COVID-19 had a significant impact on construction projects due to labor shortages and COVID-19 restrictions, yet little is known about the impact it had on construction safety. To address this gap, an Australian construction project was selected to study the impact of COVID-19 on safety performance, safety climate and safety leadership. The study collected data from safety climate surveys, leading and lagging safety indicators and used linear regression to compare safety performance pre and post the onset of COVID-19. Our results showed after the onset of COVID-19 there was a significant reduction (Pr>F at 0.05%) in incident rate, an improvement in supervisor safety leadership and safety climate, and satisfaction with organisational communication. The study identified the increase level of safety awareness due to COVID-19 did not result in an increase in the level of engagement in safety leadership. Interestingly, participation in the safety leadership activities did not improve until a change of Project Manager occurred. The study determined leaders who establish a positive safety climate within a project could negate the safety performance impact of COVID-19. The study confirms the importance of site safety leadership in maintaining engagement in risk management and the value of focused safety communication.

Across the global construction industry, fatalities continue to occur from high-risk activities where the risk controls have been defined, however were unreliable. In the mining industry, Critical Control Risk Management has provided positive results in reducing major accidents, which raises the question, could the Critical Control approach reduce the fatality rate in the construction industry? This study analysed 10 years of serious and fatal incident investigation reports from four international construction companies to i) assess the reliability of their Critical Controls (CCs) and ii) assess the factors which affect the reliability of CCs. The results show the reliability of CCs, measured by implementation and effectiveness, averaged just 42%. Human performance factors including risk identification, decision-making and competency together with supervision, job planning, communication organisational factors were identified as affecting the reliability of CCs. The study used bow-tie diagrams with real event data to find the actual CC effectiveness. This gave actionable findings directly related to individual CCs enabling the participating organization to focus resources on improving specific verification processes. The results confirm the applicability of CCs for the Major Accident Event hazards analyzed and highlights further review is required of the factors which need to be considered when implementing a CC program. This paper details our methodology and results, to assist others apply CCs as a risk management tool.