Impact of project complexity on construction safety performance : moderating role of resilient safety culture

Due to the increasing complexity of construction projects, the construction industry is acknowledged as having inherent risks with high levels of change and uncertainty. Therefore, resilient safety culture has been proposed to address the emerging and unforeseen safety risks being encountered to achieve a consistently high safety performance. This study aims to examine the interactive effects of resilient safety culture and project complexity on safety performance of construction projects. Data were collected using questionnaires from 78 completed building projects in Vietnam. The structural equation modeling technique was used to analyze the collected data. The results support that (1) technical and environmental project complexities have negative impacts on safety performance and (2) the negative impact of project complexity on safety performance becomes less significant when a higher level of resilient safety culture exists, but this impact might be not significant for a high resilient safety culture level. The findings of this study may contribute to the safety management knowledge by providing the empirical evidence to clarify the adverse impacts of project complexity on safety performance and the moderating role played by resilient safety culture in the construction environment. Suggestions are also provided for construction organizations to achieve sustained improvement in safety performance regardless of the changing complexity levels of construction projects.