A new SmartMarket Report from Dodge Data & Analytics, "Building a Safety Culture," takes a close look at 33 indicators of a safety culture in the construction industry, including measures of management commitment to safety and health, worker involvement in jobsite safety, company communications on safety and the degree to which safety is treated as a fundamental company value. The study found nearly equal numbers of companies showing high, moderate and low levels of engagement with these indicators, though large companies are more likely to be further along the safety culture spectrum than smaller companies. 

The report includes ABC’s Safety Training Evaluation Process (STEP) as a safety benchmark. In citing STEP in the report, ABC President and CEO Michael Bellaman states, “We have established a level of commitment to safety by putting a program out there that tries to establish standard language across the industry that people can productively use.” 

The report also cites ABC’s annual Safety Performance Report and ABC’s efforts to highlight the correlation between leading indicator implementation and lagging indicator safety performance.

According to the report, the most widely used indicators of a safety culture are encouraging workers to report unsafe conditions, holding everyone accountable for safety and having supervisors lead by example. Indicators with the lowest levels of use are joint worker/management safety and health committees, recognition and reward for safety and health participation, and owners requiring safety and health precertification of all bidders.

The report is available for free to all ABC members.