Research On Safety Shared Mental Models Of Construction Teams

The construction industry belongs to the industries of high risk and it’s an accident-prone industry in our country. As the construction projects are toward large-scale and complicated tendency, the security problems during the construction are increasing and the risk of getting injured of the construction workers is intensifying. Once the security accidents happened, the consequences could be quite serious. According to Heinrich accident causation theory, the insecure behaviors of human beings and the insecure status of objects can both lead to the occurrence of accidents directly and the insecure behaviors of human beings are the key causes. If the insecure behaviors of construction workers could be controlled, the occurrence of accidents could be avoided. The safety behavior of construction workers can be affected positively by the safety shared mental models of construction teams, which can prompt the workers to shift from passive acceptance to active participation. And the security status of construction teams could be improved effectively.The concept and the development process of the safety shared mental models of construction teams are analyzed theoretically as well as the safety shared mental models’ effects on the safety behavior based on the domestic and foreign literature of shared mental models and the actual situation of construction teams. Then the safety shared mental models’ effects on the safety behavior are analyzed quantificationally. The questionnaire of shared mental models consists of the items measuring teamtask safety shared mental models and teamwork safety shared mental models. The questionnaire of safety behavior consists of the items measuring safety compliance behavior and safety participation behavior. The data collected from the questionnaires of construction workers shows that safety shared mental models have great positive effects on safety behavior. Finally, some suggestions are made to fo ster the development of safety shared mental models. The main factors influencing safety shared mental models are as follows, safety environment of the environmental aspect, safety training of the organizational aspect, team communication and team size of the team aspect, safety mental model of team members and team leader of the individual aspect. The details of worker participation mechanism are proposed based on the above theoretical analyses.