Strategy for Managing Factors Influencing Safety Hazards on Construction Sites: A System Dynamics Approach

Abstract

Safety-related hazards have gotten a lot of attention in the previous few decades, especially on construction sites. There hasn't been a well-defined, reliable, efficient, and thorough measuring model for safety hazard evaluation and/or minimizing construction cost, duration, and ensuring the safety of construction workers until now. Previous studies have been conducted to identify construction site safety concerns and design appropriate models to mitigate them. There has been insufficient study on dynamic simulation models leveraging VENSIM® software to explicate the basic processes of safety hazard assessment and decreasing hazards at construction sites, notably in worker behavior, managerial, environmental, and technology challenges. These components interact in a variety of ways, resulting in both positive and negative feedback loops that influence safety hazards, resulting in increased complexity. The goal of this research is to look at the elements that influence safety hazards on construction sites in developing countries, and then develop a System Dynamics (SD) model to deal with the complexity. Using systems thinking and causal loop diagrams, the study demarcates the interrelationships between sixteen nominated contributing factors. CLD consisted of five reinforcing and two balancing loops in total. In addition, CLD was employed/used to create an SD model with five stocks. To depict the cumulative/collective effect of all stocks, a new stock termed safety hazards was added/incorporated. The model was run for five years, and the findings/conclusions showed an increase in safety hazards under the specified scheme. The CLD and SD models that emerge represent the systems thinking and behavior for safety hazards in construction throughout time. The study uses an innovative methodology in the form of SD to address the construction culture coherently/holistically, as well as the factors influencing safety hazards and complexities of behavior that make up the causal relationship that are responsible for repercussions. Incorporating a policy framework in light of the created model to regulate the safety hazards on construction sites can be studied in further depth.