The contribution of construction project features to accident causation: An insight for influencing the health and safety outcomes of projects through pre-construction decision-making

Health and safety (H&S) studies indicate that pre-construction decision-making has a significant impact on the H&S outcomes of construction projects. To enable project participants involved in pre-construction decision-making to greatly and positively influence the H&S outcomes of projects they therefore need insight into construction accident causal factors, especially those factors that emanate from decision-making at this critical stage of project procurement. Among such causal factors are construction project features such as the nature of project, method of construction, site restriction, project duration, procurement system, design complexity (buildability), level of construction, and subcontracting. A critique of H&S literature within the UK construction industry reveals that these construction project features emanate from the client’s brief, design decisions and project management decisions to contribute to accident causation on projects. However, the extent of their contribution to accident causation, and consequently the H&S risk implications remain unknown and requires further investigation. The emerging research questions relating to this knowledge gap together with the research methodology to be adopted in an empirical investigation aimed at unravelling the knowledge gap are subsequently put forth. It is argued that the insight to be obtained from this study will assist construction project participants who are engaged upstream of the project procurement process to positively influence the health and safety outcomes of projects through their decision-making.