Assessing Health Climate in Building Construction Projects: Theory and Practice

The poor health of construction practitioners significantly affects the stable and healthy development of the construction industry. Although a large number of researchers have investigated the occupational health of construction practitioners, few have examined the assessment of the health climate in building construction projects. To bridge the knowledge gap, this study develops a fuzzy approach, namely Construction Health Climate Assessment (C-HCA), that can help assess health climate in building construction projects. First, health climate indicators spanning three dimensions were identified through a literature review and semi-structured interviews conducted with experienced experts. The Pythagorean fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (PFAHP) was then utilised to quantify the importance of each health climate indicator and a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method was used to assess the level of health climate in construction projects. This approach was validated by a reallife project in China. This study contributes to the current body of knowledge by developing a C-HCA approach. This approach is useful to practice as well because it can help industry practitioners gauge the level of the construction health climate in building construction projects, thereby recommending improvement accordingly.