Rating Safety and Health Performance in Construction

Safety and Health Performance Metrics for the Construction Industry Background: Construction is a hazardous industry. Many construction employers are striving for new approaches to reduce injury and illness rates, and are looking for a proven set of metrics to monitor safety and health performance. Historically, measuring health and safety performance in the construction industry has relied mainly on lagging indicators which follow an event. Because of the drawbacks associated with using only lagging indicators, many companies are now developing leading and financial indicators to measure and track actions, events, processes and costs that precede and influence safety and health performance. This study was conducted to identify which metrics will be most important and useful for measuring safety and health performance for different establishment sizes. Methods: A review of the literature, and input from an expert panel, identified 95 metrics (leading, lagging, and financial)to be rated. A series of rating sessions were held in which 229 construction contractors nationwide were asked to score these metrics by assigning a number from 1 – 5, with a 1 for top priority or a 5 for low priority. Metrics, with high importance ratings, were identified using inter-rater agreement for small (<100), medium (100 – 499), and large (>= 500) establishment sizes. Results 13 unique metrics were identified based on importance, with some overlap of the metrics by establishment size. Conclusions This project demonstrates that contractors representing different establishment sizes share similar opinions about relevant metrics for tracking safety and health performance on the job.