Purpose: Safety climate and its impact on safety performance is well established; however, researchers in this field suggest that the absence of a common assessment framework is a reflection of the state of development of this concept. The purpose of this paper is to propose a five-factor model that can be used to diagnose and measure safety climate in construction safety research and practice.Design/methodology/approach: A systematic review was adopted, and following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, 574 articles were selected at the start of the study based on a developed review protocol for investigating safety climate factors. While examining the factor analysis of different studies, data reliability and data validity of the individual research findings were considered and frequency of factors uploaded was used to determine the significance as a quantitative measure to develop the ranking of safety climate factors.Findings: The review identified that, from the established measures of safety climate in construction, there is little uniformity on factor importance. However, management commitment safety system role of the supervisor; workers’ involvement and group safety climate were found to be the most common across the studies reviewed. It is proposed these factors are used to inform a five-factor model for investigating safety climate in the construction industry.Originality/value: The findings of this study will motivate researchers and practitioners in safety to use the five-factor safety climate model presented in this paper and test it to develop a common factor structure for the construction industry. The fact that the model is comprised of five factors makes it easier to be used and implemented by small-to medium-sized construction companies, therefore enhancing its potential use.

Advancements in the modern construction industry have contributed to the development of a range of technology-based interventions to improve the safety behavior of front-line construction workers. Notwithstanding the extensive research on safety behavior, there is still a paucity of research on assessing technology interventions of safety behavior to provide an overview of their strengths and limitations. The present study aims to bridge this gap in the literature and identify the main trends of research. A systematic review and critical content analysis are adopted to capture an overview of the state of knowledge on safety behavior technologies. As a result of searching Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar databases in the period from Jan 2010 to Feb 2023, a total of 359 potential studies went through the systematic screening process and finally, 48 representative studies were selected followed by an assessment of the feasibility and applicability of the safety behavior technologies. It was found that safety behavior technology is characterized by seven technologies including virtual-reality simulation (T1), eye-tracking technology (T2), prediction modeling of safety behavior (T3), computer-based training (T4), drone/sensor-based hazard monitoring (T5), vision-based behavior monitoring (T6), and real-time positioning (T7). This research improves understanding of the status of safety behavior technologies and provides a critical review of their feasibility from the perspective of four assessment criteria including application, limitation, benefit, and feasibility. The categorizations of technologies add value to the body of knowledge in terms of generic requirements for their implementation and adaptation on construction sites.

Safety management research in construction is pervasive, therefore, a systematic review and a bibliometric mapping process that provides an overview of how recent mainstream research topics are conceptually structured is timely. Undertaking systematic mapping, contemporaneous with a scoping review of construction safety management research, can contribute to a better understanding of research outcomes and predominant topics. This study employed VOSviewer as a bibliometric tool to identify co-author citations, as well as the co-occurrence of key terms within the title, abstract and keywords of the articles. A total of 180 representative studies published in 21 peer-reviewed journals between January 2010 and November 2021 were analysed. A systematic literature review identified a significant focus on conceptualizing safety climate and safety behaviour with a growing interest in applying advanced technologies for improved safety management. Two perspectives were recognized in safety research, i.e. process-driven and people-driven, with the former focussing on accident causation while the latter on underlying the active role of workers’ involvement in safety outcomes. An in-depth discussion of the findings revealed seven trending research domains: safety systems; safety skills; accident causation; safety leadership and communications; safety behaviour and attitude; safety climate and culture; and practices for improving safety performance. This review identified an emerging interest in seeking effective leadership styles and psychological interventions to promote safety culture and behaviour. In terms of practical implications, this study found opportunities to address the gap between theory and practice by adopting systems thinking and using IT for improving safety performance in construction projects.