Evaluating the Health and Safety Maturity of Sustainable Building Projects Using A Sustainable Health and Safety Maturity Model

The health and safety maturity of 20 sustainable building projects and 21 non-sustainable ones in Manitoba was evaluated using a Sustainable Health and Safety Maturity Model comprising 22 safety maturity drivers and 251 critical to safety practices assessed via a questionnaire survey. Sustainable building projects were found to have a higher level of health and safety maturity than that of the non-sustainable ones. Larger-sized companies were found to implement more mature health and safety practices on their sustainable building and non-sustainable building projects than smaller and medium sized companies. The safety maturity drivers of “safety policy and standard implementation,” “safety inspections” and “incident investigation, reporting and performance” were the most mature on sustainable building and non-sustainable building projects whereas “designing for safety,” and “alcohol and drug testing” were the least mature. General contractors can use the maturity model to evaluate and improve their projects’ health and safety maturity. Safety practitioners can also focus efforts on the safety maturity drivers with the highest influence to help enhance the effectiveness of their safety programs, especially when faced with resource constraints.