An overview of safety management

Safety management is the key to ensuring that safety measures are implemented on construction sites. With the implementation of performance based safety legislation in many countries the onus has moved away from enforcement of prescriptive regulations to setting up of an infrastructure within the company to manage safety issues in a spirit of self regulation. The following chapters address a number of key issues relating to safety management and the examples used are drawn from four continents. Three chapters deal with the related issues of safety culture, relational contracting and subcontractor management as means to effective safety management. The first of these identifies the goals of a safety management system in terms of safety culture and performance measurement and the following chapters discuss organisational mechanisms for achieving these goals. The next chapter moves down to the individual level and deals specifically with the issue of the performance based approach to safety management and its impact on construction managers. Three subsequent chapters address issues of safety management through the medium of project management and project planning, emphasising the need for communication. The final paper deals with the practical implementation of the 5S system of safety management.