2. Planning and Design Decisions
The planning stage is important, as it influences the rest of the project’s life cycle. Consistent with the statement of Pinto
[16][58], safety should be addressed in the planning phase to be effectively implemented on site. The researcher also suggested the involvement of an OSH practitioner during preconstruction and operational maintenance phases. This corroborated Samsudin
[5], namely the assertion that to avoid more accidents and higher costs in the future, PtD must be put into place earlier in the design phase.
Acknowledging safety in components of project construction can significantly improve safety on site. For example, some construction project characteristics (e.g., pre-assembly method of construction) can mitigate the proximal accident causal factors induced by other project characteristics (e.g., a restricted site, which induces site congestion)
[17][18][23,59]. On different perspectives, Rybak et al.
[19][60] stressed the necessity of taking into consideration the requirements of environmental safety at the design stage and at the operational and maintenance stage, which corroborated Kemajl
[20][61], namely the assertion that operational and maintenance tasks are disproportionately responsible for workplace accidents. In addition, De Silve et al.
[21][62] emphasized the need of prioritizing safe design for maintenance and operation activities at the early stages of the design process. Many practitioners are determining maintenance priority based on biased experience, subjective or personal appraisal, and conservative decisions, and some even adopt a specific building maintenance handbook by default without making a deliberate choice.
Client’s Influence
A client, sometimes referred to as an owner, is a person or entity whom a construction project is carried out for, and who also funds the construction works, thus playing a vital role in encouraging the application of PtD
[9][22][23][8,11,33].
A survey investigating practices of PtD by Goh and Chua
[24][38] demonstrated that client motivation for PtD in Singapore could be the key to developing designers’ PtD knowledge, attitude, and, most importantly, practices. Therefore, to include PtD in planning and design decisions, Azmi and Misnan
[9][11] outlined a few roles that clients must undertake, such as motivating designers to acknowledge occupational safety and health during the design stage of projects, instructing tenderer to make provision for the cost of safety and health measures during the process, and ensuring that construction works are held back until the safety and health plan is fully developed.
3. Designer’s Competency
Prior study by Che Ibrahim and Belayutham
[17][23] noted that “competency” is defined as the possession of knowledge, skills, and experience by the designer to perform PtD practices. Designer’s competency is divided into three subcategories: (1) knowledge and attitude, (2) skills, and (3) experience. This will be further discussed in the following section.
3.1. Knowledge and Attitude
The need for PtD knowledge, sometimes referred to as PtD awareness, is important especially among architects to ensure proper application of PtD, particularly because the designer’s lack of understanding of construction processes is a significant hurdle that would prevent designers from contributing to worker safety
[23][25][33,63]. PtD knowledge can be categorized into tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge
[26][27][21,32]. Tacit knowledge is personal know-how (practicality) that is largely gained through education, training, and experience, while explicit knowledge is personal know-how (theoretical) based on guidelines, procedures, and best practices
[17][28][23,64]. Hence, PtD knowledge is often obtained through tertiary education, training programs, experience, and guidelines.
A study by Ismail
[11][13] demonstrated that having early access to knowledge of PtD would enable designers to facilitate clients better at the design phase, rather than waiting for the construction phase to make amendments. This stems from the statement that when designers are exposed to the concept, guidelines, and legislations of PtD in tertiary education, it could enhance design thinking as well as change the design approach. This statement supports the survey carried out by Behm
[29][65] which showed that educational intervention changed student perceptions of accident causality and prevention to favor safe design thinking. However, the integration of PtD in the curricula remains elusive, as identified in research by Che Ibrahim
[4] in a study in Malaysia out of seven universities that participated in the study; none of them incorporated the concept in their curriculum. The researchers also acknowledged four major challenges for PtD education, which include current curriculum being too crowded with designated courses, lack of OSH-related content in the curriculum, traditional methods of teaching and learning, and lack of availability of well-equipped lecturers regarding PtD.
Thus, holistic approaches need to be implemented to upgrade or enhance designer’s curricula in universities
[9][11]. This can be made possible by accreditation boards establishing a requirement to adopt safety design into existing courses and design programs, which will then evolve gradually into a primary or core subject for undergraduate designers. Moreover, Che Ibrahim
[4] suggested introducing OSH subjects, adopting an interactive and technology-driven approach to teaching and learning, and including competent OSH lecturers to improve existing curricula.
Moreover, Azmi and Misnan
[9][11] suggested that effective training programs on design for safety should be made regular and lifelong. Professional bodies can make it a requirement for designers to attend training or seminars to register or renew their professional license. Finally, organizations also need to have an effective safety knowledge management (KM) process in place
[23][33].
Accordingly, the topic of designer knowledge and awareness is often paired with designer attitude
[23][33]. Unfortunately, knowledge and available tools for design safety alone do not guarantee PtD application. As per Che Ibrahim
[30][66], first, it would be the misconceptions and mindset of designers, particularly the view that safety issues are complex in construction. Next, designers tend to be insensitive to worker safety, and finally, they lack knowledge and understanding of their roles and responsibilities in addressing the OSH issues.
In this regard, a finding by Azmi and Misnan
[9][11] revealed that although stakeholders are aware of their influences on OSH, they still feel unable to fully commit to performing the concept, especially regarding applying it during the design phase. This is also supported by Abueisheh
[31][27], who identified that in Palestine, design professionals generally consider the importance of PtD to be high and indicated that they would include the practice of PtD in their work if given a choice, therefore showing positive attitude toward the implementation of PtD.
However, in the same study, when asked about whether the Palestinian construction industry is ready to take on the responsibility of including PtD in projects, the majority expresses the idea that it is not. Nonetheless, this mindset may change once designers fully understand the ways in which their design can influence safety and health
[9][11]. Even if designers know about construction safety and PtD, Toole et al.
[22][8] research showed that designers, the lead contractor, construction stakeholders, and construction safety professionals must collaborate during design through IPD project delivery to create an effective PtD concept implementation. Overall, attitude and knowledge go hand in hand. Knowledge is considered crucial for PtD concept implementation, and the openness of architects to adapt to it makes it possible.
3.2. Skills
Skills are developed through the exercise of knowledge. Che Ibrahim
[26][21] stated that skills are divided into technical skills and soft skills. Technical skills are categorized into the ability to forecast wide-ranging hazards during the design, ability to conduct the process of hazard recognition and its severity, ability to navigate information-technology-enabled tools, and ability to perform cost–benefit analysis to justify PtD design expenditures. Meanwhile, the key attribute of soft skills is the ability to work collaboratively with other consultants.
One of the most important technical skills is hazard recognition skill, which unfortunately most architects are lacking. A study by Zhao
[32][41] revealed that architects have low risk assessment. However, in the same study, the builders’ risk assessment seems comparatively accurate assuming they thoroughly understand construction means and methods, while the engineers’ risk assessment is comparatively high. Another skill that is preferred in encouraging PtD implementation is the capability of conducting cost–benefit analysis related to OSH because it could provide guidance to decision making regarding accident prevention
[26][21]. Studies have also highlighted that the ability to use technology-enabled tools could further add value and maximize the potential benefits of PtD implementation.
For this reason, architects need to cultivate their soft skills, which enable them to work collaboratively with other professionals toward PtD practices
[5]. Furthermore, panel discussions from the study of Ismail
[11][13] revealed that such financial and collaboration skills are essential in quantifying the benefits of PtD as well as enhancing existing fragmented relationships toward a more collaborative culture. Nonetheless, the researcher also added that in Malaysia, although collaborative project delivery is said to be effective in improving the practice of PtD, such an approach has not been practiced yet.
3.3. Experience
The proficiencies of a professional are developed through learning, training, or hands-on experience. In addition, as pointed out by Durdyev et al.
[33][67], frequent disputes, goal inconsistency, change orders, rework, adversarial relationships, arbitrations, and litigations are some of the problems that have been reported to be caused by traditional construction procurement methods. These problems require enhanced performance to be achieved through IPD, but this has not been realized in actual practice. In the case of PtD, the need for the designer to have experience in conducting design-related construction works is critical.
4. Technologies/Tools for Safety
Technologies are becoming more advanced, and recent developments enabled the identification of all potentially possible threats to health and safety at work using 3D modelling. This is made possible through countless research on PtD tools, with articles that started to emerge as early as 1996
[23][33]. It is believed that, in recent years, IPD has been widely advocated for because of its potential to facilitate the use of BIM on construction projects
[33][67]. This is the standpoint from which IPD-PtD application can be seen. It has been demonstrated that combining IPD-PtD with BIM can increase project efficiency, cut down on errors, make it possible to investigate alternative methods, and broaden the scope of market potential.
Poghosyan
[23][33] stated that one of the first computer-based IPD-PtD application tools was “Design for Construction Safety Toolbox”. It was noted that by linking the design and construction phase, the tool helps designers to recognize project-specific hazards, and afterwards adopting the tool’s suggestions into a project.
Apart from this, the usage of BIM software has been frequently mentioned as one of the methods of implementing PtD. Panteli
[34][26] stated that the BIM method progresses beyond the architectural drawing design to include all the project life cycles. From the perspective of safety management during design, designers’ efforts and time can be saved by the automated detection process of safety risks using the proposed method, thus minimizing accidents during construction work
[7][27][7,32].
In a study, Ismail
[11][13] noted that consultants acknowledged that the use of BIM and associated tools is vital for information exchange and efficient communication within IPD-PtD implementation, as it can enhance visualization.
5. Design Features and Workplace Conditions
The construction industry is plagued by occupational risky situations and poor working conditions. Although it is said that workers are much more responsible for their own protection
[16][58], this should not be the case. Various parties including clients, consultants, contractors, and facility management should collaborate to ensure that safe design is implemented.
Lack of worker skills, training and experience, poor use of safety gear, poor risk perception, and deviation from safety standards dominate among the principal causes of accidents on construction sites. A study by Agwu and Olele
[35][51] highlighted a significant relationship between poor safety culture and an increased rate of unsafe acts in the Nigerian construction industry. The researchers also added that safety consideration in construction project delivery is not assigned a priority and is considered a burden in most developing countries. Developing countries, on the other hand, are not well prepared to meet these standards, which highlights the fact that the application of IPD is impeded by constraints, particularly in the context of developing countries
[33][67].
As a result, because workplace accident causation is multifaceted and complex, design has been identified as one of the major contributors to accidents and injuries
[31][27]. Design has long been identified as a leading cause of workplace accidents that result in deaths, injuries, and illnesses in the construction industry
[6][7][6,7]. Despite the fact that workplace safety design concerns have grown in popularity among industry leaders, the PtD concept has been overlooked in their industrial development policies and strategies
[22][8].
Regardless of one’s feelings about increased responsibility for design professionals, it is undeniable that design-related issues have emerged as the leading cause of construction injuries and fatalities, which must be addressed during the initial design stage. Recent research, on the other hand, has detected a link between occupational safety and architectural design
[8][9][10][11][36][9,10,11,12,13]. Goldswain and Smallwood
[12][14] also drew attention to critical workplace safety challenges in the context of architectural designs that must be addressed to reduce workplace accidents and injuries.
In addition, in study
[37][68], most respondents believe that the design element has a moderate or greater impact on worker safety during construction. Additionally, most of the respondents also felt that there is a connection between one worker and another worker in terms of safety in the workplace. This is an indicator that the responsibility to provide a safe environment for workers in construction sites relies not only on contractors and project management alone but also on designers. Designers supposedly consider ways in which foreseeable risk may be avoided or minimized for all parties involved
[9][11].
As an approach to improving safety culture in construction, Tymvious and Gambatese
[35][51] proposed a few suggestions: (1) top management needs to show a clear commitment to organizational safety issues, (2) implementation of regular staff training on safe work procedures is needed, (3) establishment of safety committees and regular safety audits or site inspections is required, (4) it is suggested to abolish productivity bonus schemes that act as incentives for employees to work faster. This is supported by Pinto
[16][58], who asserts that economic and time pressure lead to relaxing rules and procedures, causing reckless operations and practice.
6. Laws and Legislation
The proven connection between design and construction or occupational accidents prompted various countries to establish legislations to encourage designer involvement in PtD.
A survey of design engineers in Australia concluded that the regulations and codes of practice have a positive impact on construction worker safety
[29][65]. Nevertheless, available studies regarding the topic of PtD in construction of developing countries have been very limited
[31][27], therefore indicating a possible lack of PtD legislation reviews or enforcement in said countries. Similarly, in 2012, Saifullah and Ismail
[38][55] mentioned that there are no specific legal obligations imposed on clients, designers, and other “upstream stage” personnel to ensure that construction projects in Malaysia run safely. It is worth mentioning, however, that although many articles regarding PtD were published in the context of the U.S, the country currently has no PtD legislation in place.
Meanwhile, the implementation of PtD in construction has been prominent in some countries for several years, particularly those in the European Union (EU) as well as in the United Kingdom. In contrast, research from Canada indicates that failing to incorporate stakeholders early limits the use of IPD by public authorities, while poor risk/reward sharing mechanisms and state legislation limit IPD use by public authorities
[33][67]. In a review by Poghosyan
[23][33], it was indicated that there is only a small amount of research exploring the topic of legislation or laws regarding PtD adoption, and the studies cover mostly legislation in developed countries. In view of this, there is the opportunity of drawing lessons from PtD implementation and its evolution over the years in those countries and then consider the possibility of appropriately contextualizing some of those lessons
[31][27]. Although some countries do not have direct legislation regarding PtD, some possess a more general OSH or construction safety legislation instead.
As legislation can be considered a powerful stimulus for change, the absence of construction PtD legislation in countries, especially ones of developing economies, could potentially have implications for the awareness, knowledge, and practice of PtD
[39][69]. Thus, the roles of governments or lawmakers are vital in the pursuit of the implementation of PtD concept among design professionals.
Existing OSH laws can be refined to include the call for practice of PtD explicitly. New regulatory frameworks and laws could also be established to convince firms to undertake PtD, for example, setting financial “penalties” for failing to comply with PtD standards or providing “incentives” that will then encourage the use of PtD in the architecture industry.