Strategies for Safety And Productivity Improvement

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the connection between occupational health and safety (OHS) and increasing employee productivity in construction industry from the point view of contractors in the Gaza Strip. This has been done by identifying strategies that effectively promote both safety and productivity during a construction task. Quantitative research (descriptive and correlational ) includes survey research (face-to-face interviews and a written closed and semi closed questionnaire for a chosen sample with a size of forty three people from the construction population), validity test and reliability test, and a relative importance index (RII) method to determine the relative importance of various factors. Strategies that can be followed to effectively affect safety and productivity were resulted from the survey feedback. These strategies fall under five major groups; planning, training, monitoring, communication skills, and inspection. Results indicated that “Training workers to carry out works properly, especially in the new types of work " factor has been ranked in the 1st position with regard to its importance in sustaining safety and productivity of project. This factor belongs to training group. The research is only confined to the safety and productivity relationship in the public construction environment in Gaza strip, but not the west bank. The small sample size of the survey would probably not be indicative of the general population of contactors in Gaza strip, although the most of the results were reasonably accepted and were related to the literature review. More research is needed to understand the topic since literature on safety and productivity in Palestine and surrounding region is very limited. Construction companies need to substantially improve OHS as well as improving construction productivity and reducing insurance and other costs. Contractors need to plan for a strategy to achieve that and need to move from strategies to implementation. In other words, contractors are recommended to act strategically to protect workers by continuously identifying hazardous conditions and by training and monitoring.