EFFECTIVENESS OF SUPPORT FOR SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS SETUP: CONTRACTORS' PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The construction industry has always been plagues with the problems of high injuries rate and fatalities rate. The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and Workplace Safety and Health (WSH) Advisory committee have co-drafted the WSH strategy in hope of improving the workplace safety in Singapore. A tremendous effort has been put into making the construction industry a safer workplace, but the progress made is lagging behind those made by the other industries in Singapore. The focus of this study is on the effectiveness of the Safety and Health Management System (SHMS) supports listed in the WSH strategy. The supports tested will include: bizSAFE, Risk Management Assistance Fund (RMAF), WSH Risk Compendiums, WSH (Construction) Regulations 2007, and WSH (SHMS and Auditing) Regulations 2009. The hypotheses of this study is how effective are the SHMS support in providing aid to set up SHMS in the planning, implementation and auditing stages. A detail literature review on the individual SHMS support is conducted, using the information gathered a survey questionnaire is formulated. The survey questionnaires are administrated through the use of email. The collected data will be discussed base on the response rate and also subjected to the t-testing. The software, Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS), will be used for the t-testing of the collected data. The response rate indicated that the SHMS supports are not well utilized; this could mean that either the supports are ineffective thus the unwillingness of construction companies to use it, or the supports are not well promoted, therefore the construction companies are in the unknown about the supports’ benefit and/or existence. The result of the SPSS software will answer the hypotheses formulated for this study. The detail conclusion for the hypotheses will be discussed in the study; in general the hypotheses are mostly not rejected. This would mean that the supports are relatively effective in helping the construction company create their own SHMS; however there are still room for improvement in the SHMS support system. The SHMS support system was remodelled for improvement and this proposed model of the SHMS support system will be discussed in details in the research studies. Promotion strategies are suggested to boost the industry’s knowledge on the availability of the SHMS support system.