Elsevier

Safety Science

Volume 46, Issue 4, April 2008, Pages 661-674
Safety Science

Assessment of safety management information systems for general contractors

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2007.06.009Get rights and content

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology that evaluates safety management information systems (SMIS) for general contractors mainly in terms of managerial effectiveness. Characteristics and variables of safety management assessments were investigated first, and several assessment techniques were then developed. A single index system measuring safety management performance of projects is also proposed for practical application. The assessments of safety management tasks are performed by several different variables including measures, project lifecycle, organization, etc. The assessment result from a case-company shows that a limited number of safety tasks can effectively represent the overall safety performance of a project. Among these tasks, managing the “daily safety meeting minutes” through the information systems was found to be the most important task. Details and implications of a case are outlined.

Introduction

Safety is a critical measure for successful construction projects, and general contractors are vigorously utilizing safety management information systems (SMIS) to effectively improve their safety performance. However, there has been no systematic and quantitative effort to evaluate comprehensive appropriateness of SMIS for construction organizations. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology that evaluates SMIS for general contractors mainly in terms of managerial effectiveness. This paper consists of two phases where the first part is a development of the methodology and the second part is a test of this methodology by using a case-company.

Characteristics and variables of safety management assessments were investigated first in this paper. The major variables for evaluating safety control tasks include the ‘importance within a safety management procedure’, ‘importance as a consequential impact’, ‘frequency of occurrence’, ‘user satisfaction’ and so forth. Several assessment techniques using a set of questionnaires and a series of workshops were developed. A single index system measuring safety management performance of construction projects was also proposed for practical application.

By applying the proposed methodology to a case-company, the safety management tasks were classified and listed under a hierarchy, and each task was evaluated based on the pre-defined variables. ‘As-is’ as well as ‘to-be’ systems were separately analyzed so as to clearly identify the areas to be improved. Details and implications of the case are outlined. Practical issues and lessons learned are briefly discussed as well.

For the purpose of clarifying the research objectives and identifying issues to be addressed in this study, research questions can be described as follows: (1) What are the most ‘important safety tasks’ those can enhance the overall safety performance of an organization with optimized managerial effort? (2) How can the head office safety experts or managers ‘monitor and support each project’, in terms of safety control, according to priority? Is there any indicator for this priority? (3) How can an organization develop ‘safety management information systems’ in order to meet these requirements?

Section snippets

Integrated perspective of safety management systems

The general role of information systems (IS) has changed in organizations. The traditional role of IS had been to support business functions by replacing labor-intensive transactions. However, as the use of information systems has become widespread and deeply integrated with business processes, the role has expanded to include support for or even shaping of corporate strategy (Bakos and Treacy, 1986, Jung and Gibson, 1999, Jung et al., 2004). Therefore, the assessment process of safety

Safety management information systems assessment

Assessing information systems for an organization requires comprehensive measures including “corporate strategy, management, computer systems, information technology, and incremental investment” (Jung and Gibson, 1999) as described in Table 1. However, the information systems assessment (ISA) for SMIS in this study is a process from a ‘business function-level perspective’. In order to clarify the research scope, it is assumed that the ‘corporate-level issues’ of ISA such as ‘strategic fit’,

Case-study

In order to examine the viability, the measures and methodology proposed in this study was applied to a case-company, which is one of the largest general contractors in South Korea. A series of workshops and a set of questionnaires were used in 2005 to gather the data from the head office and job sites.

The participants in this case include the researchers as a consultant and a facilitator, the head office safety managers as the appraiser, information systems managers as the informant, and job

Conclusions

An assessment methodology for safety management information systems (SMIS) proposed in this study has been proved to be effective enough to provide a construction organization with meaningful insights for identifying improvement areas with priority. The authors feel that the proposed methodology is also universally applicable to any organizations in the construction industry including owners, construction managers, engineers, or contractors regardless of their size or discipline. This universal

Acknowledgements

This study is part of a research project supported by GS Engineering and Construction Co., Ltd. Special thanks go out to Mr. Seongyeol Cho, Mr. Youngsuk Ryu, Dr. Chan-Jeong Park, Dr. Heewon Chung, and many other managers of GS Engineering and Construction Co., Ltd., for their participations and comments throughout several workshops and interviews.

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