| Many accidents on construction projects result in deaths, severe injuries and hugeeconomic losses, so the construction industry is urgently need of advanced safetyphilosophy and effective safety management tools. The poor safety culture andnumerous unsafe behaviors on site are the two major causes for such difficult situation.Fostering a positive safety culture is fundamental and critical for improving safetyperformance on a construction site. Unfortunately, the conceptual understanding and abasic model for construction project safety culture is still missing. As a safetymanagement measure for both reducing unsafe behaviors and reinforcing safe behavior,Behavior-based safety (BBS) has become the popular topic and been implemented onmany cases. However, owning to the complex environment, management practice andorganizational structure in construction project settings have not been roundly addressed;the BBS improvement is not satisfying or continuous on construction sites. Theobjectives of this thesis are1) to provide a distinct and comprehensive definition ofconstruction safety culture and to develop a basic model;2) to explore the influencemechanism between management behavior and workers’ behavior and to identify therole of safety climate as the moderator;3) to put forward an improved BBS schemefocusing on the management activities during the intervention based on the findingsfrom safety culture model and influence mechanism.First, intensive literature review on the classic definitions of safety culture and thesafety culture models from pertinent researches are integrated in the theoretical modeldevelopment to comprehend the characteristics of construction projects. A definition ofconstruction project safety culture and its dimensions is proposed and well discussed. ASafety Culture Interaction (SCI) model for construction projects is developed based onthe above theoretical analysis and a case study on safety climate survey and BBSobservation in Singapore. The SCI model addresses the complexity and evolutionaryprocess of safety culture in a construction project so that provides a fresh way ofthinking about construction safety as well as the theoretical foundation and frameworkfor related studies.Indicated by SCI model, the perception factors and behavior factors would interact as two dimensions of safety culture. Therefore, the SEM is applied to explore theinfluence mechanism between the factors. The influence paths and weights are reachedand the moderating role of safety climate factors like "supportive environment","supervisory environment" and "workers’ involvement" are also identified. Theinfluence mechanism between management behavior and workers’ behavior could givesuggestions for better safety involvement, communication and training on site.Meanwhile, it would also be the theoretical support to improve the BBS scheme forconstruction projects to emphasize the management activities.Finally, an improved BBS scheme is proposed implicated by the influencemechanism and an empirical study is conducted on a construction project in Hong Kong.The survey on project safety climate and supervisors’ behavior is firstly conductedamong workers as the diagnosis tool and basis for behavior intervention design. Anintensive intervention scheme mainly dealing with supervisors’ behaviors isimplemented on site for three weeks. The follow-up site observations and surveyconfirm the positive effects on both workers’ behaviors and project safety climate due tothe BBS implementation.This thesis fills the knowledge gaps by developing a SCI model for constructionprojects and revealing the influence mechanism between management behavior andworkers’ behavior, which would be a help of better understanding construction projectsafety culture and the root causes of workers’ unsafe behaviors. Moreover, the improvedBBS scheme has been proved effectively and continuously improving workers’behaviors and project safety climate, which could be a real effective tool for safetymanagement on construction sites. |
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