Consistency Of Safety Management System Implementation: A System Dynamics Approach

Site safety issues have always been a significant concern in the industrial world. As in any other industry, the construction industry also has a deep impact because of accidents. Accidents do have greater impact on human life and health but besides these, there are several other issues affected by an accident in a working area. Site accidents can have serious effect on the company’s position and reputation in the extremely competitive construction marketplace due to the direct impact on the company’s business.

Different researchers have attempted to identify the factors attributable to a successful construction project. It was obviously seen that, in the components of project management factors, safety management or safety program is one of complementary factors contributing to a project success.

There are several questions and concern that every policy maker trying to focus on safety matters in a company. The basic drawback of the policy maker is that they always search for the defect in their policy rather than evaluating the working environment and conditions under which it had been adopted. It should be noticed that the policy that has been effective 10 years back may not produce the same result today. Also the policy that has successful in one region may not bear the same outcome in the other. The effectiveness of policy depends not only in the content of policy itself but also on factors like time, working culture, hierarchical need, human attitude, behavior etc.

Throughout the entire construction projects life starting from the design phase to the very end of execution phase, numerous project management actions are deployed in terms of planning, scheduling, quality assurance and communication system (Chan et. al, 2004). Action involving safety issues is also a basic process included in order to execute the project safely. This is because a major accident during execution phase can leads to many problems for company.

As a result, many companies have established own safety program for preventing the occurrence of accidents, as they have recognized the potential impacts of accidents and their impacts in the longer run. But do they ever review “What are the impacts of such safety program”, “Are these safety programs consistent or are they being followed with great care” or in other words whether the program positively or negatively affected their execution or is there any consistency in their Safety Management System Implementation. National Occupational Health & Safety Commission (NOHSC) has stated that most of companies have traditionally focused only on outcome measures of performance, for example, the accident records.

Therefore, Mr. Niraj Baidya made a study to review the actual position which main aspect is that, under their safety program, do they know these:

1. Whether the root causes of accidents still exist or were eliminated.
2. Whether the safety program implemented is effective or not.
3. Whether project participants are satisfied with the program.
4. How consistency they are in terms of their Safety Management System Implementation

This study primarily aimed to investigate the Consistency of Safety Management System Implementation using the System Dynamics Approach under safety operation of Case Study Company i.e. Bovis Lend Lease (Thailand) Limited. The main objectives of the study were to: (1) identify the endogenous and extraneous factors which affect safety performance; and (2) develop a system dynamics model to explain how the factors affect the safety performance

Conclusion
This research investigated the impact of various components on the site condition in terms of unsafe act and condition in the various Bovis projects. The objective of this modeling exercise was firstly to understand the mechanism of various endogenous and exogenous factors affecting the safety performance of various Bovis projects and develop a system dynamics model to explain how the factors affect the safety performance and secondly to identify the general guidelines for policy formulation. Budget, attitude and behavior, BLL employee commitment, BLL employee understanding, BLL supervision, equipment on hand, knowledge, pre contractual communication, safety practice, safety training, subcontractor supervision, subcontractor understanding, top management commitment, understanding BLL requirement, and worker understanding are the primary focused variables. Going into details of each factors helps to give a clear picture of the problem existing in the site. These are the key factors that have been found during generic model formulation. However, these issues are further influenced by several factors which have been explained briefly as follows:

1. Unsafe site condition is positively influenced by the work speed, uncertainties and the skilled fraction in the project. Complexity of project and weather influenced the uncertainties whereas the total number of workers and skilled workers generates skilled fraction. Unsafe condition causes accident generation, thus affecting the progress rate. Progress rate results the increment of schedule pressure and thus increasing the work speed.
2. Understanding of worker, subcontractor and BLL staff directly affected by the knowledge flow gained from the safety training. With the improvement of understanding, supervision and commitment level of the different parties enhances, thus affecting the attitude and behavior or workers and improve the site condition.
3. Subcontractor safety understanding, experience working with BLL and BLL work system comprising of pre contractual document, safety practice and coordination positively affects the subcontractor understanding of BLL safety requirement. In addition to subcontractor understanding, intention of subcontractor affects the subcontractor budget allocation and safety expenses.
4. Complexity of project, client and the desired goal of safety condition implemented by the BLL management influence the budget allocation.

A dynamic simulation model representing the perceived mode was built using the system dynamic methodology. Simulation describes the current behavior and the inferred future. Site condition is measured in terms of unsafe act, condition and accident record of the project. The model structure is based on the literature reviews and the information gathered from the interview conducted with the different parties namely Bovis Project team, subcontractors and the workers involved in the project site.
Sensitivity test indicate the potential parameters for behavioral improvement. The model was applied to the investigation for various components affecting the safety performance. Real life practices were explored to make practically possible changes in the sensitive parameters. Three policies in order to improve the safety training and knowledge flow, Proactive subcontractor awareness and improving supervision were presented in the model for an improved and safe site condition. The implementation methodology of the derived policies was also described in a reasonable detail.

Recommendation
To enhance the project site condition, the following recommendations are suggested:
1. To develop a Proactive Awareness to Subcontractor. BLL should not only to provide the written documents and formal meeting but also arrange some kind of workshop where the sub contractor are provided with training and demonstration about all the safety need so that they have thorough with the Bovis safety requirement before the commencement of the work.

2. Supervision is a critical process for maintaining proper site condition. Thus BLL should provide sufficient training and information to all supervisors. They could also provide a specialist supervisor in the site. Providing a supervisor who is specialist to his work increases the effectiveness of supervision on the site by. Having a specialist leads to not only proper quality of work, but the attitude and behavior of workers to quality and safety increases.

3. Training is the most common method of responding to employee’s performance deficiencies. BLL should make their training program more effective by providing focused group training, survey based training and interactive training. For the focused training, workers should be divided into groups based on their skill and scope of work. The training program content and method of presentation should reflect the needs and characteristics of the work force. Safety program should also comprise of evaluation procedure to determine its effective and to provide feedback for future improvement.

His thesis abstract is copied and posted

ABSTRACT

The construction industry is notorious for its poor safety record when compared with other industries. The major causes of accidents have been identified, and can be directly attributed to unsafe design and site practices. Accidents arise from different causes that can generally be classified as physical incidents posing hazardous situations, and behavioral incidents caused by unsafe acts. These studies is concerned with understanding the mechanism of various endogenous and exogenous factors affecting the safety performance in terms of unsafe act and condition of various Bovis projects from different prospective of BLL employees, Subcontractors and workers. Based on the factors, an applicable simulation model was built using the system dynamic methodology. The model was calibrated to investigate its dynamic problem to explain how the factors affect the safety performance and to formulate and evaluate the practical policies to improve the performances. In order to considerably improve performance and to be able to adapt to different scenarios, four integrated policies combining the individual policies having the most potential were evaluated. The results reveals that Developing a Safety Culture, Effective and Focused Training Program, Proactive Awareness to Subcontractor and Specialist Supervisor are the most effective policies for improving the exiting safe site condition.