Safety Science 72 (2015) 337–350

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Safety Science
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ssci

Review

Overview and analysis of safety management studies in the construction

industry
Zhipeng Zhou a,⇑, Yang Miang Goh a, Qiming Li b
a
Department of Building, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, Singapore
b
Department of Construction and Real Estate, School of Civil Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Persistent endeavors have been made to promote construction safety, but fatalities still plague the indus-
Received 11 May 2014 try. Recently there had been an emergence of a variety of construction safety research focusing on topics
Received in revised form 6 October 2014 such as safety competency, accident statistics, design for safety, and safety culture. A large number of
Accepted 17 October 2014
construction safety studies with the variety of topics make it difficult for stakeholders to have an over-
Available online 7 November 2014
view of this field. Hence a systematic review of previous studies is paramount for facilitating sharing use-
ful research findings and accessing future trends in construction safety research. A five-step framework
Keywords:
was proposed in this review. The analysis focused on publication year, journal title, country/region dis-
Safety management
Construction industry
tribution, organizational level, project phase, project type, innovative technology application and
Systematic review research topic. Three groups of construction safety research were identified. The first group of research
Chronological analysis is conducted from the perspective of safety management process, such as safety assessment and safety
Thematic analysis program. The second group aims to explore the impact of individual and group characteristics in relation
to construction safety, such as worker behavior, perception, and safety climate. The third group utilizes
accident/incident data to improve safety performance. In order to better capture construction safety
research trend, these studies were discussed from chronological and thematic perspectives. Four main
research findings including construction safety research perspectives, construction safety research
trends, innovative technology applications in construction safety, and safety information flow, were
gained. Finally, this review identified and discussed research gaps and corresponding agenda which
can serve as guidance for future construction safety research.
Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
2. Methodology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
3. Data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
3.1. Literature search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
3.2. Literature selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
3.3. Literature coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
4. Data analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
4.1. Year profile of publications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
4.2. Publications distributed by country/region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
4.3. Publications distributed by organizational level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
4.4. Publications distributed by project phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
4.5. Publications distributed by project type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
4.6. Publications distributed by innovative technology application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
4.7. Research topic distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
5. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
5.1. Chronological discussion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

⇑ Corresponding author.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2014.10.006
0925-7535/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
338 Z. Zhou et al. / Safety Science 72 (2015) 337–350

5.1.1. Research topics before 1995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

5.1.2. Research topics after 1995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
5.2. Thematic discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
5.2.1. Impact of individual characteristics on construction safety. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
5.2.2. Impact of group/organizational characteristics on construction safety. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
5.3. Research findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
5.3.1. Construction safety research perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
5.3.2. Construction safety research trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
5.3.3. Innovative technology applications in construction safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
5.3.4. Safety information flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
5.4. Research gaps and agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
5.4.1. Lack of unsafe behavior monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
5.4.2. Lack in applying safety climate to accident prediction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
5.4.3. Ignorance of quantitative relationship identification between project/company scale and construction safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
5.4.4. Lack of construction safety research at the task level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
5.4.5. Excessive concentration on building project and construction phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
5.4.6. Lack of innovative technology applications in construction safety practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
6. Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348

1. Introduction future trends of construction safety. There were several literature

reviews on construction safety in the past, but most of the previous
The construction industry is an old industry that dated back to reviews were focused on specific aspects of construction safety,
the Palaeolithic Age between 40,000 and 12,000 B.C., when rather than comprehensive and systematic. For example,
humans inhabited in caves or in built structures on level ground Laukkanen (1999) conducted a review of occupational health and
(Pérezgonzález, 2005). The first written record concerning safety safety training in the construction sector. Choudhry et al. (2007b)
management in the construction domain was in 2200 B.C. reviewed the literature concerning safety culture, placing particu-
(Pérezgonzález, 2005), when King of Hammurabi of Babylon lar focus on research undertaken from 1998 onwards. Hu et al.
passed a law stipulating penalties for houses falling down and kill- (2011) reviewed factors which could influence the risk of falls on
ing their inhabitants (Clarke et al., 1999). In contrast to other construction sites. Pinto et al. (2011) was concerned with tradi-
industries with high safety risks, the construction industry has tional management methods related with occupational health
the characteristic of small scale of accidents with high frequency, and safety areas, and pointed out the major limitations of these
and diverse hazard sources. The trend of construction accidents methods to deal with construction safety issues. Another literature
has decreased steadily, thanks to continuous efforts from research- review was conducted to explore relationships between construc-
ers and practitioners (Huang and Hinze, 2006; Hallowell, 2012). tion safety and digital design practices with the purpose of foster-
However, much can be done about construction safety, because ing and directing further study (Zhou et al., 2012). Swuste et al.
the construction industry is still regarded as one of the most unsafe (2012) implemented a critical review focusing on the question of
industries at present (Perttula et al., 2006; Pinto et al., 2011). The whether or not it is possible to influence safety in the building sec-
construction sector employs about 7% of the world’s work force, tor. Zhou et al. (2013) reviewed previous studies in the area of
but is responsible for 30–40% of fatalities (Sunindijo and Zou, innovative technology applications for construction safety
2012). Table 1 illustrates the status of construction safety in some management.
countries and it can be inferred that construction safety is a peren- In contrast to past reviews, the contributions of present review
nial global problem. It is apparent that the construction industry is mainly lie in two aspects: (1) the coverage of wider research topics
far from the vision of ‘‘zero accidents/injuries’’ espoused by many on construction safety, and (2) the offering of systematic review on
construction-related companies. past, current, and future research on construction safety. This
Many articles with a variety of topics on construction safety study is especially vital to new researchers in aiding them to obtain
have been published. These research results can serve as the foun- a wider perspective of construction safety management. It can also
dation of progressing construction safety management. Hence a support in-depth investigation and offer potential chances for
systematic analysis of construction safety studies is indispensable researchers and practitioners to fill the gaps between research
for the main stakeholders to share innovative findings and access and practice in the field of construction safety. It is believed that

Table 1
The status of construction safety management in some countries.

Country Description of the status of construction safety

United States The census data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed that a total of 774 workers died from injures they suffered on construction sites
in 2010, accounting for 16.5% of all industries. The fatality rate (9.8 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers) ranked the fourth highest among all
industries (BLS, 2012)
United One third of all workplace fatalities occurred on construction sites. It was a fatal injury rate over four times the average level of all industries and was
Kingdom the cause of the largest number of worker fatalities (Health and Safety Executive (HSE), 2009)
China The number of fatalities was 2538 in the construction industry in 2007 (Zhou et al., 2008)
Singapore There were 24 fatalities in the construction sector in 2006, which occupied 39% of the total 62 workplace fatalities (Ministry of Manpower, 2007)
Australia There were 30 fatalities recorded in 2012. This number of fatalities equated to three deaths per 100,000 workers, which was the fourth highest fatality
rate of all the industries (Safe Work Australia, 2013)
Korea The construction sector occupied the highest percentage of fatalities among all sectors (Yi et al., 2012)
 Z. Zhou et al. / Safety Science 72 (2015) 337–350 339

this systematic review will motivate further studies on construc- Preliminary search
tion safety. The remainder of this study is structured as follows.
Literature
In the second section, a five-phase framework of systematic review Ten journals are identified.
on construction safety studies is designed. The third section
search
describes a three-phase method to collect relevant publications. Secondary search
The fourth section conducts an overview and analysis of these
studies from the aspects of publication year, journal title, coun- Selection based on publication types
try/region, organizational level, project phase, project type, innova-
Literature
tive technology application and research topic. The fifth section Journal articles remain.
selection
conducts discussion from chronological and thematic perspectives,
proposes four main research findings, and identifies six research Selection based on criteria
gaps and corresponding agenda. Finally, the conclusions are stated.
Paper title
Literature Publication year
2. Methodology
coding Journal title
Although literature review usually plays a part of a study in Country or region
most cases, it can also be a stand-alone work. A literature review Organizational level
study is not merely a report on the references. Instead, this type Project phase
of study synthesizes the results from individual studies to produce Project type
a coherent and integrated argument about one research subject
Innovative technologies application
(Fink, 2005). A recent research trend shows an increasing use of Data analysis
systematic review in current literature. Systematic review is a spe- Research topic
cific and reproducible approach for identifying, selecting, and
appraising all the literature of a certain agreed level of quality that
are relevant to a research question (Booth et al., 2012). The appeal Chronological Thematic
of this style of review is that a more rational and standardized discussion discussion
technical process to review a research area, thereby illustrating
the objectivity and transparency of process to the readers (Jesson Discussion Research findings
et al., 2011).
This study adopts the systematic review as a methodological
approach to review the existing construction safety literature to
Research gaps and agenda
explore useful findings and identify knowledge gaps for future
Fig. 1. Main process of systematic review on construction safety studies.
research agenda. Fig. 1 illustrates the main process of systematic
review conducted in this study. The first three steps aim to collect
enough appropriate publications related to construction safety
Table 2
research. Through preliminary search, ten journals with the high-
Search results in the five databases.
est numbers of papers were identified as target journals for sec-
ondary search. The results of secondary search were used to Database EBSCO Engineering Science Scopus Web of
host village direct science
select literature, according to publication types and criteria. The
selected papers were compiled and coded from nine aspects (see No. of 430 779 137 966 730
papers
Fig. 1). On the basis of coding results of nine aspects, data analysis
was carried out to have an overview of construction safety studies.
The research topics were then discussed from chronological and
thematic perspectives, in order to propose useful research findings.
Research gaps and agenda were finally identified to guide future In order to ensure high quality of selected papers, ten journals
studies on construction safety. with the highest numbers of papers focusing on construction
safety were chosen, including Journal of Construction Engineering
and Management (JCEM), Journal of Management in Engineering
3. Data collection (JME), Safety Science (SS), Construction Management and Econom-
ics (CME), Journal of Safety Research (JSR), International Journal of
3.1. Literature search Project Management (IJPM), Engineering Construction and Archi-
tectural Management (ECAM), Automation in Construction (AIC),
The preliminary search was conducted in five databases includ- Accident Analysis and Prevention (AAP), and Reliability Engineer-
ing EBSCO Host, Engineering Village, Science Direct, Scopus and ing and System Safety (RESS). Six of these journals are top journals
Web of Science. The five databases involve the main peer-referred in the field of construction engineering and management (Chau,
journals in the topic of construction management and safety man- 1997): CME (1), JCEM (2), ECAM (3), JME (4), IJPM (6) and AIC
agement. A comprehensive and extensive search was implemented (9). The other four journals are also top journals in the field of
under the ‘‘Title’’ field in the databases. The full search schema is safety management.
‘‘Title ((construction) and (safety))’’. The search is restricted to The secondary search within the ten selected journals was
peer-reviewed papers written in English. The results of the preli- implemented using the ‘‘Title/Abstract/Keyword’’ field of the dat-
minary search are illustrated in Table 2. These papers were abases. As none of the databases can cover all the aforementioned
exported into Endnote (Reuters, 2012). Duplicates were inevitable journals, different databases had to be used. The full search schema
among these papers, owing to adopting overlapping databases. is ‘‘Title/Abstract/Keyword ((construction) and ((safety) or (accident)
Duplicates were then removed and a total of 1628 papers or (incident) or (hazard)))’’. The secondary search identified a total
remained. of 735 papers.
340 Z. Zhou et al. / Safety Science 72 (2015) 337–350

Table 3 (3) The paper was focused on other aspects of construction

The number of relevant papers in the ten journals. management, but not construction safety directly. For
Journal title Abbreviated Number of instance, Gambatese and James (2001) designed a water
journal title relevant papers spray system to suppress dust emissions, but this study is
Journal of Construction Engineering JCEM 139 focused on construction safety or accident prevention.
and Management
Safety Science SS 97 After application of the selection criteria, 439 relevant publica-
Automation in Construction AIC 46
Construction Management and CME 44
tions remained. Table 3 shows the distribution of the 439 papers in
Economics the ten journals. Journal of Construction Engineering and Manage-
Journal of Safety Research JSR 43 ment (JCEM) had the largest number of relevant papers, followed
Accident Analysis and Prevention AAP 26 by Safety Science (SS). More than 50% of the selected papers were
International Journal of Project IJPM 18
published in these two journals, demonstrating the significance of
Management
Engineering Construction and ECAM 16 JCEM and SS in the area of construction safety research.
Architectural Management
Journal of Management in JME 6
Engineering 3.3. Literature coding
Reliability Engineering and System RESS 4
Safety The title, abstract and keywords of the selected papers were
Total number 439 used for literature coding. When the required information cannot
be obtained from the title, abstract and keywords, the full paper
was evaluated to facilitate coding. The coding was focused on the
3.2. Literature selection
sections of research method and conclusions. The following infor-
mation was stored in the database during the coding process: (1)
Some papers which match the subject of construction safety
paper title; (2) publication year of each paper; (3) journal title;
may not be contained, in spite of the strict specifications in litera-
(4) country or region (this information refers to where the studies
ture search. The objective of this review is not to gain a complete
are conducted, rather than where the authors are from); (5) orga-
list of papers, but rather to explore the current trends, useful find-
nizational level (namely industry level, company level, project
ings and research gaps of construction safety management. On the
level, sub-project level and task level); (6) project phase (namely
other hand, some of the selected papers which do not match the
planning, design, construction, maintenance and demolition); (7)
subject but match the research schema are likely contained. It is
project type; (8) innovative technology application; and (9)
essential to make further efforts to screen and filter the 735 papers
research topic.
for in-depth review. Considering publication types firstly, book
reviews, editorials, editor’s notes, generics, letters to editors, news
items, closure and patents were removed, leading to the total num- 4. Data analysis
ber of papers to be decreased to 658. Then, a preliminary review
was conducted through reading abstracts and keywords of the 4.1. Year profile of publications
658 papers and the following three filter criteria were used to fur-
ther select relevant papers for in-depth review and analysis. In the selected 439 papers, the earliest one concerning con-
struction safety management was published in ‘‘Safety Science’’
(1) The words in the search terms were used in different set- (The journal’s former name is ‘‘Journal of Occupational Accidents’’.)
tings or had other meanings not directly relevant to con- in 1978. It presented an empirical study on the nature and deter-
struction safety. For example in Balfanz et al. (1992), minants of safety motivation of employees in the construction
‘‘construction’’ does not refer to the construction industry, industry (Andriessen, 1978). The extent of safety in work behavior
but constructing an event and fault tree in general. was measured by means of an employee self-reported checklist. As
(2) The words in the search terms were only mentioned, but not shown in Fig. 2, the number of relevant papers published annually
studied in depth. As an illustration, Miller and Bernold is not large, fewer than ten before 2002. Especially before 1995, no
(1991) mentioned safety in their abstract, but the paper more than five publications are related to construction safety. In
was focused on the productivity benefits of sensor-inte- general, an increasing number of relevant papers have been pub-
grated nailing equipment. lished gradually since 2002. Although there are only ten relevant
papers in 2007, the overall trend of construction safety research
goes upward. It is noted that there were more than fifty publica-
tions regarding construction safety in 2011. Forty-eight publica-

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013

Fig. 2. Year profile of publications (till August 2013).

 Z. Zhou et al. / Safety Science 72 (2015) 337–350 341

tions have already been published within the first eight months of sub-project company
2013. This shows that more attention has been paid to construc- level, 6.83% level, 8.43%
tion safety in recent years and construction safety research has
become a vital part of construction management research.

4.2. Publications distributed by country/region

In contrast to Osama et al. (2004), who analyzed country/region industry

distribution based on authors or institutions, this review is focused project level,
on where each study was implemented. Some studies that did not level, 38.04%
involve specific countries/regions were excluded from the analysis 44.42%
of country/region distribution. For comparative studies across
countries or regions, each country or region was accounted for
one time in the analysis. It was observed that many of the compar-
ative studies involved the United States’ construction industry
(Recarte Suazo and Jaselskis, 1993; Hassanein and Hanna, 2008;
Ling et al., 2009; Lai et al., 2011).
task level,
A total of 34 countries or regions from six continents were cov-
2.28%
ered in the selected papers (see Fig. 3). Almost 20% of the studies
were conducted in the United States. Other notable countries or Fig. 4. The number of publications distributed by organizational level.
regions with significant number of studies are Hong Kong, Austra-
lia, China, United Kingdom, Finland, Spain and South Korea. Inter-
estingly, despite the relatively small construction industry in Hong
Kong, this region had 28 publications. Other than the countries level, sub-project level and task level. It was noted that more
highlighted earlier, there were no more than 10 relevant studies than 80% of the papers were focused on project and industry lev-
in other countries. As a region, Asia had 92 publications. This els. The studies at project level can be further differentiated
shows the increasing emphasis on construction safety as the region based on the size of the projects that were studied. For example,
grows and develops. However, it was noted that many European Hinze and Raboud (1988) studied large building projects in Can-
journals that publish in non-English languages were not captured ada to evaluate the influence of company or project policies and
in this review. practices on injury frequency. Huang and Hinze (2006) explored
the owner’s role in safety management of large construction pro-
4.3. Publications distributed by organizational level jects. On the other hand, Wilson and Koehn (2000) discussed the
philosophy of safety management on small-to medium-sized pro-
Organizational level of construction safety studies can be clas- ject in northwestern United States. Mahalingam and Levitt
sified into five levels including industry, company, project, sub- (2007) paid attention to global projects and they tried to identify
project and task level. The distribution of publications according challenges that contractors faced when attempting to transfer
to the five levels is shown in Fig. 4. Project level accounted for safety techniques to developing countries on short-term global
almost half of all the studies, followed by industry level, company projects.

Sweden (4) Finland (13)

Canada (5) Denmark (6)
United Kingdom (20) Netherlands (5)
Slovakia (1) China (21)
Hungary (1) Romania (1) South Korea (10)
Italy (1) Japan (4)
Portugal (1) Turkey (2)
Greece (1)
Spain (12) Israel (3) Kuwait (2)
Jordan (1) Thailand (3) Taiwan (6)
United States (84) Egypt (1) Pakistan (1)
Saudi Arabia (2) Hong Kong (28)
India (1)
Honduras (1) Singapore (8)
Ghana (3)

Australia (24)

Brazil (5)
South Africa (1)

Fig. 3. The number of publications distributed by country/region.

342 Z. Zhou et al. / Safety Science 72 (2015) 337–350

Studies at the company level include investigation into compa- of green building design and construction practices on safety and
nies of different scales and types, such as small subcontractor health of workers. In terms of the operation/maintenance phase,
(Loosemore and Andonakis, 2007), large company (Zhou et al., Hinze (1981) explored safety performance of construction road
2008), leading construction company (Choudhry et al., 2009), large maintenance crews in Missouri, the United States, while some
residential framing company (Mitropoulos and Guillama, 2010), researchers (Chan et al., 2008; Hon et al., 2010, 2011) concentrated
and small- and medium-sized company (Kheni et al., 2010). The on safety management of RMAA (Repair, Maintenance, Minor
sub-project level refers to large activities that can be conducted Alteration and Addition) projects. This review did not identify
independently within a project. The type of activity involves exca- any papers related to the demolition phase. It is recommended that
vation (McCann, 2006), roofing (Behm, 2011), scaffolding (Halperin construction safety research should adopt a life cycle approach and
and McCann, 2004), steel work (Leu and Chang, 2013), crane more research should be conducted on the plan, design, operation/
related work (Shapira et al., 2012), concrete formwork (Hallowell maintenance and demolition phases.
and Gambatese, 2009) and trenching (Hinze, 2005). Only 2.28% of
the studies were conducted at the task level. The tasks in these
4.5. Publications distributed by project type
studies were bar bending (Balasubramanian and Prasad, 2007), lift
operation (Sertyesillisik et al., 2010), material transfer (Perttula
Given that publications at company and industry levels were
et al., 2006) and overhead drilling (Rempel et al., 2010). Since basic
focused on companies and the construction industry, only studies
components of a construction project are constructed through
at project level, sub-project level and task level were considered
individual tasks, ensuring the safety of various tasks can be the
to be analyzed. Seven project types were involved in these studies
precondition of a safe project. More research should be conducted
(see Fig. 6). Out of the 234 papers, 205 (88%) publications were per-
at this level so as to develop innovative and practical safe work
tinent to building projects. Green building is becoming increas-
techniques for the industry.
ingly popular owing to environmental requirements and benefits.
However, green building accounts for a higher injury rate than tra-
4.4. Publications distributed by project phase ditional non-green building (Dewlaney et al., 2012; Fortunato
et al., 2012). This serves as the impetus for the study of green
As shown in the curve in Fig. 5, the ability to influence safety is building construction safety. Rajendran et al. (2009) presented a
the highest at the beginning of a project (Szymberski, 1997). Thus study of the impact of green building design and construction prac-
the plan and design phases can better assure safety of subsequent tices on construction worker safety and health. Behm (2011) con-
phases. Nevertheless, Fig. 5 illustrates that 408 (90%) studies ducted observations and field investigations of nineteen
involved the construction phase. Ironically, there was only one rel- vegetated roofs to reveal unsafe access for workers and equipment,
evant paper on the plan phase, which provided a decision tool for a lack of fall protection measures, and other site specific hazards.
decision makers to determine the adequate level of safety invest- Fortunato et al. (2012) applied six detailed case studies to identify
ments in a project (Aminbakhsh et al., 2013). There were 14 studies and evaluate the safety and health risks associated with the design
on the role of designers in construction safety. These studies show
that prevention through design (PtD) is an effective measure to
improve safety performance (Toole and Gambatese, 2008;
Gangolells et al., 2010; Behm, 2011). Eight studies combined the building project 205
design phase with other phases. For example, Frijters and Swuste underground project 12
(2008) developed a model for risk assessment in the design and road project 10
plan phase, and they showed that their proposed model can facil- pipeline project 4
itate risk reduction and prevent possible accidents. Enserink (2001) bridge project 1
proposed a quick scan approach for integral assessment, which oil and gas project 1
airport project 1
argued that construction safety issues should be considered in
the phases of plan and design. Six studies integrated the design 0 50 100 150 200 250
and construction phase. Rajendran et al. (2009) studied the impact Fig. 6. The number of publications distributed by project type.

High 500
408
450

400
Ability to Influence Safety

Number of Publications

350

300

250

200

150

1 100

1 6 3 50
14 5
1 0
Low 0
Start plan design construction operation/maintenance demolition End
Date Date

Fig. 5. The number of publications distributed by project phase.

 Z. Zhou et al. / Safety Science 72 (2015) 337–350 343

Table 4
The number of publications distributed by innovative technology application.

Innovative technology Augmented Laser scan Management Remote Global positioning Geographic Knowledge
reality (AR) information sensing system (GPS) information management
system (MIS) system (GIS) (KM)
Number 1 1 1 1 2 3 3
Innovative technology Ultra wideband Wireless network 3D Automation Data mining Database Robotics
(UWB)
Number 3 3 4 5 5 5 5
Innovative technology Building information Radio frequency Software 4D Computer-aided Sensor Virtual reality
modeling (BIM) identification (RFID) (VR)
Number 6 6 6 7 8 9 9

elements and construction management practices implemented to and diversified. As a result of coding the 439 papers, three main
achieve green certification. Another literature built on previous groups of construction safety research surfaced.
knowledge by quantifying the percent increase in base-level safety The first group of research from the perspective of safety man-
risk resulting from the design strategies and construction methods agement process involves safety plan, safety monitoring, safety
implemented to earn specific LEED credits (Dewlaney et al., 2012). assessment, safety measure, safety performance and so on. The
Perez-Alonso et al. (2011) presented the status of preventive activ- second group pays attention to the impact of workers’ individual
ity in the greenhouse construction industry of southeastern Spain. characteristics (such as worker behavior, perception, competency
Besides building project, other project types are bridge project, oil and attitude) and group/organizational characteristics (such as
and gas project, underground project, pipeline project, road project safety climate, safety culture and relationship among workers)
and airport project, but the number of relevant studies is signifi- on construction safety. The third one mainly focuses on how to uti-
cantly fewer. Due to the different construction methods and char- lize accident and incident data to improve safety performance,
acteristics of non-building projects, safety risks vary a lot including accident statistics, accident cost analysis, quality of acci-
accordingly. There should be a deliberate attempt to increase the dent data, accident causation, and hazard identification. To allow
number of studies on safety of non-building construction projects, analysis of research topics, only the main research topic of each
particularly large-scale infrastructure or industrial projects (such study was classified. Table 5 displays the distribution in detail
as metro, airport, and bridge) which are known for their engineer- according to main research topics. Among all the research topics,
ing complexities. safety measure (SME) was the most frequently studied topic,
accounting for 15.49% of all. Other frequently studied topics
4.6. Publications distributed by innovative technology application include accident statistics, accident causation, safety assessment
and hazard. These five topics add up to about 50% of all studies.
The construction industry is often regarded to be hesitant in
adopting innovative technologies (Andresen et al., 2000;
Gonzalez de Santos et al., 2008) due to the inherent difficulties of 5. Discussion
its unstructured and changing environment. As diverse innovative
technologies continue to develop, researchers are increasingly 5.1. Chronological discussion
aware that innovative technologies application can be an effective
solution to safety issues of construction management (Zhou et al., 5.1.1. Research topics before 1995
2013). In an era with endless emergence of new technologies, In order to illustrate the distribution of research topics more
many studies have resorted to innovative technologies to prevent clearly and conveniently, the time span from 1978 to 2013 was
construction accidents. Sixty-three papers involve a total of 21 divided into 12 periods. Each period contains three years except
types of innovative technologies applied in construction safety. the last one. The last period is composed of 2011, 2012 and the first
Table 4 illustrates the publication distribution by innovative tech- eight months of 2013. Fig. 7 shows the distribution of research top-
nology application. The whole number is larger than 63, as some ics within construction safety before 1995. The research topics
publications involve more than one type of innovative technolo- were very scattered in this period, mainly focusing on accident sta-
gies. It was found that virtual reality and sensor were the most fre- tistics, accident cost, safety regulation and safety measure. Various
quently utilized. Following that were computer-aided and 4D types of accident statistics were analyzed, including back injuries
technologies. of site workers (Stubbs and Nicholson, 1979; Bernold and Guler,
These technology-driven studies often explored a combined 1993), major and minor accidents at the Thames Barrier construc-
application due to different functions of various innovative tech- tion site (Hubbard and Neil, 1985, 1986), occupational accidents in
nologies. To reduce vehicle accidents, global positioning systems the Israeli construction industry (Pines et al., 1987), accidents in
(GPS), smart sensors and wireless networks were integrated to pro- materials handling (Niskanen and Lauttalammi, 1989), serious
duce an advanced construction safety management system enti- occupational accidents in the Finnish construction industry
tled SightSafety (Riaz et al., 2006). Another example was the (Salminen, 1995), and fatalities recorded by OSHA (Hinze and
integration of building information modeling (BIM), location track- Russell, 1995).
ing, augmented reality (AR) and game technologies for building a The study of accident cost was also a common research topic
safety management and visualization system (SMVS) (Park and and these research provided motivation for better construction
Kim, 2013). safety management (Laufer, 1987; Leopold and Leonard, 1987;
Ore, 1992). It was established that despite increase in expenditure
4.7. Research topic distribution due to safety regulation compliance, accident cost decreases with
better compliance. For example, Koehn and Musser (1983) found
Previous analysis demonstrates that the subject of construction that with better safety compliance, ENR (Engineering News-
safety is performed by a range of studies. Research topics are broad Record) 400 companies’ construction cost decreased from 2.8% to
344 Z. Zhou et al. / Safety Science 72 (2015) 337–350

Table 5 1988), robotic materials handling system (Skibniewski and

Research topics distribution. Wooldridge, 1992), rule-based simulation program for construc-
Research topic Proportion tion safety (Stouffs et al., 1994), and backup alarms (Blackmon
(%) and Gramopadhye, 1995).
(1) Safety management process 44.65
Safety assessment (SAS) 7.29 5.1.2. Research topics after 1995
Safety information (SIN) 0.68 With reference to Fig. 8, the distribution of research topics
Safety investment (SIV) 0.91
Safety knowledge (SKN) 2.73
became increasingly diversified and complex after 1995. This is
Safety measure (SME) 15.49 especially so for the period after 2002, where 20 research topics
Safety monitoring (SMO) 4.33 were involved in the line of 2002–2004, 22 research topics were
Safety performance (SPE) 4.78 involved in the line of 2005–2007, and 24 research topics were
Safety plan (SPL) 0.68
involved in line of 2008–2010. The increasing variety of areas cul-
Safety program (SPR) 1.59
Safety regulation (SRE) 2.96 minated in 29 research topics being covered during 2011–2013,
Safety standard (SST) 0.23 accounting for 87.9% of all types of topics. It was observed that
Safety training (STR) 2.96 established research topics like accident statistics and safety mea-
(2) Impact of individual and group/organizational 20.27 sure were still being studied, but the techniques used became
characteristics more advanced. As an illustration, Goh and Chua (2013) used neu-
Age of worker (AOW) 0.23 ral network to study relationship between safety management ele-
Different role in construction safety (DRS) 3.64
Ethnic of worker (EOW) 0.91
ments and accident severity. In addition, there was an increasing
Relationship among workers (RMW) 1.59 focus on proactive management of accidents, for example safety
Safety climate (SCL) 3.64 plan, safety training, safety monitoring, near miss management,
Safety culture (SCU) 2.73 and safety knowledge.
Trade of worker (TOW) 0.46
There is a wide acceptation that a clear, comprehensive, and prac-
Worker attitude (WAT) 0.68
Worker behavior (WBE) 2.28 ticable safety plan should be formulated to ensure safety perfor-
Worker competency (WCO) 0.23 mance (Saurin et al., 2005; Bansal, 2011). A variety of approaches
Worker perception (WPE) 2.73 for safety planning were developed. For example, Saurin et al.
Worker psychology (WPS) 1.14 (2004, 2005) integrated safety planning and control (SPC) into the
(3) Accident/incident data 33.03 construction planning and control process at three hierarchical lev-
Accident causation (ACA) 9.79 els of short, medium and long term. Yi and Langford (2006) proposed
Accident cost (ACO) 2.05
Accident investigation (AIN) 1.82
a theory of safety planning method which could estimate the risk
Accident statistics (AST) 11.85 distribution of a project and help managers evaluate situations of
Causal model (CMO) 1.59 safety risk. Goh and Chua (2009, 2010) proposed a case-based rea-
Hazard (HAZ) 5.24 soning approach to construction safety risk assessment, aiming to
Near miss (NMI) 0.46
utilize past risk assessment and incident cases to improve the effi-
Quality of accident data (QAD) 0.23
Other (OTH) 2.05 ciency and quality of new hazard identification. Geographic infor-
mation system (GIS) was applied in construction safety planning
in a real project in India (Bansal, 2011).
1.4%. This indicates that safety regulations or rules are significant Diverse innovative technologies were adopted to improve safety
for accident cost reduction and accident prevention. training in construction. One application was the computer-based
This duration saw innovation in different types of safety equip- safety training (CBT) of Hispanic construction workers (Evia, 2011).
ment and systems. Some examples include safety helmets Virtual reality technology was used to develop a game technology-
(Gilchrist and Mills, 1987), portable ladders (Hakkinen et al., based safety training platform to promote the safety of construction

AST
OTH ACO
EOW QAD
TOW AIN
1978-1980
AOW NMI

WCO ACA
1981-1983
WAT HAZ

WPS CMO
1984-1986
WPE SPR

WBE SKN 1987-1989

RMW SRE
1990-1992
SCU SIN

SCL SAS
DRS SPE 1993-1995
SMO SME
STR SPL
SST SIV

Fig. 7. The distribution of research topics within construction safety before 1995.
 Z. Zhou et al. / Safety Science 72 (2015) 337–350 345

AST
OTH ACO
EOW QAD
TOW AIN
AOW NMI 1996-1998

WCO ACA

WAT HAZ 1999-2001

WPS CMO
2002-2004
WPE SPR

WBE SKN 2005-2007

RMW SRE
2008-2010
SCU SIN

SCL SAS
2011-2013
DRS SPE
SMO SME
STR SPL
SST SIV

Fig. 8. The distribution of research topics within construction safety after 1995.

plant operations (Guo et al., 2012). Teizer et al. (2013) proposed a are influenced by the safety attitudes of construction workers
novel approach towards integrating real-time location tracing and (Loosemore, 1998; Leung et al., 2010; Hung et al., 2011). To change
3D immersive data visualization technologies to improve ironwork- the safety attitude of practitioners, Tam et al. (2001) applied an
ers’ education and training in safety and productivity. attitude-changing model based on reinforcement theory. Conchie
Another area of research was the use of technologies to facili- et al. (2011) studied how trust and distrust were related to safety
tate collection and monitoring of real-time safety information. leadership. Larsson and Torner (2008) investigated mechanisms by
These technologies include differential global positioning system which psychological climate might influence safety behavior.
(DGPS) (Oloufa et al., 2003), sparse point cloud (Kim et al., 2005), Construction workers’ ability to perceive hazards was shown to
sensor (Lee et al., 2009), remote sensing (Teizer et al., 2010) and have reliable relations to safety performance. An example is the
radio frequency identification (RFID) (Yang et al., 2012). study by Tam et al. (2003), who investigated the relationship
Effective knowledge management has been indicated by the between the characteristics of construction personnel and their
academia to significantly further organizational performance and ability to recognize safety signs and symbols. Yi et al. (2012) sug-
improve long-term competitiveness (Alavi and Leidner, 2001; gested a color scheme to reduce perception-related accidents on
Ruikar et al., 2007; Hallowell, 2012). Safety knowledge manage- construction sites. Some studies concentrated on comparing
ment was also identified as an important area of construction between groups of workers, for example Zou and Zhang (2009)
safety. For instance, Hadikusumo and Rowlinson (2004) conducted compared safety risk perceptions of workers in China and Austra-
a study on a design-for-safety-process tool to capture construction lia. Trajkovski and Loosemore (2006) studied safety implications
safety hazards and the safety measures required from safety engi- of low-English proficiency among migrant workers.
neers. To investigate how safety knowledge management strate-
gies were employed in the construction industry, Hallowell
(2012) conducted 11 case studies on a geographically dispersed 5.2.2. Impact of group/organizational characteristics on construction
sample of general contractors in the United States. Ding et al. safety
(2012) developed a knowledge base using construction drawings, Group/organizational characteristics of construction workers
to facilitate risk identification in subway projects. usually involve safety culture, safety climate, relationship among
workers and different role in construction safety. Most definitions
of safety culture encapsulate beliefs, values, and attitudes that are
5.2. Thematic discussion shared by a group (Yule, 2003). It is recognized that safety culture
plays an important part in workers’ safety on construction sites
5.2.1. Impact of individual characteristics on construction safety (Choudhry et al., 2007a). Safety culture can be compared among
As site workers are direct stakeholders in construction acci- three levels of construction management: top management, super-
dents, there is a growing focus on construction workers to explore visory staff and frontline worker (Fung et al., 2005). Choudhry et al.
the impact of individual characteristics on construction safety. This (2007b) reviewed existing literature on safety culture and provided
research area included studies on traditional classification of work- some clarification in terms of definitions, empirical evidence and
ers and groups, such as trades. For example, Baradan and Usmen its theoretical development. Some measures were explored and
(2006) revealed that ironworkers and roofers had the highest occu- proposed to further safety culture on construction sites (Chinda
pational risk. Fung et al. (2012) developed a risk evaluation model and Mohamed, 2008; Molenaar et al., 2009; Gilkey et al., 2012).
(Q-2-REM) for different construction trades. On the other hand, a In contrast to safety culture, the term ‘‘safety climate’’ is defined
more recent trend was the acceptance that unsafe behavior is as organizational members’ shared perceptions about their work
intrinsically linked to workplace accidents (Lingard and environments and organizational safety policies (Cabrera et al.,
Rowlinson, 1998; Mohamed et al., 2009) and the need for proactive 1997). The definition of safety climate is clearly related to those
management of worker behavior. Safety issues and risky behaviors of safety culture, but safety culture is characterized by shared
346 Z. Zhou et al. / Safety Science 72 (2015) 337–350

30 29

25

20
16
15

10
6
4
5 2 2 2
0 0 0 1 1
0
Period 1: Period 2: Period 3: Period 4: Period 5: Period 6: Period 7: Period 8: Period 9: Period 10: Period 11: Period 12:
1978-19801981-19831984-19861987-19891990-19921993-19951996-19981999-20012002-20042005-20072008-20102011-2013

Fig. 9. The trend of innovative technology application in construction safety.

underlying beliefs, values, and attitudes, safety climate is closer to use different types of technologies to ensure construction site
operations, and is characterized by the day-to-day perceptions of safety. Because to err is human (Mokdad et al., 2000) and an ideal
the working environment, working practices, organizational poli- safety management system without any human errors cannot be
cies, and management (Yule, 2003). Safety climate has been provided, various innovative technologies can serve as the last bar-
regarded as a leading indicator of safety performance. Statistically rier to timely identify human errors and deal with them, and finally
significant relationships were found between safety climate and prevent construction accidents. Technology-driven safety can
personal characteristics, including gender, marital status, educa- assist management-driven safety, rather than replace (Teizer
tion level, number of family members to support, safety knowl- et al., 2010). Both of them are mutually dependent and
edge, drinking habits, direct employer and individual safety cooperative.
behavior (Fang et al., 2006). Safety awareness, safety competence
and safety communication were found to influence safety climate
measurement (Lin et al., 2008). A popular way to study safety cli- 5.3.2. Construction safety research trends
mate is to measure safety climate in a variety of projects or orga- As discussed previously, construction safety research topics are
nizations. For instance, Choudhry et al. (2009) measured safety varying with the times. At the beginning, the academia was mainly
climate in a leading construction company in Hong Kong, Lingard concentrated on construction accident data, inclusive of conduct-
et al. (2010b) conducted their safety climate survey in a large hos- ing accident statistics, analyzing causing factors, calculating acci-
pital construction project in Australia, and Zhou et al. (2011) dent cost and so on. Given that site workers are the direct
focused on a Chinese construction company’s safety climate. stakeholders involvement in construction fatalities/injuries,
Construction safety is affected by the complex interrelation- researchers turned the focus to individual characteristics of site
ships between individuals and within gangs (Baarts, 2009). It was workers, e.g. behavior, perception, attitude, competency and psy-
found that safer workers had good working relationships with their chology. Comparing with individual characteristics of site workers,
foreman, the employer and their fellow crew members (Hinze, group/organizational characteristics are more fundamental and
1981). In addition, Sunindijo and Zou (2012) suggested that polit- they can have heavy impact on individual characteristics of work-
ical skill, which is one of the most important skills in management, ers. The academia subsequently tried to explore the impact of
positively influenced the implementation of safety management group/organizational characteristics on construction safety, in a
tasks and promoted the development of safety climate. range from the relationship among workers to organizational
Many research highlighted the roles played by different parties safety climate or culture. The trend of construction safety research
in construction safety management, such as owner, designer, gen- is much more diversified at present. Twenty-nine topics were
eral contractor, sub-contractor, and foreman. Smith and Roth focused during the recent period of 2011–2013 (see Fig. 8). This
(1991) discussed how contract documents and past court decisions indicates that the academia is endeavoring to use multi-means to
influenced the owner’s safety liability. Hinze and Wiegand (1992) address safety issues and improve safety management in the con-
assessed the extent to which designers’ decisions were made with struction industry.
specific consideration given to safety of construction workers.
Toole (2002) highlighted that specific site safety responsibilities 5.3.3. Innovative technology applications in construction safety
should be assigned based on the ability of designers, general con- Construction projects are often built in an unstructured and
tractors and subcontractors, so as to prevent root causes of con- changing environment due to their inherent complexities and diffi-
struction accidents. Rowlinson et al. (2003) studied foremen’s culties. Therefore safety hazards or risks in construction sites cannot
opinions regarding 27 safety supervisory tasks. be completely excluded. Innovative technology application can be
an intermediate solution to prevent workers from injuring in an
5.3. Research findings environment with safety risks. Fig. 9 illustrates the trend of innova-
tive technology application in construction safety. No more than two
5.3.1. Construction safety research perspectives studies considered adopting innovative technologies in construc-
Despite the diversification of research topics in the field of con- tion safety before ‘‘period 9’’. However, there have been a signifi-
struction safety, they are mainly derived from two research per- cantly increasing number of construction safety studies adopting
spectives: management-driven and technology-driven. As to the innovative technology application since ‘‘period 9’’, but the number
first perspective, corresponding researchers deem that enhancing climbed to 29 in the recent ‘‘period 12’’. This demonstrates that more
management performance can effectively guarantee construction and more researchers have recognized the effectiveness of innova-
safety and avoid fatalities or injuries on construction sites. The tive technology application to support safety management in the
studies from the perspective of management usually involve safety construction industry. As the functions of various innovative tech-
climate, safety culture, worker’s competency or behavior, hazard nologies are different from and complementary to each other, it
management, and so on. The other perspective focuses on how to tends to be an integrated application of various innovative technol-
 Z. Zhou et al. / Safety Science 72 (2015) 337–350 347

ogies. Twenty-three studies integrated at least two types of innova- climate factors (Glendon and Litherland, 2001) and properties
tive technologies assisting in construction safety. (Lingard et al., 2010a), the ways to improve safety climate (Zhou
et al., 2008; Zou and Sunindijo, 2013), and the measurement of
5.3.4. Safety information flow safety climate scores in multi-levels (Lin et al., 2008; Choudhry
The way of safety management in the construction industry et al., 2009). Despite the importance of safety climate in the pro-
has varied from reactive to proactive. Safety information flow motion of construction safety, previous studies have not been
plays a key role in this variation. Proactive safety management focused on how to apply safety climate to accident prediction. As
requires safety information flow to be more smooth and efficient. a leading indicator or precursor, safety climate has the great poten-
Basically construction safety management is a process of safety tial to timely predict accidents on construction sites.
information flow involving information collection, transmission,
storage, analysis, estimation, visualization and response. Various
innovative technologies can be adopted to assist in managing 5.4.3. Ignorance of quantitative relationship identification between
safety information flow. Radio frequency identification (RFID), project/company scale and construction safety
laser scanning, sensor, and global positioning system (GPS) were Some researchers conducted construction safety studies from
used to collect safety related information, such as identity infor- the perspective of project scale or company scale. It was found that
mation, location information, and environment information. accident rate is higher in small construction businesses than in lar-
Wireless network and ultra wideband were used to promptly ger ones (Jeong, 1998; Kheni et al., 2010). This is because small
transmit safety information to the right places and persons. Ana- construction businesses have fewer resources, making it difficult
lytical technologies (e.g. data mining, geographic information sys- to effectively perform construction safety management
tem (GIS), and augmented reality) and visualization technologies (Champoux and Brun, 2003). On the contrary, large ones have bet-
(e.g. 3D, 4D, virtual reality, and building information modeling ter organization, greater awareness of occupational safety, and
(BIM)) were combined to analyze safety information and visualize more training for construction workers (McVittie et al., 1997;
the results of safety assessment, in order to guide construction Kheni et al., 2010). However, these were descriptive studies and
practice to the avoidance of fatalities or injuries. only identified the qualitative relationship between project/com-
pany scale and construction safety. Their quantitative relationship
5.4. Research gaps and agenda is still a gap which can be supplemented in future research. Studies
can be done to determine the extent of project/company’s effects
The academia has already done a significant number of studies and their role in construction safety performance.
related to construction safety, and these studies have demon-
strated many benefits for the construction industry. Three main
groups including a total of 33 types of construction safety research 5.4.4. Lack of construction safety research at the task level
topics are identified in this review. The diversification of construc- As discussed in Section 4.3, more than 90% of the studies were
tion safety research topics shows that researchers and practitio- concentrated on the industry, company and project levels. Studies
ners are exploring a variety of paths to advance construction conducted at the task level only accounted for 2.28% of all. Tasks
safety management level. Nevertheless, this review still identified are often performed to construct basic components of one pro-
six research gaps which will be discussed below. Corresponding ject. Tasks are related to specific behavior of workers, material,
research agenda are also proposed. construction method, equipment/tools, and working environment,
which are direct factors of construction safety. Therefore ensuring
5.4.1. Lack of unsafe behavior monitoring the safety of various tasks can be the precondition of safety at the
Many studies argued that the majority of fatalities/injuries are sub-project, project, company and industry level. More attention
ascribed to workers’ unsafe behavior (Choudhry and Fang, 2008). should be paid to safe construction tasks, in order to explore
It is widely recognized that workers’ unsafe behavior is intrinsi- innovative and practical work methods or techniques for the con-
cally linked to workplace accidents (Lingard and Rowlinson, struction industry.
1998; Mohamed et al., 2009). Some studies endeavored to
explore why workers engaged in unsafe behavior (Teo et al.,
2005; Choudhry and Fang, 2008), and how to foster safe behavior 5.4.5. Excessive concentration on building project and construction
on construction sites (Teo et al., 2005). Although these studies phase
and corresponding findings are significant to enable workers to There were 88% studies concentrating on the project type of
work more safely, they cannot guarantee the complete elimina- building. Only 29 studies were focused on non-building projects,
tion of unsafe behavior from construction sites. It is essential to such as underground project, road project, bridge project and pipe-
explore methods to monitor unsafe behavior in case of its occur- line project. This shows that there is a need for more construction
rence. Considering the complexities and difficulties of unsafe safety research on non-building projects, particularly complex
behavior monitoring, manual method is not enough to fulfill infrastructure or industrial projects. Their engineering complexi-
the task. The development of information and communications ties will increase construction safety risks. Similarly, this review
technology (ICT) provides the opportunity and possibility to has also shown that current safety research tends to focus on the
establish an unsafe behavior monitoring system based on ICTs. construction phase. Fig. 5 reveals that the ability to influence safety
This can be an important area of construction safety research. is the highest at the beginning of a project (Szymberski, 1997).
Some studies have taken a lifecycle approach, where construction
5.4.2. Lack in applying safety climate to accident prediction safety research takes into account the different phases of a project.
There is an increasing interest in utilizing safety climate to It is recommended that future research should diversify the efforts
improve construction safety. The significance of safety climate and ensure that non-building projects and non-construction
and its relationship with safety performance has been established phases should be paid more attention. Additionally, it can also be
in construction safety research (Siu et al., 2004; Mohamed et al., interesting to study construction safety management from other
2009). Safety climate is the manifestation of normative values, dimensions of contractual differentials, competition and prices,
beliefs, and behaviors at a point in time (Yule, 2003; Cooper and new building concepts and the globalization of the construction
Phillips, 2004). The academia made great efforts to explore safety market for future research.
348 Z. Zhou et al. / Safety Science 72 (2015) 337–350

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