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For past decades, design for safety (DfS) has gained growing interest among scholars and practitioners in different geographical contexts as one of the innovative practices integrating worker health and safety in the front-end of the project lifecycle. However, a systematic scientometric study appraising the research development in DfS practice in construction domain remains elusive. This paper aims to bridge this gap by conducting a scientometric review of the available DfS literature in the construction domain. A total of 167 relevant articles were retrieved using a systematic data acquisition approach from Scopus and snowballing and then put forward into a scientometric analysis to construct science maps. The scientometric review identifies the most prolific journals, authorship, cooccurrence network of keywords, article citations, and regions. An in-depth qualitative discussion is presented to provide deeper insights into the existing studies and opportunities for future research in five main DfS research themes as follows: (1) DfS concept and management; (2) DfS technological advancement; (3) DfS capability and competency; (4) DfS education; and (5) DfS sustainability. The value and uniqueness of this review study lie in its novel contribution to the body of DfS knowledge through synthesizing the wider DfS literature landscape in the construction domain. The findings offer a point of reference for both academia and industry in bridging the deficiencies in the current research and providing pathways for future directions in DfS research.

The document investigates the feasibility of incorporating safety considerations into the design phase of construction projects to enhance worker safety and health. It explores whether integrating safety in design can be a practical approach given current design practices and project delivery methods. The study encompasses a literature review, an analysis of relevant OSHA standards, and a pilot survey of design professionals. The aim is to determine the potential impact of "designing for safety" on reducing risks and improving overall project outcomes.

Research and practice have demonstrated that decisions made upstream from the construction site can influence construction worker safety. The design for construction safety concept is defined as the consideration of construction site safety in the design of a project. Globally, the concept has gained momentum as an intervention to improve worker safety. However, in the US construction industry, numerous barriers exist that preclude this concept from becoming a standard practice. This research established a clear link between construction fatalities and the design for construction safety concept. Two-hundred and twenty-four fatality investigation reports were reviewed and a link to the design for construction safety concept was determined. The results show that 42% of fatalities reviewed were linked to the concept; the associated risk that contributed to the incident would have been reduced or eliminated had the design for construction safety concept been utilized. The specific characteristics of construction projects were evaluated and those which lend themselves to the greatest risk reduction within the scope of the concept were identified. The US construction industry should implement the concept of designing for construction safety as a standard practice to reduce overall project risks.

As digital technologies become widely used in designing buildings and infrastructure, questions arise about their impacts on construction safety. This review explores relationships between construction safety and digital design practices with the aim of fostering and directing further research. It surveys state-of-the-art research on databases, virtual reality, geographic information systems, 4D CAD, building information modeling and sensing technologies, finding various digital tools for addressing safety issues in the construction phase, but few tools to support design for construction safety. It also considers a literature on safety critical, digital and design practices that raises a general concern about ‘mindlessness’ in the use of technologies, and has implications for the emerging research agenda around construction safety and digital design. Bringing these strands of literature together suggests new kinds of interventions, such as the development of tools and processes for using digital models to promote mindfulness through multi-party collaboration on safety.

Safety is a major concern in the construction industry. Recent studies have shown that many construction fatalities are related to design and could have been avoided with proper design considerations. Nevertheless, designers have limited knowledge about construction safety and often are unable to identify how their designs may pose a risk during the life cycle of a building facility such as construction, operation and maintenance. Limited effort has been made to help designer to address these safety issues in the design phase. This study presents a structured DfS rule-based knowledge library to provide safety knowledge to designer. Using the DfS knowledge library, an Intelligent BIM-integrated risk review system is proposed to help designers identify risk related to their design element along with required design features. A risk register system is also developed in the BIM platform to follow up for any residual risk. The proposed risk review system has been examined with an illustrative case project. It is found that many of the risks could have been avoided/eliminated with the DfS knowledge library and intelligent risk review system early in the design phase. Thus, it would help to avoid any unexpected delay or costly design change late in the project to mitigate the risk.

An organization must strive to maintain its most valuable resource, knowledge, in order to be more productive and competitive. One of the steps to manage the knowledge is to capture contents of the knowledge. In construction site safety, success in capturing the tacit knowledge of safety officers is of paramount importance; however without a good mechanism, this process might be difficult due to time and hazard perception constraints. This paper discusses research in a design-for-safety-process tool, which aims at: (1) capturing safety knowledge from safety engineers about construction safety hazards and the safety measures required; (2) assisting a safety engineer to identify safety hazards in construction projects and determine the safety measures required; and (3) training students and inexperienced safety engineers in identifying safety hazards and the measures required. In this paper, the first objective is discussed.

In most countries, the construction industry is one of the most dangerous industries. Safety in construction is a complex issue and is influenced by many factors, such as the technology being used, worker behaviour, actual site conditions and, of course, the design being constructed. Given this background, safety hazards identification and accident precautions are important elements in any construction site safety management system. The development described in this paper has produced a visualization of the construction process that can be used to assess safety hazards. The aim of the research is to produce a design-for-safety-process (DFSP) tool. This will help to identify safety hazards inherited during the building construction phase that are actually produced during the design phase. The domain, in which this particular application is being developed, is a typical 40-storey Hong Kong Housing Authority residential block. In this paper, the components of DFSP tool are discussed. The components of DFSP tool comprise of virtually real construction components and processes, virtual reality functions, and DFSP database. The integration of these components enables a user to do a walk-through in the virtually real project and to identify safety hazards inherited within construction components and processes as well as to select accident precautions needed to prevent the occurrence of accidents.

Thinking on safety integration right from design stage is of some interest in research terms. How can we increase the overall efficiency of a working system, whilst reducing risks at source and consequently costs? Can future operation of a working system be anticipated? What can be anticipated? Can we help designers to respond to statutory requirements by experience feedback and by structuring our knowledge of working system operational performance? Based on a “user-focused” design approach, this paper is structured in two sections. The first section comprises analysis of the existing position by focusing specifically on the question of safety at design stage, the second part includes generic recommendations for making work equipment design safer and more “secure”.

This paper reviews and discusses the principal findings of the preceding papers in the special issue and draws out the lessons to be learned by designers, safety specialists and researchers. It returns to the questions posed in the editorial and groups them under the headings of the case for design as an important contributor to operational safety, the general principles of the design process and whether they are universally applicable across different technologies and fields of application, the dilemmas facing designers and the help which can be offered to assist them in their vital and difficult work. The paper ends with a summary of the gaps in our knowledge of the design process and its contribution to safety. These are large and cry out for more research to study them.

This paper analyzes the impact of a large-scale safety-in-design initiative during the design and construction of a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Drawing on multiple data sources including individual interviews, group interviews, construction documentation, and an expert panel involved in the initiative, the writers identify 26 potential design changes on the project and assess the importance of timing, trade contractor involvement, and the type of design change in determining whether a proposed design change was ultimately integrated into the final construction plans. The writers further consider whether adopted design changes would have occurred in the absence of the safety-in-design initiative and whether the accepted design changes ultimately impacted construction site safety on the project. This analysis of a full-scale safety-in-design initiative provides important insights into how injury prevention efforts in the construction industry can begin upstream by involving designers, engineers, and trade contractors in preconstruction processes.

Designers can contribute to enhancing the safety of construction work by considering how their decisions impact on both the physical environment in which construction workers operate and the means and methods they use. To do so, however, designers require knowledge about safety hazards on site and the opportunity to examine their designs early in projects. Through a set of studies virtual reality tools were used to examine the potential for collaborative dialogue between designers and builders to provide a forum for learning and proactive change of a design to make a project safer to build. In the tests, participants viewed proposed designs using virtual reality to examine various alternative design and construction scenarios. The study shows that consultation and dialogue with an experienced construction professional are highly beneficial for designers to appreciate the implications of designs on safety, and that designers are more willing to adapt design details than to change aesthetic aspects of their designs.