Citation

Fang D, Huang Y, Guo H, Lim HW. Safety Sci. 2020; 128: e104761.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ssci.2020.104761

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The unsafe behavior that is seen everywhere on construction sites is the biggest challenge for further improvement of construction safety performance. Focusing on the "human" related issues in construction safety, this paper reviews the research and practices of safety management and comes up with three key elements to look at, namely safety leadership, safety culture, and safety behavior. Through systematic exploration on the connotation of and interaction between safety leadership, safety culture, and safety behavior, a Leadership-Culture-Behavior (LCB) approach for construction safety is proposed with the kernel - leadership driven culture development and behavior control. The LCB approach emphasizes the role of safety leadership to not only directly reduce unsafe behavior but also to fundamentally change the causes of unsafe behavior through safety culture development, ultimately achieving the goal of reducing unsafe behaviors sustainably and preventing accidents. The LCB approach has been implemented in a number of railway and building projects in mainland and Hong Kong SAR, China, and Singapore. Significant improvement of L/C/B has been observed. Taking a high-speed railway project in China as an example, safety leadership, safety culture, and safety behavior of the project stakeholders at all levels were significantly improved. In the end, based on LCB, new directions and potential areas for future research of construction safety are discussed.

Language: en

Keywords

Construction safety management; LCB; Safety culture; Safety leadership; Unsafe behavior