Manikam Pillay

Resilience engineering: a state-of-the-art survey of an emerging paradigm for organisational health and safety management

Resilience engineering has been suggested to represent a new strategy for improving health and safety management. However, what resilience engineering is, and/or how it is different to organisational resilience is unclear. This paper provides a survey-of-the-art of RE in its widest context, based on a review of 46 articles published between January 1988 and December 2012. The state-of-art suggests that (i) a significant portion of literature comes out of work done in aviation, healthcare, nuclear and petro-chemical industries; (ii) there is no clear definition of OR, or of RE; (iii) RE lacks a clearly defined theoretical framework, and (iv) the gap between work as imagined and work as performed is an important reference point for research and practice in RE. The paper provides a working definition of RE and identifies a number of areas for advancing research and practice in this area of organisational health and safety management.

The Psychological Contract of Safety: The Missing Link Between Safety Climate and Safety Behaviour in Construction Sites

The causal relationship between safety climate and safety behavior is examined in numerous studies, however the pathway that mediates this relationship is still unclear. Viewing safety through the lens of the ‘Psychological Contract’ it is argued that ‘Psychological Contract of Safety’ (PCSaf), could be a vital factor for improving safety performance. Previous research suggests that (1); safety climate is based on perception of workers regarding safety and (2); PCSaf is based on perceived mutual obligations between workers and supervisors, as a result, if PCSaf or mutual obligations between workers and supervisors are fulfilled, then safety behavior of the workers will be positively influenced. A proposed model of Psychological Contract of Safety (PCSaf) as an alternative intervention in the understanding and management of safety practice is presented. A final model will deepen understanding and reveal relationships between safety climate and safety behavior on construction sites.

Resilience Engineering, Gaps and Prescription of Safe Work Method Statements Part 1: The View of Organisational Outsiders

The construction industry is frequently cited for its poor safety performance. In spite of this, many countries continue to rely on contemporary, prescriptive approaches to improve performance in the sector. In Australia, one such approach, Safe Work Method Statements (SWIMS), have been mandated in construction work. However, there is limited empirical research on SWIMS, so their ability to improve health and safety is largely unknown. This is a significant gap in our knowledge. Recent research suggests that Resilience Engineering (RE), which is an innovation in organisational health and safety management, offers a promising approach, by understanding the gap between work as imagined and work as performed. SWIMS provide a practical tool by which such a gap can be investigated in construction settings. Recent research also suggests that organisations are part of a broader socio-technical system. As such, gaining a view of the different elements of the system is an important first step towards developing an understanding of the role SWIMS play in health and safety risk management. This paper first describes the socio-technical system that constitute construction work; followed by an exploration of the meaning SWIMS as ascribed by the external agencies as the first ‘outsider’ of this system. It is based on an analysis of data collected as part of a larger PhD study of the prescription and practice of SWMS in the Australian construction industry.

Predicting the Level of Safety Performance Using an Artificial Neural Network

In this study, an artificial neural network model is developed to predict the level of safety performance on construction sites. Adopting an experimental research design, the model employs safety behaviour, near misses, incidents, fatalities, and the safety risk levels as the inputs, while the safety performance level acted as the output. 339 datasets were generated based on expert intuition and professional experiences. A 5-4-1 Multi-Layer Perceptron with back-propagation was sufficient in building the model that has been trained and validated. The results are promising and show good predictive ability. The developed model could help construction and consultancy firms to assess, forecast, and monitor the level of safety performance of construction projects.

Role of Psychological Contract to Influence Safety Behaviour at Construction Sites

Viewing safety through the lens of the ‘Psychological Contract’ and considering the influence of supervisor on construction site, this research proposes a ‘Psychological Contract of Safety’ (PCS) which is based on the mutual obligations to safety between supervisor and workers, predicts safety behaviour at a construction site. In order to test this hypothesis, data were collected from a mega-construction project in Sydney, Australia. The empirical data indicates that there is a strong influence of the PCS on the safety behaviour of individual workers. Using Structural Equation Modelling this research tested a survey instrument that can be used in other construction settings to examine the strength of the mutual relationship between supervisors and workers and its influence on safety behaviour.

High Reliability Organisation (HRO) Principles of Collective Mindfulness: An Opportunity to Improve Construction Safety Management

The construction industry remains a high-risk industry, because of high fatality rates worldwide. Most construction accidents result from interaction between the work team, workplace, equipment and materials which lead to about 70% of injuries and fatalities. A wide range of safety management approaches have been implemented to manage construction risks, and they have been successful in reducing lost time injuries and incidents. However, a number of safety management approaches currently used in the industry have not kept pace with emerging theory on accident causation, prevention and safety management. To minimise accidents more advanced approaches and methods are required, and one of such methods is High Reliability Organisation (HRO) principles of collective mindfulness. This paper presents a systematic review of HRO research published in construction from 1990–2017. This review aims to identify the possibilities and barriers associated with transferring HRO principles to construction activities. Key findings from seven articles are discussed, research gaps identified and primary outcomes from the data will be presented descriptively.

Organizational Factors, Residual Risk Management and Accident Causation in the Mining Industry: A Systematic Literature Review

Organizational factors are considered part of the broader human factors domain that links three aspects of industrial set-ups, namely, the job, the individual and the organization and how these impact on employee health and safety. The broader human factors domain in the context of sociotechnical systems has attracted a lot of research in the past three decades. In particular, organizational factors have long been suspected to have the greatest influence on individual and group behavior at the workplace, although there is little research on their influence in industrial accident causation. In addition, there is little research on the influence of organizational factors on residual risk management in high-risk industries such as mining. Residual or net risk is defined as the level of risk present with all identified risk control measures in place. Most accidents in the mining industry are as a result of residual risk, as compared to inherent risk. Therefore, it becomes imperative to examine accident causation in the context of residual risk management. This paper explains a systematic literature review that is intended to identify research studies published on organizational factors in the mining industry between 1980 and 2017. The aim of the review is to examine the relationship between organizational factors and accident causation in the context of residual risk management. Gaps identified in the literature review would assist in directing future research towards this critical relationship, which is responsible for the injury and loss of many lives in the mining industry. The search strategy involved identifying published and peer-reviewed articles in electronic databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, Proquest, EMBASE, ASCE and CINAHL. Selection of eligible articles was achieved through refined inclusion and exclusion criteria that resulted in a total of 27 articles eligible for review. Primary outcomes and research gaps from the data extraction are presented following the PRISMA reporting checklist.

Resilience Engineering: An Integrative Review of Fundamental Concepts and Directions for Future Research in Safety Management

This paper reviews the literature on resilience engineering as a safety management approach. Preferred Reporting Items for Reporting Systematic Reviews guidelines were used to search, select and evaluate 46 published works. The terms organisational resilience and resilience engineering are clarified, and functionalist and interpretive research frameworks used to analyze articles. This review suggests there is no universally agreed definition of resilience engineering; but it involves a collective aspect, is multifactorial, multilevel and multidimensional; associated with four key principles (anticipation, response, learning and monitoring) and successful outcomes. The gap between work as imagined and work as performed is an important aspect. Studies on resilience engineering have predominantly involved qualitative investigations; with data collected through site observations, safety audits and surveys. Eight research gaps were identified, and suggestions made on how these gaps can be addressed through empirical research.

Advancing Organisational Health and Safety Management: Are We Learning the Right Lessons?

The twenty-first century has seen many changes, together with improvements in health and safety performance in some sectors. These improvements are testimony that the combined effects of regulatory enforcement, proactive leadership and investments in safety technology are bringing in some tangible benefits overall. However; organisational accidents still occur, raising the question of whether key learnings from previous disasters are used for informing organisational health and safety management practices. This paper, based on an analysis of findings from the Mocando Well Blowout and Fukushima Disasters, seeks to explore this very research question. This paper first discusses key factors identified in reports of the above disasters, followed by an introduction to organisational learning. Safety through organisational learning is proposed as a method, and a number of suggestions made for advancing research and practice in safety management through these approaches in the general industry.

Case Study in Best Practice Incident Investigation

The Workplace incident investigation methodology has typically developed alongside our understanding of accident causation and the ever-evolving associated models. The research-practice gap that has existed and continues to exist, presents an interesting area for discussion and future research. Through analysis of literature in the field of incident/accident investigation methodologies, this paper focuses on a number of models in the context of practice within a small to mid-sized enterprise and in particular looks at what can be considered as best practice for such an enterprise.