Bilevel Standards-Compliant Platform for Evaluating Building Contractor Safety

Abstract

In building construction, contractors are typically selected through competitive bidding or negotiated contracting, in which the project price is the major selection criterion. A contractor’s safety performance is still not a major selection criterion, despite the existence of numerous safety prequalification methods. The negative repercussions of such apathy create a critical need for systems that enable owners to evaluate contractor safety performance and facilitate the selection of safety-conscious contractors by virtue of their good safety practices. This study presents the development of a computerized platform for evaluating contractor safety performance that is capable of analyzing contractors’ safety performance data. The platform incorporates newly developed parameters that enable (1) including leading and lagging safety indicators that depict current and past contractor safety performance; (2) conducting analysis on both the organizational and project levels; and (3) satisfying the requirements of international safety standards. This research contributes to the existing body of knowledge by presenting a validated standard-compliant set of 10 indicators and 71 metrics that facilitate evaluating contractor safety performance and establishing their significance analytically. This should prove useful to decision makers and researchers alike and is a step forward to facilitate including contractor safety performance among major selection criteria, which can ultimately bring significant improvements to the building industry’s safety.