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.

A safe work environment is crucial in high-risk industries, such as construction refurbishment. Safety incidents caused by uncertainty and unexpected events in construction refurbishment systems are difficult to control using conventional safety management techniques. Resilience engineering (RE) is proposed as an alternative to traditional safety management approaches. It presents a successful safety management methodology designed to deal with uncertainty in high-risk work environments. Despite the fact that RE resides in the safety domain, there is no common set of RE indicators to measure and assess resilient in the work environment. The main aim of this research is to explore RE indicators that have been identified as important in developing and assessing the resilient work environment in high-risk industries, particularly in construction refurbishment. Indicators have been attained through a systematic literature review of research and scholarly articles published between the years 2004 and 2019. The literature review explored RE indicators in various industries. Descriptive analysis and co–occurrence-based network visualization were used for data analysis. The findings revealed 28 RE indicators in 11 different high-risk industries. The results show that the four commonly used indicators were: top-management commitment, awareness, learning, and flexibility, all of which have a strong relationship with RE. The findings of this study are useful for stakeholders when making decisions concerning the most important RE indicators in the context of their research or practice as this would avoid the ambiguity and disparity in the identification of RE indicators.

Issues regarding relationships between supervisor safety behavior (SSB) and worker safety behavior (WSB) are well recognized in construction management research. Nevertheless, how safety plans are articulated through the actions of supervisors to the workforce remains unclear. By conceptualizing safety from the window of the “psychological contract” (PC), this research proposes that if the “psychological contract of safety” (PCS)—if reciprocal commitments between a supervisor and a worker are fulfilled—then WSB will be positively influenced. Using a PCS scale based on employer obligations, multilevel surveys were performed at five construction sites in Sydney, Australia, and data from 352 workers associated with a mega-construction project were collected. A hypothetical model proposing the PCS as an intervention is presented. The model is validated using structural equation modeling (SEM), the data reliability and validity of the survey findings are ensured, and the goodness of fit of the proposed model was examined. The results indicate that PCS successfully mediates the relationship between two important safety agents—the supervisor and the worker. When addressing the research gap, this article explains how the concept of PCS can be further utilized to investigate safety issues that are regularly raised. In addition, new avenues for researchers and practitioners are suggested to consider the social exchange relationships at construction sites. Using the validated PCS model and understanding the level of fulfillment, construction supervisors may influence workers’ behavior with greater confidence. Furthermore, when finding a low level of fulfillment of PCS, senior managers can deliver training to supervisors to improve their safety behavior to the benefit of WSB.

This study examines the available evidence of high reliability organisational (HRO) theory as a strategy to manage construction safety: (1) Background: High reliability organisations (HROs) have been under investigation by organisational scholars to understand how they function at an exceptionally high level with few or no accidents under challenging circumstances. The construction industry is a high risk industry and is also known for a high fatality rate around the world. This systematic review examines the available evidence of HROs as a strategy to manage construction safety; (2) Methods: A systematic review to summarise and critically appraise the literature on high reliability organisational theory, aimed at improving construction safety; (3) Results: Of 2724 articles found, fifteen studies met the inclusion criteria for qualitative synthesis and review. Six of the studies were from construction, four were from general HROs research, two were from health care, and three were from the aerospace, oil and gas, and nuclear industries; (4) Conclusion: Based on the available evidence, transferring the practices and principles of HROs to construction, the validation of proposed assessing tools and a consensus HRO definitions are the major issues identified.

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.