6.

PREVIOUS STUDIES

Safety is defined as liberation from risk, injury and danger. In addition, safety can also be the
manifestation of “caution” in order to avoid danger. Therefore, safe work culture can be
defined as the patterns of behaviors and attitudes or products of people which creates
commitment and efficiency in an organization. Paivi Hamalainen, (2009) stated that many
countries focus more to have prevention activities on occupational accidents than on work-
related diseases. Beside that, Zaliha Hj Hussin (2008) studied the types and factors of
accidents that happened in food manufacturing factories in small and medium sized industries
and the actions taken by the employers following the occurrence of an accident in Malaysia.
Faridah Ismail (2010) stated that there are many indicators or practices of good safety culture,
but they did not showed the way to improve safety culture, which lead to improvement of
safety behavior and also mentioned that there are three safety components in safety culture
framework, which are psychological factors, behavioral factors, and situational factors.

The risk assessment process is completely dependent on the hazards that are included in the
evaluation process (Mitropoulos & Namboodri, 2011), and the industry has consistently
failed to identify and control hazards prior to construction. In fact, in a study conducted by
Carter and Smith (2006), a large proportion of hazards were not identified. Unidentified
hazards will lead to an underestimation of risk associated with the project. For example,
accident proneness theories suggest that certain individuals are more likely to be involved in
accidents as a result of “their innate propensity for accidents” (Shaw & Sichel, 1971, p. 14).
Kerr (1950, 1957) corroborates this theory by claiming that accidents are caused by workers
who are unable to adjust to dynamic work environments.

According to Ahmadon, construction sites are generally complex and sometimes unsafe to
the workers and environment. It is one of the most dangerous workplaces because of high
number and frequency of accidents. Abdul Rahim, stated that the development of
construction industry has been plagued by the accidents or injuries that are frequently
occurred. It is estimated that there are around 60,000 construction fatalities occurred
worldwide each year, which equates to one accident happens every nine minutes. According
to Chang, accidents at work occur either due to lack of knowledge, supervision, lack of
means to carry out a work safely, errors in judgment, carelessness in making decision, or total
irresponsibility. In addition, the lack of a controlled working environment and the complexity
and diversity of the sizes of organizations have given impacts on safety performance in the
industry. According to Edward, the safety legislation and policies have a great impact upon
the safety level of a construction worksite. Legislation forms a framework in which health
and safety is regulated and controlled.

Safety and health has become important issue, which has been developing in the social
context that increasing the concern for prevention of danger situations for people at
surrounding. Recent years have showed increasing reports of accidents that occur in school
area. The reported accidents that involved not only report on injuries but also to deaths.
According studied by some researcher, they found that 85% to 98% of injuries in the
workplace is not attributed to the act safe practices of certain individuals who are negligent.
Negligence can also associate with awareness. This shows that safety awareness an important
aspect in ensuring safety in the laboratory.

According to Seo et al, industries especially those in developing countries are suffering
enormous economic and personnel costs as a result of injuries and diseases related to work.
The case for employees and organizations is that, according to Demba et al, in developing
nations, the rates of industrial and occupational injury related deaths and disabilities are on
the rise. As a result, the mining sectors of these mineral endowed developing countries are
highly prone to these occupational injury-related deaths and disabilities. In their study, Yule
et al noted that employees conformed to safety rules and procedures when they perceived that
the action of their supervisor is fair and congruent with organization policy on safety. From
this study, hopefully we as a future engineers will take the safety on the serious part in our
life as a workers in the future.