Safety culture, green construction, and a multi-ethnic workforce: a case study

Details

• Personal Author:
  Chapman LJ ; Cunningham, Thomas R. ; Flynn M
• Description:
  The problem: Annual injury and fatality rates in the US construction industry are currently higher and perhaps among the highest of all US industry sectors (NIOSH, 2014, Gillen et al. 2014). Perhaps more important, the high rates in the construction industry have failed to decline despite concerted federal safety agency and industry efforts over a number of years (Gillen et al., 2014; NIOSH, 2008). In addition, there is little current scientific evidence about which factors might be contributing the most to injury and fatality rates or about which factors might be the most amenable to intervention. Safety culture defined: Safety culture has become, in some sense, a label attached too much of the entire constellation of efforts that have been accomplished to address work safety in construction and in other industries. Although the first safety culture studies of the construction industry were completed thirty-five years ago, safety culture has not yet been clearly defined. (Cox and Flin, 1998; Pidgeon, 1991; Smith et al., 1978). A frequent question is "what's the difference between safety culture and safety climate?" One way that has been suggested to discriminate between the two has been to view safety climate as a static measurement or photograph of the dynamic process that is safety culture (Hecker and Goldenhar, 2014). Safety culture case examples: In an attempt to find new ways to improve safety, a few case studies focused on safety culture or safety climate have been accomplished recently on large construction projects. For example, safety culture and climate were carefully documented during the construction of London's 2012 Olympic Park in order to learn from and transfer ideas and process improvements to construction projects throughout the United Kingdom (Finneran et al, 2012; Cheyne et al., 2011). In another example, prompted perhaps by eight workplace fatalities, an extensive safety culture and climate assessment was conducted during the construction of the 2006-09 Las Vegas City Center, then the largest commercial construction project in US history (Gittleman et al., 2010). This paper on the Omni hotel project is another case study of a large construction project that is intended to investigate and document the development of a safety culture. Can better safety culture or climate produce better safety performance? Several recent studies have examined the value of measuring safety climate to predict safety performance and safety outcomes. For examples, three meta-analyses have tested pathways between safety climate, related constructs, safety behaviors, and injuries (Nahrgang et al. 2010; Christian et al. 2009; Clarke, 2006). To varying degrees, these wide-ranging analyses of multiple studies have found evidence to support a relationship between safety climate, safety performance, and safety outcomes. While the evidence for safety climate predicting safety performance is not unanimously strong across the numerous studies that have been conducted, there is clearly evidence to suggest potential value in aiming to improve safety culture to reduce workplace injuries. At the same time, traditional measures used for safety performance may be problematic. Measures of safety performance may be lagging indicators: There is evidence that the traditional measures of safety performance, such as rates of fatalities, lost time injuries or worker compensation claims may be problematic because they are lagging indicators. Lagging indicators are changes that lag or take place only long after the workplace problems that create them have begun to occur. In addition, they are unlikely to show improvement until months to years after changes that actually improved safety have been implemented and succeeded (Clark, 2006). Existing measures of safety culture or climate are also problematic, perhaps even more so. Indeed, even definitions sufficient to discriminate between safety culture and climate are difficult to agree on (Hecker & Goldenhar, 2014). As a result, there are very few good studies indicating that either workplace culture or climate improvements can improve workplace safety performance. The Dallas Omni Hotel project: After a May 2009 citywide referendum that supported a city-owned convention center hotel, the Omni Hotel project formally began on September 15th 2009. The hotel officially opened two years and almost two months later, on November 11, 2011, sixty-one days ahead of schedule. The hotel complex was constructed at a total cost of $331.6 million and came in under budget. Construction work was completed 61 days ahead of schedule and within its budget (ENR, 2013). The Omni Hotel's 1,001 rooms are located in a 19 story, boomerang-shaped tower. An adjoining, four story podium houses 80,000 square feet of meeting rooms and public spaces including five culinary venues, a full service spa, a fitness center and a rooftop pool (David, 2014; City of Dallas, 2014; ENR, 2013) The Dallas Omni Hotel project's construction phase achieved substantial statewide and nationwide recognition and acclaim. In 2012, the TEXO professional construction association (that represented commercial contractors in North and East Texas) bestowed four distinguished building awards on the Omni project including 1) Balfour/Russell/Pegasus Joint Venture received the Design and Build Award for projects over $30 million 2) Walker Engineering received the Electrical 3 Award for projects over $10 million, 3) The Brandt Companies received the Mechanical 3 Award for projects over $10 million, and 4) the KPost Company received the Exteriors Award (TEXO, 2012). Also, in 2013, the Omni Dallas became the first and only Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold-certified hotel in Texas, and the largest LEED gold-certified new construction hotel in the United States outside of Las Vegas. According to city documents, the project was noteworthy for being accomplished with "no major injuries/low accident ratio" and for the "3000+ project jobs created" during the construction phase (City of Dallas, 2010). Managers associated with the construction of the Omni Hotel suggested to the authors that there were innovative aspects to the safety culture at Omni and offered to cooperate in a research case study. According to members of the Omni construction management team, the Omni project was unique in that the level of safety and health performance was above and beyond anything they had experienced on projects of this size. This research project was designed to document the development and experience of a model positive safety culture during the Dallas Omni hotel construction project through manager and safety supervisor interviews. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Construction Industry Mortality Occupational Health Race Factors Safety Small Business
• Keywords:
  Construction-industry Construction-workers Injuries Injury-prevention Mortality-data Mortality-rates Racial-factors Safety-climate Safety-practices Safety-research Small-businesses

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• Publisher:
  American Society of Safety Engineers
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  Ohio ; OSHA Region 5 ; OSHA Region 6 ; Texas
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  EID - Education and Information Division
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-9
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20046599
• Citation:
  Safety 2015: Proceedings of the 2015 ASSE Professional Development Conference, June 7-10, 2015, Dallas, Texas. Des Plaines, IL: American Society of Safety Engineers, ASSE-15-662, 2015 Jun; :1-9
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2015
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Safety 2015: Proceedings of the 2015 ASSE Professional Development Conference, June 7-10, 2015, Dallas, Texas
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:b0a016e85ef1b081ec7c1ca43b53aa1f0d104bc1d091e7c3f8679f791ff85237a097e75206397f799bb316993d1abddcac1910cee14c41794ba8a6653f0effcd
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/201606/cdc_201606_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 89.23 KB ]