Dr Tanvi Newaz

Falling from height (FFH) is blamed for causing significant injuries and deaths on construction sites. Previous research has outlined a broad range of technological advances facilitating the management of the FFH safety risk. However, the extant literature lacks a comprehensive assessment to investigate the contribution of various FFH technologies, as well as their implementation feasibility on construction sites, which provides rationale for this study. The study aims to assess recent safety technologies which can be used to control the risk of FFH on construction sites, especially in urban building construction projects. A scoping review was conducted to identify such technologies and provide insight into their application in the construction industry. As a result of searching Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar databases between 2010 and 2021, a total of 86 representative studies were selected and reviewed. Following this stage, an assessment of their feasibility was carried out based on a set of criteria from the literature. A total of 7 FFH technologies were identified, characterising the contribution of recent technologies to the prediction, prevention, and mitigation of FFH risks. These technologies include (1) Safety risk assessment and propagation, (2) real-time sensing and monitoring, (3) automated prevention through design, (4) ontology and knowledge modelling, (5) virtual reality for FFH training, (6) personal fall arrest systems, and (7) collective fall protection systems. This research contributes to an improved understanding of the status of FFH technologies. The feasibility assessment provides insight into suitable technologies for construction projects of various sizes and features.

Academic institutions play a prominent role in nurturing resilience skills in their graduates especially in fields, such as construction management (CM), which deal with a challenging work environment. Although resilience is a well-established topic in the literature, there is still a paucity of research that examines the importance of academic resilience interventions in the CM discipline. To address this research gap, this study aims to analyse the importance of academic resilience interventions (ARI) from the perception of CM students. First, the literature on ARIs in relevant contexts was reviewed followed by a quantitative survey to obtain the viewpoints of undergraduates undertaking CM programs in Australia. This paper is based on the survey data collected from 105 undergraduate students from five universities. Applying an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), three latent variables were found: (1) industry engagement; (2) raising awareness; and (3) readiness and empowerment to represent the identified ARIs. An importance analysis using the 2D quadrant method revealed that the ARI measures labelled ¿site visits,¿ ¿role model,¿ and ¿self-assessment¿ from the industry engagement aspect (factor1), ¿role-playing¿ from the raising awareness aspect (factor2), and ¿case study¿ from the readiness and empowerment aspect (factor3) are the most important ARIs from the perception of students. An independent-samples t-test revealed that there is no significant difference between the perception of male and female students on the importance of each ARI. The study provides an enhanced understanding of resilience interventions that can be leveraged for improving the CM curricula.

A Psychological Contract of Safety (PCS), based on mutual obligations between supervisors and workers, has been observed in an Australian construction context applied to safety. It has been described in recent research explaining the influential role of supervisors. In the past, there have been numerous studies establishing that the mainstream theory of the Psychological Contract (PC) affects behaviour when applied to various cultural backgrounds. Despite this, there is no established theory that explains how PCS may influence workers¿ behaviour in alternative cultural backgrounds. To test this theory, data were collected from construction projects in two divergent cultures, Australian and Chinese. A sample of 352 Australian and 374 Chinese construction workers completed a survey related to PCS and its influence on safety behaviour. Results from using Structural Equation Modelling show that there is a strong influence of the PCS on the safety behaviour of individual workers in both countries. Specifically, the Chinese workers placed higher PCS influence on both compliance and participation behaviour than the Australian workers. The research findings have been contextualized with managerial and cultural implications allowing practitioners to apply the mechanism to improve safety behaviours of workers in their respective cultural contexts. Conceptualising the extant PC theory as a framework from which to leverage PCS management initiatives brings a new approach to construction safety studies, revealing the influential role of supervisors in interpreting safety obligations in a cross-cultural construction setting.

Previous research enables managers to apply appropriate safety management factors for increased site safety. However, the heterogeneity of such factors in contemporary studies makes it difficult for practitioners to keep up to date with relevant alternatives. There is a paucity of systematic reviews that examine factors, map out their relationships, categorize research gaps, assess the practicality of research findings, and offer direction for future research. In this paper, a systematic review of 2574 articles published between 2010 and 2020 and a full-text examination of 75 quantitative surveys were conducted to catalogue, synthesize, and assess safety management factors in contemporary literature. Thematic analysis subsequently revealed 38 interrelated safety management factors to be classified under three individual, workgroup, and organizational groups. A critical content analysis of the representative studies was conducted to identify five future research trends as well as associated research gaps and directions on construction safety management in the form of an agenda suggesting a shift in research emphasis from physical safety issues to organizational and culture-related factors that have the potential to systematically enhance the overall safety performance. Furthermore, directions are provided to safety practitioners concerning the useful implementation of safety management factors.

Purpose: Safety climate and its impact on safety performance is well established; however, researchers in this field suggest that the absence of a common assessment framework is a reflection of the state of development of this concept. The purpose of this paper is to propose a five-factor model that can be used to diagnose and measure safety climate in construction safety research and practice. Design/methodology/approach: A systematic review was adopted, and following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, 574 articles were selected at the start of the study based on a developed review protocol for investigating safety climate factors. While examining the factor analysis of different studies, data reliability and data validity of the individual research findings were considered and frequency of factors uploaded was used to determine the significance as a quantitative measure to develop the ranking of safety climate factors. Findings: The review identified that, from the established measures of safety climate in construction, there is little uniformity on factor importance. However, management commitment safety system role of the supervisor; workers¿ involvement and group safety climate were found to be the most common across the studies reviewed. It is proposed these factors are used to inform a five-factor model for investigating safety climate in the construction industry. Originality/value: The findings of this study will motivate researchers and practitioners in safety to use the five-factor safety climate model presented in this paper and test it to develop a common factor structure for the construction industry. The fact that the model is comprised of five factors makes it easier to be used and implemented by small-to medium-sized construction companies, therefore enhancing its potential use.