Development of an operational excellence model to improve safety for construction organizations

International Construction Specialty Conference of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (ICSC) (5th : 2015)

Development of an operational excellence model to improve safety for construction organizations Liu, Huang; Jazayeri, Elyas; Dadi, Gabriel B.; Maloney, William F.; Cravey, Kristopher J.

Abstract

Construction incidents have numerous root causes, but one of the most frequent is worker behavior. Therefore, construction safety management systems should be designed to maximize the number of safe behaviors by workers, and focus on the execution of construction safety management to achieve excellent safety performance. Operational excellence, a safety concept from the chemical processing industry, is defined as doing the right thing, the right way, every time – even when no one is watching. Good operational excellence results in effective reinforcement of appropriate safety systems, and significantly reduces the rate of unsafe behaviors. Researchers managed to embed the concept of operational excellence into construction safety management. Through an extensive literature review, discussions with industry experts on the topic, and subject matter expert validation, the researchers have developed an operational excellence model designed to evaluate and improve safety performance for construction organizations. This paper describes the model development process and the key elements included in the Operational Excellence Model (OEM). The primary contribution to the overall body of knowledge is developing a practical operational excellence model for practitioners to assess and improve safety performance through behavioral and cultural elements.

Item Metadata

Title	Development of an operational excellence model to improve safety for construction organizations
Creator	Liu, Huang; Jazayeri, Elyas; Dadi, Gabriel B.; Maloney, William F.; Cravey, Kristopher J.
Contributor	International Construction Specialty Conference (5th : 2015 : Vancouver, B.C.); Canadian Society for Civil Engineering
Date Issued	2015-06
Description	Construction incidents have numerous root causes, but one of the most frequent is worker behavior. Therefore, construction safety management systems should be designed to maximize the number of safe behaviors by workers, and focus on the execution of construction safety management to achieve excellent safety performance. Operational excellence, a safety concept from the chemical processing industry, is defined as doing the right thing, the right way, every time – even when no one is watching. Good operational excellence results in effective reinforcement of appropriate safety systems, and significantly reduces the rate of unsafe behaviors. Researchers managed to embed the concept of operational excellence into construction safety management. Through an extensive literature review, discussions with industry experts on the topic, and subject matter expert validation, the researchers have developed an operational excellence model designed to evaluate and improve safety performance for construction organizations. This paper describes the model development process and the key elements included in the Operational Excellence Model (OEM). The primary contribution to the overall body of knowledge is developing a practical operational excellence model for practitioners to assess and improve safety performance through behavioral and cultural elements.
Genre	Conference Paper
Type	Text
Language	eng
Date Available	2015-11-26
Provider	Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada
DOI	10.14288/1.0076355
URI	http://hdl.handle.net/2429/53542
Affiliation	Non UBC
Citation	Froese, T. M., Newton, L., Sadeghpour, F. & Vanier, D. J. (EDs.) (2015). Proceedings of ICSC15: The Canadian Society for Civil Engineering 5th International/11th Construction Specialty Conference, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. June 7-10.
Peer Review Status	Unreviewed
Scholarly Level	Faculty; Other
Rights URI	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/
Aggregated Source Repository	DSpace

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International Construction Specialty Conference of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (ICSC) (5th : 2015)