A FRAMEWORK FOR ENHANCING AND IMPROVING THE SAFETY CULTURE ON SAUDI CONSTRUCTION SITES

Improving safety culture is necessary to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities on construction sites internationally. A comparative study of eight developed and Arab countries shows that Saudi Arabia is performing poorest in terms of the rates of major injuries and fatalities, and embedding a safety culture in practice remains a challenge. Three key elements of a safety culture model are identified from the literature: person (safety climate), environment/ situation (safety management system) and behaviour (safety behaviour). These have been constituted into safety culture models. There is also a fourth element relating to organisation. However, there is a lack of research which considers how these components can be integrated into a holistic safety culture model. A conceptual framework is proposed that adopts and integrates these elements for application to the Saudi construction industry. The framework is composed of the three elements derived from the existing frameworks in the literature, and the fourth element of organisational context. The framework will be developed and tested using Saudi construction projects and it is expected that the results of the study will be of benefit to contractors for measuring their own safety culture performance.