CHAPTER ONE

1.1  Background To The Study

The construction industry constitutes one of the industry with the highest number of hazardous nature of work which requires the implementation of safety policy and safety management so as to mitigate the inherent risk and hazards in the construction industry. The term safety is defined as the mitigation of risk to a level that is reasonably low as practicable. Therefore Safety management systems (SMS) constitute a detailed management system formulated to implement safety policy in the organization. The SMS consist of plans, objectives, policy, procedures, responsibility, organization etc. . The essence of SMS is to identify hazard and mitigate risk in the organization and also ensuring that   these risk controls are effective SMS is a measure adopted as an explicit, rational and detailed process for managing safety risks.

The  significance of  ensuring safety in the work environment is fundamentally upheld by  different studies as the work environment is exposed to  intrinsic hazard and risk factors  which exact negative influences on the  firms overall performance.  Consequently the construction industry constitute as one of the most hazardous industry. According to the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization (2011) The ratio of one to six fatal accidents takes place at the construction site. Also a further estimate indicates that about 60,000 fatal accidents takes place   annually on construction sites around the world.  Keller & Keller, (2009) and Injuries Board (2009). In Nigeria an estimated hundreds of construction employees are incapacitated and killed as a result of accident at the construction sites. Awodele & Ayoola, (2005) and Smallwood & Haupt (2005) .The reason  being  attributed  to  poorly implemented  safety management system  and lack of  adequate policy measure  which covers all  the relevant safety issues involved in each construction project and site. Therefore the research seek to investigate the effect of safety management on project performance in a construction company