THE RELATIONSHIP OF CONSTRUCTION SAFETY AND THE CONSTRUCTION PRODUCTIVITY & CAPABILITY FUND (CPCF) SCHEME

Abstract

The construction industry has always been the highest contributors for workplace fatality among all other industries. This calls for a need to improve the construction safety standards at worksites.

The Construction Safety Audit Scoring System (ConSASS) has been introduced since 2007 to measure a firm’s maturity level of each component of a worksite's Safety Health Management System (SHMS). There has also been an increased emphasis on safety culture in which the WSHC CultureSAFE programme was introduced and launched in 2012 aimed to encourage. To further improve the effectiveness of SHMS audit, industry players developed a model to calculate the Construction Safety Index (CSI) that can be used to audit the effectiveness of a construction firm’s SHMS.

The Construction Productivity and Capability Fund (CPCF) is a scheme that primarily aims to encourage and facilitate Singapore-registered businesses to build up their capability identify productivity gaps and improves site processes so as to achieve higher site productivity.

The issue is to relate how the entire CPCF Scheme will not just benefit productivity but safety as well. The research is conducted by reviewing the past literature of construction safety audit, interviewing safety auditors, observing three construction firms and sites that underwent ConSASS audits and also conducting a CSI Self assessment. From the results, it is concluded that the CPCF Scheme has a positive relationship to safety performance. Additionally, safety performance has proven to have a positive relationship to safety culture.