Construction safety management: the case for a new approach to research-informed change

Construction industry safety performance is shameful. Even though many research projects have been undertaken over recent decades, no major improvement in performance has taken place. In mainstream business, ideas such as high-reliability organising have been developed based on decades of research and debate over the nature and focus of safety management. Yet, very little of this useful research has been implemented in the construction industry. What has been implemented has been piecemeal and focused on specific problems rather than taking a big picture of how the industry operates and what characteristics make it so unsafe. Arguably, research into occupational health, safety, and wellbeing has stimulated debate and contradictory viewpoints leading to a growing consensus that accidents are unavoidable, but little by way of improvement of safety outcomes themselves. This chapter problematises this situation and sets out a research agenda which might address this failing in the future.