Construction occupational accidents are often attributed to workers’ having an insufficient perception of how their actions influence safety in the construction site. This research explores the relationship between safety climate (SC) and personnel safety behavior (SB) of construction workers operating on building construction sites in Taiwan. The study discovered a significant positive relationship between SC and SB of Taiwan’s building construction sites, and in turn SC level had a positive impact on SB participation and overall safety perceptions. The higher the SC cognition of Taiwan’s building construction workers, the better the performance of SB was found to be. The dimension of "safety commitment and safety training" had the greatest relationship with SB. Safety training also had a deep impact on the cognition of SB. Therefore, the organizational culture and attitudes to safety coupled with the successful implementation of safety education and training can effectively enhance SC and worker SB on building construction sites in Taiwan, thereby potentially reducing the impacts of the underlying organizational factors behind safety related incidents.

Over the past half‐century, value engineering (VE) has emerged as an effective tool to manage time, costs, and quality with an aim to maximize value. It has been shown to be a highly effective approach for evaluating current construction projects. However, this tool’s application in the construction domain is quite variable. This research aims to provide an in‐depth quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the application of VE in construction projects. It is found that new research over the past decade has continuously improved the efficiency and productiveness of VE practices. Current work focuses on integrating VE with other disciplines, applying VE in diverse project domains, assessing VE performance, and developing new VE technologies. This broad review highlights some of the key areas of interest that required future investigation to ensure the continued delivery of value in the ever‐changing and evolving construction industry.

The international construction industry has long experienced high rates of occupational incidents resulting in serious injury and death. The high rate of fatal construction accidents has clearly highlighted the importance and urgency of safety management improvement for building and construction sites. This paper analyzed 33 nominated success factors of the site safety management (SSM) of building construction projects using Principle Components Analysis (PCA) to extract the success factors (SFs) of SSM in Taiwan. The internal relationships among these SFs were further explored using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to examine the underlying relationships. The results of this study indicate that there are moderate correlations present between the selected SFs for SSM. Management behaviors, a safe work environment and safety resources, the safety behaviors of workers, and prevention and remedial actions were found to be the major influencers for SSM performance. Furthermore, the study shows that SSM in Taiwan is still overly focused on safe working conditions, to the detriment of workers’ safety perception and training. Further work is required to ensure that safety programs are agile enough to understand and adapt to the factors which influence SSM outcomes.

This study investigates multilevel differences in safety climate (SC) perception dimensions between management and laborers on Taiwanese construction sites. With Taiwan’s high rate of construction site safety incidents, implementing successful safety strategies requires understanding differences in SC perceptions between management and laborers. This study used a structured SC questionnaire with responses from 74 managers and 261 laborers. The analysis of collected data includes (1) descriptive statistics comparing the selected dimensions; (2) Pearson correlation analysis examining relationships between SC perception dimensions; (3) t-test and one-way ANOVA to assess relationships between the respondent’s background and SC perception dimensions; and (4) Post-Tukey comparison analysis to compare the SC perception differences between management and laborers. The results indicate that management-level staff show a higher degree of SC perception than laborer-level staff. This level of SC perception varies between individual dimensions. The strongest convergence between the two groups is observed in the dimension of ‘workmate care of each other’, and the greatest divergence is found in ‘risk decision making’. Previous studies regarding SC perception in Taiwan specifically focus on construction workers and neglect the differences in perception between management and laborers. The outcomes of this study contribute to the understanding of multilevel SC perceptions, which can be used in the development of targeted strategies to improve SC on construction sites.

The technology available to water quality management applications needs to be advanced due to greater use of automation to increase ease of operation, support remote operation and reduce risks due to operator error. In this case study, a comparison is made between System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) and the Bow-tie methodology for identifying process hazards and countermeasures which can be used to guide the design and testing of an automated water quality management system (AWQMS). For this study, the application considered is a small hydroponics installation where water quality management has been automated. The STPA methodology uses a system theory-based approach to identify hazards, which include operational failures, human errors, and component interactions. The Bow-tie diagram focuses on individual barriers for a given threat which can prevent the realisation of a hazardous event and unwanted consequences. Thus, the 22 preventative barriers and seven recovery barriers identified through the Bow-tie diagram provide the design process with broad requirements for reducing the risks of user error as well as the ones associated with ongoing operations. The STPA method identified many Causal Factors (CF) generated from the Unsafe Control Actions after considering all the feasible scenarios. For design input, the STPA provided the design process with 204 specific CFs which were used to create 94 countermeasures to be included in software and hardware design as well as user information material. Both methods identified useful measures to control the hazards associated with human interaction with the AWQMS. However, the measures differed in the level of detail and the involvement in the evolution in the final system losses. In this study, the STPA process was able to identify several hazards which did not visibly relate to the Bow-tie barriers. However, the Bow-tie diagram illustrates a distinction between preventative and recovery hazard controls.

The success of source protection in ensuring safe drinking water is centered around being able to understand the hazards present in the catchment then plan and implement control measures to manage water quality risk to levels which can be controlled through downstream barriers. The programs in place to manage source protection are complex sociotechnical systems involving policy, standards, regulators, technology, human factors and so on. This study uses System Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) to analyze the operational hazards of a typical drinking water source protection (DWSP) program and identify countermeasures to ensure safe operations. To validate the STPA results a questionnaire was developed based on selective grouping of the initial countermeasures identified and distributed to specialists in DWSP in Taiwan, Australia and Greece. Through statistical analysis using Principle Components Analysis (PCA), the study identified four critical success factors (CSFs) for DWSP based on the questionnaire responses. The four CSFs identified were “Policy and Government Agency Support of Source Protection”, “Catchment Risk Monitoring and Information”, “Support of Operational Field Activities” and “Response to Water Quality Threats”. The results of this study provide insight into the approach of grouping of source protection measures to identify a series of targeted CSF for operational source protection programs. Using CSF can aid catchment management agencies in ensuring that the risk level in the catchment is managed effectively and that threats to public health from drinking water are managed appropriately.