Construction Safety Management Systems and Methods of Safety Performance Measurement: A Review

The construction industry experiences high injury and fatality rates and is far from achieving a zero-injury goal. Thus, effective safety management systems are critical to ongoing efforts to improve safety. An appropriate definition of safety management systems is required, and the elements included in a safety management system should be identified to be used by practitioners to improve safety. A variety of safety management systems have been introduced by researchers and organizations. Most have been developed based on the root causes of injuries and fatalities within organizations. This review paper gives an overview of different safety management systems in various fields to identify the similarities and differences in these systems. The aim of this review is to demonstrate the state-of-the art research on a variety of safety management systems and related methods of measurement. This paper also provides background studies of developing safety management systems. The primary contribution of this review to the body of knowledge is providing insights into existing safety management systems and their critical elements with appropriate methods of safety performance measurement, which can enable owners, contractors, and decision makers to choose and implement elements.