Safety and Productivity in the Construction Industry

Safety in construction industry of Palestine still suffers from ignorance and lack of supervision. This low consideration of safety importance caused escalation of accident rate in construction projects. Also, construction productivity is not encouraging when low productivity is causing delays in construction projects. The objective of this paper is to identify the productivity factors that are most related to safety, and determine their relative importance as perceived by contractors. A questionnaire survey, based on 28 identified productivity factors, grouped into 7 major factor categories, was conducted. Responses from 61 personnel from contractors organizations suggest that the following are the most important factors related to safety: 'skillfulness of worker improves safety', 'demonstrating daily activities to workers before start contributes to improving safety', 'anticipated risks included in safety program in order to avoid accidents increases productivity', 'accidents frustrate workers and create absenteeism which decrease productivity', and 'when foremen allocate tasks to workers, they consider safety measures'. The results also indicated that 'worker problems' is the most important among productivity groups of factors followed by 'safety program, 'subcontractors, 'inspection', 'personal protective equipment', 'factors improving productivity' and 'local conditions'. Contractors are recommended to act strategically to protect workers by continuously identifying, evaluating, and mitigating hazardous conditions, risky activities, work locations and work condition on job site.