Safety-Knowledge Management in American Construction Organizations

Abstract

Despite improvements in safety performance over the past 30 years, the construction industry still accounts for an injury-and-illness rate that is approximately five times greater than the all-industry average. This disproportionate injury-and-illness rate has been attributed, in part, to the complex, dynamic, and transient nature of construction projects. To address these challenges, construction organizations must be able to adapt to change by effectively identifying, capturing, storing, and transferring safety knowledge. To investigate how safety-knowledge management strategies are employed in the construction industry, 11 case studies were conducted with a geographically dispersed sample of American general contractors. The sample was stratified by experience modification rate (EMR), a relative measure of safety performance. The results of the case studies indicate that construction organizations tend to acquire safety knowledge from a variety of internal and external sources, but have ineffective knowledge storage and transfer systems, which impede the ability of the workforce to obtain critical knowledge to solve urgent safety-related problems. High-performing organizations were distinguished by their ability to manage tacit safety knowledge with formal processes such as data-entry systems that capture reactions to safety situations from experienced workers and safety mentoring. Other innovative strategies include acquiring tacit safety knowledge during safety stand-downs through interviews with workers and storing safety knowledge in proprietary training videos.