Measuring, modeling, and assessing safety communication in construction crews in the US using social network analysis

Alsamadani, Rayyan Mohammednour (Ph.D., Civil, Envi ronmental, and Architectural Engineering) Measuring, Modeling, and Assessing Safety Communica tion in Construction Crews in the US using Social Network Analysis Dissertation directed by Assistant Professor Matthe w R. Hallowell Effective safety communication has been found as a major practice to enhance safety performance. Open discussion from supervisors to em ployees, immediate feedback and corrections, and implementing a lesson-learned prog ram are examples of practices that help managers to improve on-site safety communication. Y et, safety communication has become more challenging, especially for bi or multi-lingua l construction work crews in which Hispanic workers account the majority of the construction wo rkf rce in some States. Beside the language barrier, cultural differences have also influenced safety practices for Hispanic workers. This dissertation employs social network analysis approa ch to quantify and model the weaknesses and potential points of safety communication for small work crews. Additionally, it uses exploratory interview and Photovoice techniques to study safety challenges for Hispanic workers. This dissertation follows a three-journal paper formatio n. The first paper is an exploratory study that models and quantifies the five safety communication modes of local small construction crews; in addition, it generates visualized networks of commu nication patterns. The second paper investigates the relationships between personal att ributes, communication patterns, and safety performance of 161 participants from 14 different w ork crews. The third paper proposes research to study and determine the cultural challenge of sa fety for Hispanic workers. Further, it aims to