Health and safety influence on the construction project performance in United Arab Emirates

The traditional performance measurements of time cost and quality are no longer the only benchmarks for construction projects. In recent years there is an additional target of health and safety requirements challenging construction performance to plan more thoroughly. Wherever reliable records are available, construction is found to be one of the most dangerous safety criteria. Efforts have been made to address this problem but the results have been far from satisfactory as construction accidents continue to dominate. Despite the programs implemented by government authorities and measures introduced by companies themselves the number of construction accidents still remains alarmingly high. The principal aim of this research is to determine the importance of integrating and improving health and safety standards within construction project management in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to investigate the extent health and safety influence- the construction project performance. Therefore, in the developing countries the construction industry continues to lag behind most other industries particularly as a consequence of inadequate organisational issues. From this perspective this research explores the approved methods adopted in the UK in order to improve the existing code of practice in the UAE thus introduce the foundations on which appropriate health and safety systems may be built. An overview of the published materials and the updated legislation were undertaken. To achieve the objectives of the study a questionnaire and interviews were carefully designed where 350 copies were distributed to construction industry companies in the UAE. Interview sessions have been also conducted to meet the first objective of the project which is to determine the health and safety currently applied on construction sites.The overall result of this research denotes that some safety managers were more concerned about cost than health and safety and in the UAE there is still a lack of preventive measures for reduction of occupational safety and illness on construction sites.

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