Safety Climate Perceptions in the Construction Industry of Saudi Arabia: The Current Situation

Evaluation of insurance policies in the Saudi Arabian construction contracts

The construction sector is more complicated and prone to risk than many other industries due to the size of the projects and the financial capital involved. Arranging insurance is the prudent course of action for risk management in the construction sector. There is a lack of clarity in insurance policies for public construction projects in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), which poses additional risks to all involved contracting parties. The aim of this research is to evaluate insurance policies in the KSA's public construction projects to identify the key deficiencies and obstacles and provide a road map for improvement in the insurance sector concerning insurance against financial losses, professional liability, defects' liability, hidden defects, and others. Forty-two contractors and forty-two owners in Saudi Arabia were surveyed, using a questionnaire to gather information for the study about their knowledge of and attitudes regarding risk transfer through insurance (professional liability, defects liability, and hidden defects). The study also covers the selection criteria for insurance policies for projects that potentially shift risk to the construction sector. Ten criteria were also examined as potential sources of liability issues and suggested as potential remedies in KSA. The findings indicate that the duty and liability of engineers and those participating in these projects can be offset by engineers' insurance against professional errors and hidden flaws, and by the construction industry's clear liability policy. Additionally, the research is envisaged to contribute to construction projects' overall quality and safety, ensuring that robust legal and financial safeguards protect all stakeholders.

The design of experimental courses in safety culture

To promote the application of safety culture in experimental courses that educate safety engineering majors and help students understand the concept and meaning of safety culture more deeply, this paper designed 10 experimental courses in safety culture from the perspective of the definition of safety culture using literature co-occurrence analysis and certain review methods. First, according to the literature research and keyword analysis, the definitions of safety culture can currently be divided into three categories: "the embodiment of safety concepts"; "the synthesis of safety concepts and behaviors"; and "the comprehensive theory of safety culture". Then, based on the study of the definitions, 10 experimental courses were designed and the basis was listed. The final results include 10 safety culture experiments and the relationship between them. The purpose, significance, contents and steps of the 10 experiments are designed to help students better understand the meaning of safety culture and try to transform scientific research achievements of safety culture into teaching.

OSH Performance within TQM Application in Construction Companies: A Qualitative Study in Saudi Arabia

OSH plays a significant role in construction project success. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the influence of total quality management (TQM) application in improving occupational safety and health (OSH) within the context of Saudi construction companies. Factors were identified from structured literature reviews of previous relevant empirical studies. Then, these factors were theoretically framed into the concept of a triple bottom line (TBL), which includes three main dimensions: social, environmental, and economic. Thus, a semistructured interview survey was used to investigate these factors to address the performance of OSH in construction companies that implement TQM. A grounded theory was used to analyze and determine these factors. Accordingly, fourteen effective factors are identified. The survey findings indicate that the most influenced factors are the control of occupational accidents/injuries, the enhancement of workforce safety, the improvement of management pledges toward OSH, and the development of work culture toward OSH. These findings are vital in exploring the influence of TQM application in Saudi construction companies for the management of improving the performance of OSH, thereby helping to reduce the level of work injuries in the construction field and boosting the safety and health of workers for construction projects.

Survey of the health, safety and environment climate and its effects on occupational accidents

BACKGROUND: Preserving and protecting the human resources is considered as the most important capital in any economic section by industrial development. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate the health, safety and environment (HSE) climate and its effects on occupational accidents in a petrochemical industry. METHOD: This cross-sectional study was performed on 354 male workers in a petrochemical industry (10 different categories of site operators). Data was collected through a questionnaire, which its validity and reliability were standardized with Cronbach’s alpha at 0.85. In this questionnaire the safety condition, workplace environment, disease symptoms were investigated in five, four and three dimensions, respectively. Data was analyzed by SPSS version 23 and LISREL version 8.8. RESULTS: According to the model values, there were significant correlation between safety condition and workplace environment r = 0.66, also between work safety condition and disease symptoms. The three hidden variables of work safety condition, work mental environment and physical workplace had significant effects on disease symptoms. Therefore, safety condition was the most effective variable on disease symptoms. Two significant predictors were work safety condition and physical workplace for work mental environment with coefficients γ= 2.29, β= –0.1, respectively. CONCLUSION: HSE condition indicators, working environment and disease symptoms reflect workers’ views on HSE issues in the workplace. It can be beneficial in rooting the factors affecting occupational accidents and performance evaluation in the organization HSE management system.

An integrated DEMATEL-ANP approach for identification and prioritization of factors affecting falls from height accidents in construction industry

BACKGROUND

Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique, integrated with the Analytic Network Process (ANP) is used for determination and prioritization of cause-effect relationships among factors affecting construction falls.

METHODS

Considering the 135 fall accidents collected between 2013 and 2018 from fifteen residential construction projects, 70 factors and sub-factors affecting the occurrence of construction falls were determined based on the safety experts' opinions. Then, questionnaires based on the former and the latter were distributed among 10 occupational health and safety specialists to determine the effectiveness of the factors. The interactions and important degree of each factor are specified, using DEMATEL-ANP approach.

RESULTS

Findings showed that organizational factors and their sub-factors have the greatest impact on construction falls and were considered as causal variables (D-R>0), while individual and environmental factors were considered as the effect variables (D-R<0). The results of prioritization using the ANP method showed that the work platform altitude, psychological/occupational stresses, and interactions were ranked as the first through third priorities affecting the falls, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

It is necessary to implement a systematic strategy to reduce the unsafe conditions in construction projects and to pay more attention to organizational factors.

Assessing the Mediating Role of Safety Communication Between Safety Culture and Employees Safety Performance

The main purpose of this research was to investigate the mediating role of safety communication (SCO) in the relationship between safety culture (SC) and safety performance (SP) amongst employees in the petrochemical industry. Safety communication methods not only enhance working conditions but also have a positive impact on employee's behaviors and attitudes toward safety leading toward reduced incidents in the workplace environment. A stratified sampling method was followed to collect data in the petrochemical industry in Malaysia. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was utilized to analyze the hypothesized model, using data from 320 participants. The findings reveal that safety communication partially mediates the association between safety culture and safety performance. Further, safety culture was found to have a significant and positive effect on safety performance. This -study makes a significant theoretical contribution by providing empirical evidence on the direct and indirect relationship between safety culture and safety performance in the petrochemical industry.

Measuring Safety Climate in the Construction Industry: A Systematic Literature Review

Recent studies on safety in various fields use the concept of safety climate to explain the causes of safety accidents. Many studies attempt to measure the safety climates and identify the causes for accidents in the high-risk construction industry. Studies have shown that the higher the level of the safety climate, the lower the accident rate at construction sites. Methods of measuring safety climate, including the NOSACQ-50 survey, have been presented. Studies on the methodology of measuring safety climate should be continued to improve reliability and precision. Although many studies have been conducted to measure safety climate, such as questionnaires, regression analysis, and suggestions for safety climate measurement methods, there are few studies on a systematic literature review of them. This requires a systematic literature review (SLR) of the studies conducted so far. This study conducted an SLR on the definition and measurement methods of safety climate in the construction industry published since 2000, when safety climate’s impact on accidents began to be established. This review study utilized the PRISMA method, analyzed 735 studies, and selected 57 papers finally. SLR was carried out for selected research works, and the results were summarized. There are three methods to measure safety climate: literature survey, questionnaire, and data analysis. Factor analysis, development of measuring model, development of questionnaire, statistical analysis, and machine learning were investigated as their sub-methods. This study’s results can be used as fundamental sources for improving existing methods and developing new methods of measuring safety climate in the construction industry.

Incidents and Disaster Avoidance: The Role of Communication Management and the Organizational Communication Climate in High-Risk Environments

Health, safety and the working environment are of paramount importance, especially in the high-risk environments found at facilities in the oil and gas industry, where hazards are inevitable and accidents may lead to regrettable situations such as explosions, oil spills and other disasters. The high number of accidents and disasters at such facilities bring safety-related matters to the fore. The complexity of the communication process is very often underestimated, where failures in communication could lead to major disasters. This paper investigates the role of communication management and the organizational communication climate and their impact on incidents and disaster avoidance. This study embarks on a quantitative approach involving 260 personnel from high-risk workplaces at oil and gas facilities, based on purposive sampling. Hypotheses were tested using PLS-SEM to identify causal relationships and for mediation analysis. The findings of this study show that communication management and the organizational communication climate have a significant impact on disaster avoidance. The organizational communication climate is also found to be a significant mediator for the relationship between communication management and disaster avoidance. Communication management and the organizational communication climate need to be enhanced and to be integrated with other technology and innovation to improve safety regulation adherence in the oil and gas industry.

Safety Climate and the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Investigation on Safety Perceptions among Farmers in Italy

The diffusion of the COVID-19 pandemic has generated numerous interventions aimed at reducing the contagion by means of specific prevention measures, also characterized by stricter occupational health and safety (OHS) procedures at the workplace. To better understand how this novel working context has impacted on farmers’ safety behavior and attitude, a safety climate assessment was carried out by means of the Nordic Safety Climate Questionnaire (NOSACQ-50), which was augmented to include specific items related to the modifications of working conditions due to COVID-19. This allowed us to analyze changes in safety climate perceptions, pointing out worker-manager discrepancies in safety behavior and attitude. Additionally, the COVID-19 questionnaire contributed to analyzing the effects of the specific OHS measures due to the pandemic from the workers’ standpoint. Results showed that concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic have augmented the attention paid to OHS, demonstrating a correlation between the safety climate dimensions and the OHS measures due to COVID-19. Besides, farmers’ risk-taking behavior and attitude appeared still critical, highlighting the need for more specific and contextual interventions in terms of safety information and training. Overall, this study aims to expand knowledge on shared safety awareness and perceptions in the COVID-19 period.

Safety Leadership, Safety Attitudes, Safety Knowledge and Motivation toward Safety-Related Behaviors in Electrical Substation Construction Projects

Poor safety conditions and performance are consequences of individual factors as well as organizational and group factors. However, little attention has been afforded to the sequential impact of these factors on safety-related behaviors (compliance and participation) in the Saudi Arabian electrical construction industry. This study examines the causal effects of leadership and attitudes on safety compliance and participation mediated by motivation and knowledge. The research collected 636 surveys in electrical construction projects for nine large contractors between November 2018 and July 2019 in Saudi Arabia. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to determine the mechanism by which leadership and attitudes affected safety compliance and participation through motivation and knowledge. The results indicate that safety leadership and attitude factors as well as their interactions predicted safety motivation and knowledge. Additionally, these factors affected safety participation and compliance via workers' motivation and knowledge. Safety motivation and safety knowledge positively affected workers' participation and compliance. Management should encourage and regularly assess effective leadership and attitudes and developing motivation and knowledge among employees can improve organizations' safety-related behavior performance.

Developing a Dynamic Supervision Mechanism to Improve Construction Safety Investment Supervision Efficiency in China: Theoretical Simulation of Evolutionary Game Process

The construction industry suffers from poor safety performance caused by the joint effect of insufficient safety investment by contractors and inefficient safety supervision by the government because of the information gap between the two sides. The present study aims to put forward a new pathway to improve safety investment supervision efficiency and analyze the decision-making interactions of stakeholders under this new pathway. For this purpose, this study establishes a safety investment information system to eliminate the information gap between the government and contractors for construction projects in China and further develops a dynamic safety investment supervision mechanism based on this. Evolutionary game theory is used to describe the decision-making interactions among stakeholders under the current static supervision mechanism and the dynamic supervision mechanism proposed in this research. Moreover, system dynamics is adopted to simulate the evolutionary game process and analyze the supervision effect and equilibrium state of different supervision mechanisms. The results reveal that the proposed safety investment information system could facilitate the transition of the supervision mode from static to dynamic; the evolutionarily stable strategy does not exist in the current static penalty scenario; and the dynamic supervision mechanism that correlates penalties with contractors' unlawful behavior probability can restrain the fluctuation of the evolutionary game model effectively and the players' strategy choices gradually stabilize in the equilibrium state. The results validate the effectiveness of the proposed dynamic supervision mechanism in improving supervision efficiency. This study not only contributes to the literature on safety supervision policy-making but also helps to improve supervision efficiency in practice.

The Effects of Multi-Sociodemographic Characteristics of Construction Sites Personnel on Perceptions of Safety Climate-Influencing Factors: The Construction Industry in Saudi Arabia

The construction industry in Saudi Arabia relies prominently on migrant workers of multi-sociodemographic characteristics with different perceptions of a safety climate. The exploration of the perceptions regarding the safety climate among various groups of migrant workers may help identify effective means of improving safety levels at construction sites in Saudi Arabia. This study aimed to examine the effects of multi-sociodemographic characteristics of construction site personnel on their perceptions of the factors that influence the safety climate at construction sites in Saudi Arabia. Data were collected from 401 construction site workers, employed at ongoing construction project sites in Saudi Arabia, using a designed questionnaire. A generalized, linear model approach was applied, using the single ordinal logistic regression method, to analyze the collected data. The results revealed the significant sets of sociodemographic characteristics and their associated subgroups that had significant effects on the perception of importance assigned to each safety climate-influencing factor. These findings provide a better understanding of the views of construction site personnel on the safety climate and can assist construction industry decision-makers, safety policy designers, government agencies, and stakeholders when designing better-targeted enhancement plans and strategies to improve the safety climate of construction sites, based on the sociodemographic makeup of the personnel at each construction site.

NOSACQ-50 for Safety Climate Assessment in Agricultural Activities: A Case Study in Central Italy

Safety climate assessment has been recognized as a powerful tool to bring to light workers' perceptions related to safety practices, attitudes and behaviors at the workplace. Accordingly, its investigation can provide useful information about safety problems within a company before accidents occur. In literature, numerous studies can be found investigating safety climates in different types of industry. However, safety climate assessment in agricultural activities is addressed scarcely, even though agriculture represents a very hazardous sector. To reduce this gap, the present study proposes an investigation of safety climate among farmers by means of the Nordic Safety Climate Questionnaire (NOSACQ-50). The results of the survey brought to light a low level of safety perception of the interviewed sample, especially as concerns safety commitment and risk-taking attitudes. In particular, a different attitude toward safety issues has been registered depending on both the position and gender of the interviewed farmers. Overall, the output of this cross-sectional analysis adds to the current literature by expanding knowledge of safety climate among farmers, representing a baseline for further investigations based on human-centered approaches to enhance safety in agriculture and consequently social and workplace aspects of sustainable agricultural systems.

Determinants for Safety Climate Evaluation of Construction Industry Sites in Saudi Arabia

The hazardous nature of the construction industry requires giving increasing attention to safety management and the available means to eliminate or reduce the risks of workers' injuries. Workers in the construction industry of Saudi Arabia face similar daily risks as workers face in other countries. The safety climate significantly influences safety performance, making research in the field of safety climate a vital step toward raising safety levels at construction sites. This study aims at exploring key components of determinants for safety climate evaluation of Saudi Arabian construction sites. Using data collected from 401 industry practitioners, a dimension reduction statistical approach and exploratory factor/principal component analysis were conducted on 13 safety climate factors that were found to significantly correlate with safety climate evaluation of construction sites. The study revealed three key components of determinants for safety climate evaluation of Saudi Arabian construction sites. Notable components are safety commitment, safety interaction, and safety support. Implications of this study include assisting construction industry stakeholders to bolster the safety climate at their construction sites, which should lead to improved safety performance levels.