This latest issue (Volume 176, Issue 3) of Management, Procurement and Law is a collection of four articles showcasing the best international construction health and safety research from India, Nigeria and South Africa. The easy-to-read articles will appeal to scholars and practitioners keen to see fewer injuries and fatalities on construction sites.
In this first article, Jatau et al. (2023) admonished management to rethink health and safety (training) models to serve people in construction (PiC). The article, which attempts to respond to how we should improve awareness of health and safety (H&S) and share H&S-related information among construction workers, foregrounds the critical role of training in communicating ways to avoid harm and damage to properties on construction sites. The data from construction professionals active in the industry in Nigeria and South Africa shows that training information is mainly shared through seminars, workshops and lectures, as verbal instructions are standard. The gist of the article is that safety communication enhances H&S education, which influences compliance, which remains a significant issue in construction H&S, especially in developing countries. Therefore, management at all levels must go beyond sharing information to tick the box that H&S training has taken place. Instead, management and supervisors of workers on construction sites should endeavour to use training methods that engender understanding and learning. Suggested methods in the article include on-the-job training, peer mentoring, and instructor-led training that are open to the use of audio-visual materials and case studies.
The following article in this issue also addresses H&S training. In this article, on-the-job training takes centre stage with a lean tool called ‘training-within-industry’(TWI). Mollo et al. (2023) argued that TWI could reduce or limit human failure (errors and violations) by improving the safety management system (SMS) on construction sites. The article showcases a framework that urges us to identify problems that cause errors and violations on project sites and to use the beneficial characteristics of TWI and SMS to reduce them. The idea’s premise is based on the well-reported notion that poor SMS is associated with human failure, accidents, injuries, and fatalities. Whenever these problems (accidents, injuries, etc.) are pervasive on a project site, workers and managers will be keen to remedy the situation to save lives and salvage the industry’s image (Phase 1 of the framework). For such reasons, interventions such as TWI are relevant to the construction industry. Phase two of the framework proposed in the article suggests that job programme factors, including knowledge of work (defined by tasks), knowledge of responsibility (defined by the management), job instruction (that builds the knowledge of jobs), job methods (that build the knowledge of systems), and job relations (that build respect for people), would lead to enhanced SMS. The article shows that favourable outcomes, such as better hazard controls and risk assessments, will follow a combined use of TWI and SMS elements on sites (Phase 3). Mollo et al. (2023) up the debate on how H&S errors and violations must be reduced on construction sites.
Addressing violations of safe work procedures in construction is the focus of the following article by Emuze (2023). Anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests that safety violations are routine. The danger of making safety violations part of work routines is better imagined than witnessed. With both statistical and textual data from on-site operatives in South Africa, Emuze (2023) contends that site management influences the violation of safe work procedures (SWP) on project sites to the extent that the ‘normalisation’ of behaviours that increase exposure to harm is made possible. Workers on-site are also not exempt, as they could deviate from SWP to either increase production or handle work pressure when the stakes are high. The notion that unsafe procedures beget violations of SWP on construction sites is emphasised. The article also reiterates that inadequate supervision, sharing of misleading information, and refusal to follow SWPs should not be condoned on construction sites. If this is not the case, all risk assessment (RA) related efforts expended at the start of the project may be voided.
The fourth article of this issue addresses risk assessment, which is central to all precautions required to control hazards on construction sites. Chellappa and Salve (2023) explored barriers to effective safety RA in Indian construction from the view of safety professionals. Relying on the complementarity between qualitative and quantitative data, the article proposed six RA-related challenges on construction projects in India. These include identifying steps in activity and inherent hazards in such a task. It also includes evaluating the risks and scoring before control measures are suggested. Additional barriers include tight schedules and inadequate data. To all these challenges, the article suggests that users should be context specific when undertaking RA-concerning activities and knowledge of construction is not negotiable. The construction H&S corpus echoes the advice from the authors.
From training to RA, the articles in this Volume 176 Issue 3 of Management, Procurement and Law aligns with Sustainable Development Goal 3, as they seek to propagate ‘good health and well-being’ for people on the frontline of construction.
The editorial panel of MAPL is grateful for the continued support of this journal.
