Proactive Approach to Measure Safety Management on Building Projects in Saudi Arabia

Safety management is important throughout the world specifically on building projects, which are prone to accidents due to their unique operations, dynamic and ever-changing nature. In every country, contractors implement safety management systems (SMSs) to avoid accidents and comply with applicable laws, regulations and to provide safe work environments for their workers. Nonetheless, accidents still happen on many building projects in the country. The objective of this work is to measure safety management as perceived on building projects by employing a proactive approach in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to improve site safety. A survey instrument is utilized to gather data from building projects. Another questionnaire is used to conduct interviews with the key managers on the same projects. Analysis of the questionnaire survey is performed after entering the data into SPSS software by applying factor analysis and multiple linear regression. Factor analysis extracted two significant factors, including "management commitment, employee involvement, and safety training"-factor 1, and "project safety plan, safety committee, and safe use of equipment"-factor 2, which proactively measure the implementation of safety management on the building projects. The safety model obtained by multiple regression analysis identifies two significant contributors to the performance of the SMS. Analysis of the interviews complemented and validated the results of the questionnaire survey. The findings provide in-depth understanding of proactively measuring safety management on building projects for the construction industry practitioners to make project sites safer.