Design for safety (DfS), also known as prevention through design, is a prominent means for tackling work-related illnesses and injuries in construction. However, the available DfS studies in construction have paid very limited attention to developing countries. Consequently, there is limited insight into DfS implementation in many developing countries including Palestine. This study therefore investigates DfS implementation among design professionals in the Palestinian construction industry. A questionnaire survey was used to obtain data from design professionals and the data was analysed using inferential statistics (i.e. analysis of variance and t-test) and descriptive statistics. The results revealed that the extent of engagement in DfS practices among the design professionals is very low despite a high awareness and positive attitude towards the concept of DfS. Additionally, while there is a great interest in undertaking DfS training, the designers' participation in training is low. Additionally, awareness of DfS, DfS education and training, professional body affiliation, level of education, years of experience, and size of organisation were found to have limited association with the extent of engagement in DfS practices by the designers. These findings suggest the presence of DfS implementation barriers/challenges, which are undermining the implementation of DfS by the design professionals in Palestine. Collaborative efforts are required by the construction industry stakeholders to improve DfS implementation. Furthermore, the findings mirror the outcomes of similar studies in other developing countries and thus highlight an urgent need for additional studies within developing countries to ascertain the barriers/challenges to DfS implementation in those geographic contexts.
10Safety climate has a positive impact on safety performance in the construction industry; it is a 11 multilevel phenomenon that can be formed at organization and group levels especially in large 12 organizations with multilevel management structure. The study investigates how organizational 13 support cascades down to cultivate group-level safety climate at two time points over a two-year 14 period through the relationship with organization-level safety climate, supervisory safety-specific 15 transformation leadership, and co-worker support in a large US-based construction contractor. 16Structural equation modeling analysis on data from an online survey among 284 construction 17 professionals shows, different from prior research, that organizational support at one point in time 18does not directly predict subsequent group-level safety climate. Instead, it affects group-level safety 19 climate through the mediation effect of supervisory safety-specific transformation leadership and 20 organizational-level safety climate, and its moderation effect on the relationship between co-worker 21 support and group-level safety climate. Importantly, the results also suggest that safety-specific 22 transformational leadership may be an even more important predictor of group-level safety climate 23 than organizational-level safety climate and co-worker support. These results imply that organizations 24 support could focus on empowering leaders to demonstrate safety-specific transformational leadership 25 behaviors for the sake of enhancing group-level safety climate. 26
KEYWORDS 27Organizational support, safety climate, safety-specific transformational leadership, co-worker support, structural 28 equation modeling 29 30 31To explore the relationship between safety climate and safety performance, many studies in 58 construction have focused on the organization as the unit of analysis (e.g., He et al.,2016). Yet, 59organizations are social systems that are constructed through interdependencies between individuals 60 and subunits across an organizational hierarchy (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). This hierarchy creates 61 micro-and macro-levels of safety climate. Consistent with the idea that organizations are multilevel 62 systems, Zohar and Luria (2005) proposed and tested a multilevel model of safety climate that 63 includes organization-level and group-level safety climate in a manufacturing context. Organization-64 level safety climate (OSC) arises from the formal organizational-wide policies and procedures 65 imposed by top management, while group-level safety climate (GSC) arises from the safety practices 66 associated with the implementation of organizational policies and procedures by front-line supervisors 67 in each workgroup. In particular, Zohar and Luria (2005) proved that OSC and GSC are two 68 distinguishable constructs. Further, the researchers found that the positive effect of OSC on safety 69 behaviors is fully mediated by GSC. The results provided a new multilevel approach to investigating 70 safety climate. 71 In ...
Purpose
With the rapid development of digital information and modelling software applications for construction, questions have arisen about their impact on construction safety. Meanwhile, recognition that designers can help reduce risks involved in construction, operation and maintenance via a prevention through design (PtD) approach (also known as design for safety) highlights the significance of digital technologies and tools to PtD. Thus, this paper aims to provide a systematic review of a wide range of digital technologies for enhancing PtD.
Design/methodology/approach
A five-stage systematic literature review with coding and synthesis of findings is presented. The review covers journal articles published between 2000 and 2020 related to the applications of various digital technologies, such as building information modelling (BIM), 4D, databases, ontologies, serious games, virtual reality and augmented reality, for addressing safety issues during the design phase in construction.
Findings
Analysis of the articles yielded a categorisation of the digital applications for PtD into four main areas: knowledge-based systems; automatic rule checking; hazard visualization; and safety training for designers. The review also highlighted designers’ limited knowledge towards construction safety and the possibility to address this by using gaming environments for educating designers on safety management and using artificial intelligence for predicting hazards and risks during design stage in a BIM environment. Additionally, the review proposes other directions for future research to enhance the use of digital technologies for PtD.
Originality/value
This paper contextualises current digital technology applications for construction health and safety and enables future directions of research in the field to be identified and mapped out.
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