a notorious reputation for being an unsafe industry in which to work. Despite the fact that safety performance in the industry has improved, injuries and fatalities still occur frequently. To address this, the industry needs to evolve further by integrating safety into all decision making processes.

Strategic Safety Management in Construction and Engineering takes a broad view of safety from a strategic decision making and management perspective with a particular focus on the need to balance and integrate ‘science’ and ‘art’ when implementing safety management. The principles covered here include the economics of safety, safety climate and culture, skills for safety, safety training and learning, safety in design, risk management, building information modelling, and safety research methods and the research-practice nexus. They are integrated into a strategic safety management framework which comprises strategy development, implementation, and evaluation. Practical techniques are included to apply the principles in the context of the construction and engineering industry and projects. Case studies are also provided to demonstrate the localised context and applications of the principles and techniques in practice.

Patrick Xiao Wei Zou is Professor and Research Leader of Construction Engineering and Management at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. With a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia, he has held a professorship at the University of Canberra and associate professorship at UNSW, and visiting academic appointments at several universities in the UK, USA, Singapore  and China. Dr Zou is an award winning researcher and teacher in the fields of safety management, risk management, and sustainable building and construction systems. Prior to entering to academia he worked as construction engineer.  

Riza Yosia Sunindijo is a Lecturer in Construction Management in the Faculty of the Built Environment, at the University of New South Wales. He has also worked as a project engineer, project manager, and sustainability champion for a range of multi-national construction and project management organisations

Foreword vii

Acknowledgements ix

1 Safety Management in Construction and Engineering: An Introduction 1

The importance of the industry 1

Characteristics of the construction and engineering sector 2

Why a book on strategic safety management? 6

Historical development and current trends in construction safety management 6

The book’s contents 10

References 14

2 Economics of Safety 17

Costs of construction accidents 18

Benefits of investment in safety 29

Return on investment in safety management 33

A case study on return on investment in safety risk management 35

Optimisation of investment in safety risk management 40

Evaluation of investment in safety risk management 44

Conclusions 49

References 49

3 Safety Climate and Culture 53

Safety climate 54

Safety culture 58

Safety culture maturity measurement criteria and frameworks 62

Safety culture maturity measurement instrument 65

Case studies 69

Utility of safety culture 80

Conclusions 81

References 82

4 Skills for Safety 86

An overview of the skill set 86

Conceptual skill 92

Human skill 95

Political skill 99

Technical skills 103

Skill development model 106

Skill development strategies 111

Conclusions 117

References 118

5 Safety Training and Learning 123

Training and learning defined 124

Approaches to learning: pedagogy and andragogy 124

Safety learning in construction and engineering 128

Techniques for evaluating safety training and learning 139

Case study 142

Conclusions 148

References 149

6 Safety in Design, Risk Management and BIM 152

What is safety in design? 152

Why is it necessary to implement safety in design? 155

Safety in design policies and guidelines 156

Safety risk management 160

Current issues and possible solutions 170

Case studies 172

Building information modelling (BIM) for safety in design 175

Conclusions 177

References 177

7 Research Methodology and Research–Practice Nexus 180

A typical research process 181

Research methodologies 183

Current state of play on safety research methodologies 193

Social desirability bias in research design 195

Why and how social desirability bias happens 197

Techniques for minimising social desirability bias in safety research 200

Research-practice nexus 203

Discussions 207

Assessing the relevance of research outcomes in practical application 208

Conclusions 208

References 210

8 Strategic Safety Management 214

A strategic safety management framework 215

Developing safety management strategies 216

Implementing safety management strategies 220

Evaluating safety management strategies 224

Case study 225

Conclusions 230

References 231

Bibliography 234

Index 237

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