The construction industry has one of the highest occupational accidents rates in comparison to other industrial sectors. Improvements in current health and safety managerial practices can bring benefits such as preserving human life and increasing companies' competitiveness by the reduction of costs arising from accidents, interdictions, and fines. This article presents a survey on the use of health and safety managerial practices, and on the difficulties for implementing those practices, as well as for being in compliance with safety regulations, from the perspective of the people responsible for safety management in construction companies. Data were collected in the construction sites of 40 construction companies from the residential building sector of Porto Alegre, Brazil. Those data were compared to the results of a similar survey carried out in Spain with 20 construction companies. The principal component analysis, and multiple response analysis techniques were used to analyze and classify the practices. Five categories of safety management practices were proposed, and an analysis of the most used practices in the sample of companies was made. Moreover, a comparison was made between the most adopted categories of practices and the perception of their importance from managers.
Occupational safety and health; Best practices; Management; Construction
