PERCEPTION OF BUILDING CONSTRUCTION WORKERS TOWARDS SAFETY, HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT

The construction industry is known as one of the most hazardous activities.Therefore, safety on the job site is an important aspect with respect to theoverall safety in construction. This paper assesses the safety level perception ofthe construction building workers towards safety, health and environment on aconstruction job site in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The above study was carriedout by choosing 5 selected large building construction projects and 5 smallbuilding construction projects respectively in and around Kuala Lumpur area. Inthe present study, an exhaustive survey was carried out in these 10 project siteareas using a standard checklist and a detailed developed questionnaire. Thechecklist comprised 17 divisions of safety measurements which are consideredand perceived to be important from the safety point of view and was assessed based on the score obtained. The questionnaire comprised the generalinformation with 36 safety attitude statements on a 1-5 Likert scale which wasdistributed to 100 construction workers. The results of the checklist show thedifference of safety levels between the large and small projects. The studyrevealed that the large projects shown a high and consistent level in safety whilethe small projects shown a low and varied safety levels. The relationshipbetween the factors can be obtained from the questionnaire. They areorganizational commitment, factor influencing communication amongworkmates, worker related factors, personal role and supervisors’ role factors,obstacles to safety and safe behavior factors and management commitment atall levels in line with the management structure and risk taking behavioralfactors. The findings of the present study revealed invaluable indications to theconstruction managers especially in improving the construction workers’attitude towards safety, health and environment and hence good safety culturein the building construction industries.