Challenges of BBS Implementation in Construction Industry

† †
DONGPING FANG, HAOJIE WU †, QUAN ZHOU ‡, MENGCHUN ZHANG , MINGZONG ZHANG
Professor of Construction Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
†
PhD candidates, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
‡
Research fellow, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
fangdp@tsinghua.edu.cn,wuhj08@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn

Abstract
Behavior-based safety (BBS) is a systematic approach to promoting behavioral support for injury prevention. The
traditional BBS methodology requires to keep doing the observation and feedback until the worker accepts the inter-
vention and is willing to try the suggested recommendations, no matter the intervention is taken by the supervisors or
by workmates.
Although BBS has been extensively applied in many industries, it needs to be adapted to suit the demands and cha-
racteristics of the construction industry. Based on the authors’ experience of BBS implementation, the main chal-
lenges of BBS implementation in construction industry include: (1) the relatively poor safety culture in subcontrac-
tors and projects are not conducive for BBS implementation; (2) the general process of behavior selection in other
industries will not be suitable for construction industry; (3) it would be hardly possible to accomplish the long term
individual feedback to each employee as the traditional BBS scheme suggested.
In this paper, the causation model of unsafe behaviors has been developed focusing on both the individual and the
management unsafe behaviors. Based on the model, the database of unsafe behaviors’ causations could be built to
reveal the individual causes and management causes respectively. Consequently, the intervention scheme towards
the two kinds of causations could be developed accordingly and specifically for construction industry.
Based on this model and the authors’ BBS practices in Mainland China, Hong Kong as well as in Singapore, useful
methods and suggestions for improving the BBS implementation are recommended as follows: (1) conducting safety
culture survey among all parties of the project to facilitate BBS implementation; (2) taking both the management
unsafe behaviors and workers’ unsafe behaviors into account during the intervention period and correcting both of
the two parts simultaneously; (3) emphasizing the involvement of foremen and supervisors in BBS implementation.

Keywords: Behavior based safety; Safety culture; Challenges; Construction.

nated from the particular circumstances of construction

INTRODUCTION
Behavior-based safety (BBS) is a systematic approach to
promoting behavioral support for injury prevention. The
BBS study in the last 30 years aimed to correct and re-
duce employees’ unsafe behaviors as well as injuries.
Meanwhile, content and methodologies of BBS have
experienced great growth and evolution, and nowadays
the meaning of BBS is quite different to different people.
Though the specific BBS schemes vary in observation
form, intervention methods, and the complexity of the
whole process, they share basic principles and elements
in common as the foundation.
Nevertheless, since different opinions exist among safe-
ty professionals and scholars, a lot of debate on the in-
vestment and effectiveness of BBS implementation
come up. BBS implementation in different countries and
fields also display the different results. Since construc-
tion industry has a critical safety record, many govern-
ments and companies show their interest to the ap-
proaches for improving safety performance as BBS was
one of the most popular resorts. Guastello carried out a
comprehensive review of different occupational accident
prevention programs and concluded that BBS showed
good effects [1]. However, research in the BBS imple-
mentation in construction industry has been limited. The
authors’ practices in Mainland China, Hong Kong and
Singapore are also confronted with the challenges origi-
industry. Although BBS has been extensively applied in
many industries, it needs to be adapted to suit the de-
mands and characteristics of the construction industry.
Based on the previous BBS practices, the authors devel-
oped the causation model of unsafe behaviors to im-
prove the current BBS scheme in construction industry.
The model does not only stress the individual causes but
also the management causes of specific unsafe behaviors.
The principle of development and application of this
model will be elaborated in this paper. The data sets
collected before will be shown as the example of data
collection of unsafe behaviors’ causations. Based on the
model, the database of unsafe behaviors’ causations
could be built to reveal the individual causes and man-
agement causes respectively. Consequently, the inter-
vention scheme towards the two kinds of causations
could be developed accordingly.
LITERATURE REVIEW ON BAHAVIOR
BASED SAFETY (BBS)
The concept of BBS originated with the work of
Herbert William Heinrich [2], who drew the conclusion
that roughly 90% of all incidents are caused by human
error. This conclusion became the foundation of what
BBS has come to be today. Komaki carried out the first
application for behavior-based safety when she used a
behavior-based model for improving safety performance

Proceedings of the World Urban Transit Conference 2010 (WUTC 2010)

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in one of her student’s family bakery [3]. Dr. E. Scott
Geller summarized the factors that affect safety as the
person, the environment, and behavior [4].
The initial model of BBS was an inexpensive, simple,
top-down approach based on B.F. Skinner's operant
conditioning [5], where supervisors observed and pro-
vided feedback, doling out reward or punishment as
necessary. Then a move toward interventions led by the
employees themselves, with peer-to-peer coaching and
feedback was found in early 1980s. In 1990s, it was
suggested focusing on company culture with the inclu-
sion of both management and employees to incorporate
the employers’ responsibility and commitment. Nowa-
days, all the systems above are still in use.
The widespread application of BBS in safety manage-
ment brings out the disunity within the understanding of
BBS system among people and companies. However, it
is well accepted that the fundamental elements of tradi-
tional BBS shall include: (1) selecting (or indentifying)
the target behaviors to form a checklist which are crucial
and observable; (2) defining the evaluation criteria for
each item in the checklist so that they could be measured
accurately and reliably; (3) conducting site observation
in accordance with the checklist and criteria and produc-
ing the evaluation on the current status of safety perfor-
mance; (4) providing performance related verbal or vis-
ual feedback as the primary reinforcement.
In summary, the traditional BBS methodology requires
to keep doing the observation and feedback until the
worker accept the intervention and is willing to try the
suggested recommendations.
CHALLENGES OF TRADITIONAL BBS
IMPLEMENTATION IN CONSTRUCTION
Although BBS has been extensively applied in many
industries, the features in construction industry may be-
come the negative factors for the success of traditional
BBS implementation include, (1) relatively poor safety
culture in companies and projects, especially the sub-
contractors, and low level training for employees; (2)
the complicated environment and large amount of unsta-
ble and nonstandard behaviors on site; (3) high liquidity
of construction labor market and the diversity in em-
ployees’ background and experience. Consequently, the
modifications directed towards such factors should be
fully considered and developed to improve the current
BBS scheme in construction industry.
Base on the questions discussed above and the authors’
experience of BBS implementation, the main challenges
of BBS implementation in construction industry include:
1. The first challenge for BBS implementation in con-
struction industry comes from the poor safety cul-
ture in construction projects and companies [6]. Al-
though more and more construction companies en-
hanced their understanding on safety and paid more
attention to new approaches for safety management,
their commitment, involvement and substantial in-
306 Proceedings of the World Urban Transit Conference 2010 (WUTC 2010)
put to safety are still very low. In some cases, BBS
implementation has become the excuse of manage-
ment, and they try to attribute most accident and in-
juries to the workers’ own responsibility, which is
the typical misunderstanding of BBS.
2. Since the data on efficacy are influenced by target
behaviors in checklist, the value of intervention will
much depends on behavior selection. Whereas, as
discussed before, the conditions on construction site
are quite complicated, and most of employees’ be-
haviors are not as standard as that in manufacturing
factory [7], so the general process of behavior selec-
tion in other industries will not be suitable for con-
struction industry. The target behaviors in BBS
checklist should be filtered carefully and the criteria
for such behaviors need to be well developed with
the cooperation of management so that the site ob-
servation could be much easier and more accurate;
3. It would be hardly possible to accomplish the long
term individual observation and feedback to each
employee or peer-to-peer coaching and feedback at
site as the traditional BBS model suggested, since
the construction employees usually transfer from
one site to another quite frequently within several
months. Once the targets of observation leave the
site before the end of the intervention, all efforts
made by observer would be in vain. In addition, the
new workers from any subcontractor would also
come to site at any time, depending on the work
progress and the demand for extra manpower. It is
impractical to update the one to one observation
and feedback to those newcomers. It is important to
note that such one to one observation and interven-
tion method has been adopted by some safety pro-
fessionals on construction site in Europe and United
States, but it cannot be deduced to be the common
practice in construction industry. The issue should
be highly considered in Singapore, where the ma-
jority of construction workers come from oversees
and the construction labor market is of high liquidi-
ty.
The issues listed above would possibly make the tradi-
tional BBS methodologies not effective enough in the
circumstances of construction industry. Therefore, the
appropriate modifications to the traditional BBS ap-
proaches are crucial and necessary for a successful BBS
implementation on construction site.
CAUSATION MODEL OF UNSAFE
BEHAVIORS
Since there are some big challenges of traditional BBS
implementation in construction industry, new ideas and
methodologies needs to be integrated into the current
model to overcome such barriers. A causation model of
unsafe behaviors has been developed during the authors’
BBS implementation in Mainland China, Hong Kong
and Singapore. The purposes of the model are as follows:
1. To build a comprehensive observation database and
provide a helpful tool for causation analysis;
2. To analyze the causation of unsafe behaviors, and
find out critical contributing causes of specific be-
haviors;
3. To be an alternative to continuous one to one ob-
servation and feedback in long term;
Fig. 1. Causation Model of Unsafe Behaviors.
Development of causation model of unsafe behaviors
The Causation model of unsafe behaviors shown in Fig.
1 is generated based on the theory of Cognitive Psy-
chology, describing the logic sequence of steps for an
action/behavior and the external and internal factors in
each step which may affect the final choice. In accor-
dance with the general flow of information processing
and behavioral decision, human’s behavioral decision
could be divided into two key steps, perception and de-
cision making. Besides, ones’ decision making may not
be definitely in accordance with the final action due to
the constraint conditions. Therefore, the authors incor-
porate such constrains into the Causation model of un-
safe behaviors, named Conditional Moderator, which
would have the influence between the decision making
Proceedings of the World Urban Transit Conference 2010 (WUTC 2010)
4. To guarantee the effectiveness and sustainability of
intervention scheme based on psychological foun-
dation.
The causation model of unsafe behaviors focuses on
both the individual and the management unsafe beha-
viors. Based on the model, the database of unsafe beha-
viors’ causations could be built to reveal the individual
causes and management causes respectively. Conse-
quently, the intervention scheme towards the two kinds
of causations could be developed accordingly.
and the final action.
Perception is the start of a behavioral decision, which
means a cognitive process in which information
processing is used to transfer information from the real
world into the brain and mind where it is further
processed and related to other information. It better de-
scribes one's ultimate experience of the real world and
typically involves further processing of sensory input.
The following factors are the variables under this step,
including external filter, internal filter and comprehen-
sion.
• Barriers in external filter will cause the mistaken
receiving of the external information by employees.
Thus, they may have an unclear or even wrong per-
ception of the risk. Both the insufficient communi-
307
 cation and unexposed risks would lead to the exter-
nal filter problems.
• Internal filter and comprehension refer to the latter
part of information processing in which the external
information has already been transferred into em-
ployees’ mind. Usually, people could not clearly
perceive the risk because they are not
ready/capable/willing to receive the necessary in-
formation. Some personal issues may cause the
wrong internal filter or inaccurate comprehension,
such as lack of knowledge, fatigue or emotional
problem.
Once the perception is formed in one’s mind, he/she
would make a decision based on evaluation and judg-
ment. Decision making can be regarded as the mental
processes resulting in the selection of a course of action
among several alternatives. Every decision making
process produces a final choice. The output can be an
action or an opinion of choice.
Since most behaviors on construction site can be re-
garded as the outcome of planned rational decision mak-
ing, the authors choose the Theory of Planned Behavior
(TPB), one of the most predictive persuasion theories in
psychology, to examine the relations among beliefs,
attitudes, behavioral intentions and behaviors of the em-
ployees.
According to TPB, human behavior is guided by three
kinds of considerations, namely behavioral beliefs, nor-
mative beliefs, and control beliefs. In their respective
aggregates, “behavioral beliefs” produce a favorable or
unfavorable “attitude toward the behavior”; “normative
beliefs” result in “subjective norm”; and “control be-
liefs” gives rise to “perceived behavioral control.”
Consequently, “attitude toward the behavior,” “subjec-
tive norm,” and “perceived behavioral control” would
lead to the formation of a decision making. Under each
category, there are some detailed factors to describe the
specific situations.
As a general rule, the person’s intention to perform the
behavior becomes stronger with more favorable attitude
toward behavior, superior subjective norm and greater
perceived behavioral control. Given a sufficient degree
of actual control over the behavior, people are expected
to carry out their intentions when the opportunity arises.
• Attitude toward behavior is an individual’s positive
or negative evaluation of self-performance of the
particular behavior.
• Subjective norm means an individual’s perception
of social normative pressures, or relevant others’
beliefs that he or she should or should not perform
such behavior.
• Perceived behavioral control refers to an individu-
al's perceived ease or difficulty of performing the
particular behavior.
308 Proceedings of the World Urban Transit Conference 2010 (WUTC 2010)
Conditional moderator refers to constraint site condition
that could affect the outcome of behavior choice. In
some cases, there would be a discrepancy or contradic-
tion between the choice of decision making and the real
action, which is resulted from the site constraint.
• Improper design refers to the improper architectural
or structural design which may cause unsafe condi-
tions or difficulties in construction on site.
• Insufficient safety protection usually comes out
when the safety protection is not sufficiently pro-
vided by contractors or subcontractors.
• Defective site layout means poor site layout (includ-
ing bad housekeeping), leading to the potential risks
for safe work.
• Improper work arrangement comes from improper
construction methods, work schedules and even the
orders issued by foremen or supervisors.
Functions of causation model of unsafe behaviors
The causation model of unsafe behaviors covers every
link in the generation of an action/behavior, thus, all
unsafe behaviors happened on construction site could be
attributed to one or several factors in the model. Similar
to the Accident-Causing Theory proposed by Heinrich,
any mistake or default in the behavioral decision process
may result in an at-risk action or unsafe behavior.
Table 1 shows the examples of data collection of unsafe
behaviors’ causations. The data collection was con-
ducted by the observer by face to face interview and
discussion with the person who made an unsafe behavior.
Based on the data collected through interviews, the ob-
server could take the in depth analysis to find out the
individual causes and the management causes of specific
unsafe behaviors.
The interview could be taken on site the moment that the
unsafe behavior was observed; otherwise, the observer
could do the interview later in the office. The descrip-
tion of the unsafe behavior observed on site should be
recorded first and items in the first column in Table 1
will be checked one by one by the use of structured in-
terview outline. The interview for each case will gener-
ate one set of data. Hundreds of data sets collected
through interview and discussion will form a large scale
database of unsafe behavior causes.
The purpose of building such database is to further cate-
gorize the causes and specify the particular obstacle for
safe behavior as well as good safety performance.
Moreover, it was found that the pattern of cause’s distri-
bution for a specific unsafe behavior varies from one
another. Therefore, it is suggested that the particular
intervention scheme and method from psychological
perspective should be developed towards each typical
unsafe behavior based on the causation model of unsafe
behaviors so that the intervention could be effective and
sustainable. ing the involvement of foremen and supervisors in BBS
implementation, for example, they are suggested to train
Table 1. Examples of Data Collection of Unsafe Behaviors’ the frontline workers during daily tool box meeting.
Causations
Case Case Case
Causation REFERENCES
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CONCLUSIONS
The causation model of unsafe behavior developed by
the authors provides a new approach to enrich the cur-
rent BBS scheme in construction industry. In addition,
suggestions and recommendations for improving the
BBS implementation in construction industry are
brought out as: (1) conducting safety culture survey
among all parties of the project to identify the weak
points of safety culture elements, which will facilitate
BBS implementation [8]; (2) taking both the manage-
ment unsafe behaviors and workers’ unsafe behaviors
into account during the intervention period and correct-
ing both of the two parts simultaneously; (3) emphasiz-

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