A Review of Implementation Barriers of Design for Safety (DfS) in the Construction Sector

The construction industry continues to record a high rate of occupational accidents despite sustained safety interventions, indicating that conventional reactive approaches are inadequate. A more proactive approach, such as Design for Safety (DfS), is therefore essential. Although Malaysia introduced the OSHCIM 2017 Guidelines and gazetted the Occupational Safety And Health (Construction Work)(Design and Management) Regulations 2024, which elevated DfS to mandatory status, implementation barriers remain insufficiently classified within a coherent theoretical framework. This study addresses this gap through a narrative synthesis that critically classifies and evaluates DfS barriers, reorganised within the Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory. An analysis of 66 articles from the Scopus and Web of Science databases identifies five (5) barrier clusters: deficiencies in knowledge, education and competency; legal, policy and liability issues; weaknesses in stakeholder communication and collaboration; organisational culture, cost and contractual constraints; and limitations in tools and technical support, including Building Information Modelling (BIM). The five (5) DOI attributes, namely relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability, are applied to explain why these barriers persist in the post-CDM 2024 Malaysian context. The findings are further cross-validated against the Prevention through Design (PtD) competency framework by Ibrahim et al. (2020), confirming that each barrier cluster corresponds to a core PtD competency element. Overall, this study asserts that DfS success in Malaysia requires a fundamental shift from a culture of minimum compliance to proactive prevention, supported by professional training, mandatory enforcement, and comprehensive digital technology support.