Conditions for an optimal safety culture in construction

This article discusses how much attention construction companies generally pay to the concept of safety and how they perceive it. The presupposition for the argument put forward in this article is that safety is not only the result of clear-cut and stringent measures, but that practical safety on the building site is also a consequence of the entire organizational culture. The authors suggest the concept of a 'safety culture' as a key theme in relation to this concept of organizational culture, as well as providing an approach that makes it possible to break this concept down into its component parts. They illustrate this theory by comparing the 'safety culture' in construction companies with that of electric utility companies. A remarkable result of the study is expressed by the difference between the approaches for motivating the workers. The study documented in this paper was part of a larger research project designed to improve the quality of labour in the construction industry. This particular study was carried out in the Netherlands at the Faculty of Building Engineering and Architecture of Eindhoven University of Technology in association with the BOUW Research College.