Determinants of Safety Climate for Building Projects: SEM-Based Cross-Validation Study

Abstract

This study develops a safety climate (SC) measurement scale for building projects in Pakistan. In addition, it attempts to validate an existing SC scale in the cross-cultural environment of a developing country and highlights the implications of its cross-validation. The SC data collected from 40 under-construction multi-storey building projects were split into calibration and validation samples for conducting the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis respectively. This resulted in a 24-item SC scale comprised of four factors: management commitment and employees' involvement in health and safety (MC&EI); safety enforcement and promotion (SE&P); applicability of safety rules and safe work practices (SR&WP); and safety consciousness and responsibility (SC&R). The factor structure achieved desirable goodness-of-fit, composite reliability and construct validity. The SE&P was discovered as one of the most influential SC factors, while SR&WP was detected as the most overlooked factor. A correlation was observed among the error variables of SE&P and SR&WP factors; thus necessitating the development of synergy in the safety enhancement efforts of these two factors.The study has reinforced the body of knowledge by highlighting the consequences of cross-validation in a developing country, and unveiling the deviations in the existing SC factor structure such as the discovery of SE&P as a novel SC factor. The study concludes that existing SC scales cannot be generalized across countries and regions without cultural adjustments. The designed SC scale and study's findings would help the key stakeholders to measure the SC and streamline their safety enhancement strategies on building projects in Pakistan.

Determinants of labor productivity for building projects in Pakistan

“…Surveys are also the most widely used and accepted method of data collection in social sciences research. Moreover, surveys are found to be cost-effective [33] and provide valuable data which cannot be directly measured, such as attitudes, casual relationship and behavior. Furthermore, surveys have proven to be valuable as they provide an insight and can be used to develop a strong statistical association between key variables [34].…”

“…Hence, similar studies need to be conducted in other developing countries and cultures, to determine whether the meaning of labor productivity, and its causes and determinants, are invariant or otherwise. According to Zahoor et al [33], a stronger focus on the cross-cultural studies helps to explain how key labor productivity factors vary across national contexts.…”

Construction Contract Administration Performance Assessment Tool by Using a Fuzzy Structural Equation Model

“…For the structure model, the variance explained by the R-squared (R 2 ) value is the most important output that reflects the strong relationship among first-order latent factors and related observed variables and between the second-order latent factor and the first-order latent factors of the model. Referring to the model output, Table 1, and Figure 2, the SFL values are higher than 0.5 [40], the significance of regression weights are less than 0.05 [41], and the minimum value of R 2 is 0.787 which correlates the CCAPI to G11. Thus, the CCA performance was strongly associated with the 11 latent factors, and the contributions of CCAPI on its eleven sub-constructs were significant.…”

Owner Project Safety Leadership and Explosives Management in a Construction Project in Kashmir

“…However, project safety patterns revealed through audits, suggest systemic failures are often the result of poor matches between the contractor project management orientation and what the Project Owner will accept (Hillson, 2003). Consequently, considerable issues arise when the Contractor engages as an agent of the Owner (Cerić, 2015) and reduces the effectiveness of the construction site safety provision (Tam & Fung, 1998) by directly affecting safety climate conflation (Zahoor et al, 2017) through lack of stakeholder management commitment (Hinze, Thurman & Wehle, 2013). This places the Project Owner in a position to affect the behaviour of less powerful individuals and align their focus and objectives away from the project scope, objectives and delivery requirements and subsequent success (Hussein, Ahmad & Zidane, 2015;Yang, et al, 2010).…”