2.1. Stage 1: planning, inception and feasibility

The success of any construction project is based on its planning and feasibility. In this stage, if any aspect is overlooked or miss-handled, severe, and long-lasting repercussions are witnessed which can never be easily undone and can only be repaired to a limited extent during execution/construction of that project. This stage of construction projects prepares project outlines which guide about the broad scope and specific objectives of project. According to Ref. [24], the planning stage comprises initial budgetary, project brief, logistical requirements, types of contractor and vendor to be hired, local planning authority guidance, utility requirements, ground investigations and reconnaissance, health and safety guidance, regulatory permissions, designer requirements, and structural assessment etc.

2.2. Stage 2: design

After planning, the next stage in pre-construction phase is of design which is itself further classified in steps as necessary for moving towards solutions for design problems encountered. In this stage, a functional facility plan is also prepared to meet the requirements. The design defects can be avoided by means of adequate and appropriate implementation of knowledge in planning and structural design [26]. Generally recommended classifications for design are preliminary design and final design. In addition, the remaining elements important to be mentioned in design are value engineering (optional), and construction documents and bid specifications. At the end of the design, the end products such as reports, drawings, estimates, and schedule are produced. In each step, engineering specifications about equipment, machines, and materials are mentioned. All such reports and documents are important in keeping track of evolution of project design in addition with the assumptions and criterion employed for development of design.

2.3. Stage 3: tendering and procurement

[27] defined tendering as “The process of preparing and submitting for acceptance a conforming offer to carry out work for a price, thus converting the estimate to a bid”. This stage involves preparation of tender documents, contractual agreements, quality and quantity surveying, preparation of work schedules and monitory systems etc. [24]. In short, tendering and procurement describe the set of actions carried out by awarding authority to bring out and manage the tendering documents, while bidding demonstrates the interests and efforts of contractors to win the contracts. In this stage, the use of electronic mediums such as publication of tenders, systematic search for tenders, contractors and suppliers, electronic submission of biddings, and electronic notification of award of contract play an axial role [27].

3.1. Owner/client obligations in OHS in construction contract

As far as OHS performance is concerned, the owners/clients do have some intrinsic obligations such as selecting safe contractors, preparing OHS specifications and providing the same to principal contractors who is bidding for the award of work and to the one also who gets appointed for execution of construction work [21,[28], [29], [30]]. The health and safety of any person working at site can be affected by any of the external factors and hence, if known to client, the same should be formally written, and brought in knowledge of the principal contractor to take due care of [31,32]. Moreover, only contractors possessing mandatory resources and expertise should be hired, and that too in writing [21,30,31]. It should also be checked by client that the tendering contractor must have accomplished provision of capital for meeting OHS standards, and only after the due satisfaction, principal contractor should be appointed [[28], [29], [30], [31]]. In addition, clients should conduct periodic audits to ensure implementation of OHS plan of principal contractor. Moreover, clients can also terminate the contract of any subcontractor for not complying with principal contractor's safety plan [30,33]. The selection of safe contractor can be ensured by means of certain safety criterion such as incident rates, record of litigations and fines, performance record, experience modification records, safety plans, site safety inspections etc. [[28], [29], [30], [31],34].

The owners should not only include the safety related clauses in contracts but also ensure implementation of those clauses and make the contractors realize their contractual responsibilities related to on-site safety [21]. Moreover, contractors should also be bound to submit the comprehensive safety program containing an integrated emergency plan and accident reporting procedures before commencement of work. The owner/client must compel the contractor to appoint a responsible and qualified safety personal for supervising the status of OHS on construction site, within the contract documents [30,31]. Also, the owner should be the part of preliminary orientation sessions for providing exquisite knowledge about safety standards and procedures to workers [16,21,28,30].

3.2. The owner's role in fostering OHS in planning stage

The initial stage in any construction project is of planning which builds foundation for efficient construction procurement process which aims at seeking funds for execution. This stage encompasses definition of broad scope of project and formulation of a business case or plan which determines and elaborate the aim and objectives of work to be undertaken. The owner must be involved in including OHS related specifications and standards while identification and drafting of project objectives and project briefs. Because, the clients contribute a huge amount of funding for projects, they can influence a lot, in positive manner, on safety and health standards and performances of projects [33]. Afterall, it is the key responsibility of top management to enhance the health and safety behavior and attitude of their employees [35].

OHS, when considered essential at initial planning stage, becomes an integral part of the entire construction process as the errors tend to reduce rather than accumulating. In addition, the potential risks, to be possibly encountered by builder or end-user, can be identified and efficiently managed. Not only this, early identification of risks can also enable the stakeholders to rule them out of project in very start of the project rather mitigating or managing them at later stages [36]. With early stage identification of risks, projects can also avoid significant time and budget overruns caused due to management of risks after accumulation. Nonetheless, it is common for safety issues to be superficial and apparent during the execution or even after the completion of construction project. Because the identification of risks on later stages involves loads of complexities and costs, it is always advisable to identify the risks in preliminary stages to save considerable amount of physical and non-physical resources [36].

The key role of client/owner regarding OHS in planning stage of project revolves around review and clarification of project brief and potential identification of hazards and risks, and their consequent repercussions via efficient risk management practices [37]. This process of risk assessment must include possible OHS risks and should be accomplished with strong collaboration of efficient and appropriate stakeholders [21,36,[38], [39], [40]]. The owner should identify the general safety issues in the project whether the project falls in any category of construction say as roads, buildings, facilities, recreational places etc. All possible safety issues and concerns should be identified in planning stage so that they can be efficiently mitigated and managed in later stages of projects [36]. Moreover, it is also important for a client to identify the specific safety issues from past lessons learned from similar nature of projects. The construction practitioners highly recommend advance review of any such available information for identification of safety issues at the very early stage. The client or owner should also design out potential possible risks within planning stage of a project by re-designing a part of that project [31,36]. For instance, while designing the school building, clients should consider the traffic management problems and devise the required traffic management plan. The pick and drop stops, zones and/or locations for students should be considered for evaluation along with the status of traffic volume and density, and separation of vehicles and pedestrians. What's more in the list, clear signs should be installed with major freeways witnessing high traffic flow and issues. The client can define safe means of access as an integral part of structure within the project brief. In addition, the owner should also identify safety issues and control measures for refurbishment, repair, or extension of existing facilities and/or assets. The identified risks should be documented separately for the contractors and designers of the project and detailed risk assessment should be conducted in both design and construction phase of project [31,36]. Also, clients can best identify risks during planning by consulting with workers appointed on such extension and refurbishment work nature of projects. For example, alternative essential services may be desired and required during refurbishment or extension of hospital building so critical equipment should not be disrupted. This can be identified via consultation with workers and would be assessed during design stage and related instructions can be forwarded to construction players. Another example from community services background can be of any organization under refurbishment or extension nature of work, which serves the clients in the domains of physical, behavioral, or psychological issues. Such clients can pose risks not only to themselves but, also to workers and contractors on site. Any interaction and communication with such groups should be critically evaluated in risk assessment process [36].

Owners should keep a good record of any risk information received to them or learnt through past experiences. To maintain OHS in all phases of construction projects, the clients should appoint safety team comprising workers and safety supervisors [30], establish their responsibilities and ensure that they must conduct periodical inspections on sites [22,41,42]. Not only this, the clients should also select safe contractors for execution of their projects and avoid assigning work to any contractor with indecent past record. The requirements about project brief and design should be established and safe work method statements should be reviewed and assessed by client. Also, the client should specify how the OHS is to be addressed in tender documents etc. [21]. The owners should be determined with a “zero injury” objective at their sites and should also communicate to contractors and other staff for their realization of safety [21,28,30,31,34].

3.3. The owner's role in fostering OHS in design stage

As the researchers believe that design phase is a critical and significant phase in which health and safety risks can be identified and well minimized and consequently, the rate of injuries and deaths can be reduced [39]. This phase requires review of all the OHS risks identified in planning phase to determine the viability of their minimization or elimination during design. Meanwhile, processes should be brought in business to capture new risks to be identified throughout design stage [36]. The clients, in planning stage, must ensure that the design team must consider OHS issues in line with the type and requirements of project, and bring out a risk-free design according to methods of construction and site conditions [21,29,30,32,40]. A safe design is considered as an effective, economic, and swift possible way for mitigation and elimination of safety associated risks. This is why, the owners should select highly qualified professionals for design of projects who must address all the OHS related aspects by means of technical and design specifications [21,30,32,40]. Efforts must be taken to design the potential risks out of the project, however, when it becomes impossible to eliminate or mitigate such identified risks, same should be included in tender documents and potential contractors should be bound to demonstrate about management of such risks. The owners should also ensure regular update and documentation of OHS matters, at design stage, with due consideration to relevant clauses from regulatory bodies. The clients also need to ensure that the design must include OHS on the constructability, use and maintenance of the structures, and no faulty design should pass [29,32,36,40]. Moreover, proper instructions and guidelines should be provided by clients to design engineers for identifying and designing the risks out. For example, clients can supply a particular layout of project and specify which construction material or equipment should not be used as it is expected to create safety related problems. The use of safe construction site and safe equipment can save up to 10% of cost associated with protective equipment, inventories of hazardous materials, and periodic testing and maintenance of equipment [43]. In summary, a safe design procedure can bring numerous benefits such as improved utility of facilities, enhanced productivity, prevention of injuries and diseases, reduction in costs, innovation sin design, and compliance to legislation etc. On contrary, unsafe design can affect the project with numerous direct costs such as costs for compensation, insurances, claims, and ecological cleanups etc. [36].

For safe design, two procedures i.e. prevention through design (PtD) and Designing for construction safety (DfCS) are extensively used in CI [38,[44], [45], [46]]. The procedure of PtD revolves around the principle that clients and designers, while designing the projects and making project risk related decisions and assessments, should be conscious about and value the safety of human resource hired at construction sites [45]. In short, PtD deals with explicit consideration of OHS of workers in the design phase of any construction project [38,46]. However, it is an unfortunate anticipation that most of the architects and/or engineers will not conduct PtD unless they are bound to do so by owners, developers, or contemporary legislations. To add more into problems and complexities, there is still a very low level of knowledge to owners about PtD and hence, it becomes very difficult to motivate them for enforcement of PtD in their construction projects [39]. Nevertheless, the owners being central leadership, should set higher bar for worker's OHS and should ensure that architects and engineers are capable of and willing to conduct PtD and henceforth, the clients should only select the architects and engineers who possess formal PtD program and a demonstrated record of accomplishment in performing PtD [45]. It should be made clear to architects and engineers, by owners, that even multiple methods of mitigating a risk are present, efforts should be made to design that risk out whenever practical. In absence of such knowledge associated attributes, it should be mandatory for architects and engineers to at least submit in writing that they understand the significance of PtD and are willing to train the designers about PtD processes and tools which will, no doubt, create an effective collaboration with contractor workforce and clients while performing PtD in design phase of project [45]. Such frequent interactions and collaborations between architects, engineers, designers, contractors, and clients should be established at the very start of design so that the value of PtD is realized to every stakeholder of the project [40,45]. Moreover, such interactions should also be encouraged in the initial training so that an informal team building with mutual trust may be witnessed for wellbeing of construction project being undertaken [34,39].

The second procedure for safe design is designing for construction safety (DfCS) which focuses on site safety consideration during design stage of any construction project. The concept of DfCS possess four captivating merits. First, because it is established in reported literature that CI has been recognized as a most hazardous industry, it is fair to assume that all the construction players must be willing to play their roles in reducing accidents, injuries, and fatalities at construction sites. The next theoretical merit for enforcement of DfCS is associated with the fact that as all accidents and their consequences are corelated with stresses, electricity, forces, and dynamic motion of bodies and/or equipment, it is fair to anticipate that stakeholders with sound educational background in such topics would not compromise on construction safety while making decisions. Third, as it is very much true for project constraints like cost, schedule, and quality that the related decisions are highly influential on project safety and such decisions are made by designers so the concept of DfCS should be implemented early in the project lifecycle to reduce damages. Last, it is commonly perceived and established through past literature that eliminating and mitigating construction safety hazards in design stage prevents accumulation of such hazards and consequent repercussions. Moreover, the resources spent on safeguarding workers from such hazards and can be saved and thus, DfCS should be the first choice among methods to eliminate safety risks [44,47].

To ensure safety in construction projects, owners and designer should establish the practices that are required and will be employed for risk assessment and management because the risk management is considered as an integral part of efficient governance of project. The risks related to safety and health should also be treated as a priority as the risks associated with time, quality and cost are treated. The periodic identification and assessment of risks at definite intervals through various processes is very significant to be defined in design stage. Moreover, the safety should be held as an agenda in every meeting and workshops should be conducted for realization of importance of safety in construction projects in early stages of design development process [34]. Processes should also be established for recording risks as identified by means of any project activity. The design documents should be regularly passed through a formal control and change management process for keeping check on changes and project information with recent developments. With that, the lessons learnt from previous projects about safety should also be regularly revisited to avoid repetition of erroneous designs. When the risk is deemed to be beyond the scope of the knowledge of project stakeholder, required expert opinion should be furnished through qualified personnel. Although, it is anticipated that design phase does not capture all the potential risks, but necessary efforts should be taken for identification of risks in this phase [36].

The risks identified in design phase should be reviewed so that the categorization of risks can be performed based on their influence on end-user or contractor or any other construction stakeholder. Obviously, the risk mitigation, elimination or designing such risks out will require different techniques for different classifications of risks [36]. There should be an efficient consultation between OHS personnel, end-customers, and other construction practitioners so that all could put forward their knowledgeful opinions which can be helpful in the identification of risks associated with the design phase of the project. If the risks as identified in planning and design stage cannot be eliminated through design, the risk should be clearly mentioned and elaborated in tender documents to capture the response of tenderers on them [36]. The official report of Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation, Australia published in 2007 with the title “Guide to Best Practice for Safer Construction: Principles” which introduced six principles for safe construction [39,45]. One of the principles was “to promote design for safety” which requires numerous actions from clients such as inclusion of safe design requirements in contracts, prequalification of safe designers and contractors, efficient collaboration among client and designers for sharing information regarding design changes and consequent risk hazards and risk elements [45]. Moreover, the clients and the designer should review all the proposed construction practices to avoid inheriting the risks. Similarly, the client should convey his knowledge about OHS and review the design documents to ensure that risks are listed as identified. The client should also ensure that sufficient resources are being spent for fulfillment of OHS requirements of all the project entities [7,30,39,40].

3.4. The owner's role in fostering OHS in tendering and procurement stage

The tendering and procurement in construction projects, is a complete process which encompasses acquisition of goods, services or property, when a firm feels its need [48]. The procurement is continuous through the various processes involved for risk assessment, identification of optimal solutions, contracting, awarding, delivery and payment of services or goods or property. In addition, the procurement process can also be linked with management of ongoing contractual works. With the procurement process, the monitoring and assessment of procurement is also considered an integral part of it. In pre-construction phase of construction projects, the tendering and procurement is the final stage before the project enters in construction or execution phase and is characterized by the following processes involved.

• •

  Needs analysis: This involves determination of organization's need and whether the procurement process can provide the optimal solution or not.

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  Funding approval: Funding approval is a stage when the scope of the project is defined, and the budget is approved.

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  Project procurement plan: This is the stage whereby the strategy for entering themarket is determined. The strategy must ensure achievement of the desired objectives.

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  Contractor selection: This stage involves the invitation ofeligible tenderers to tender for the project, evaluation of tenders received and contract awarding [49].

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  Contract management: Contract management refers to the period between acontract/s and its implementation.

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  Evaluation: The last process, which is procurement evaluation, assesses serviceprovider performance and value for money [50].

Procurement and tendering period is considered the most important period in preconstruction stage as in this period, owners and stockholders able make their limitations and requirements such as enforcing OHS requirements. The governments act as key policy makers, employers, regulatory authorities, and purchasers of goods, services, or equipment as they impart an influential role in preventing and abridging the work-associated injuries, diseases, and fatalities by means of prompt legislations and enforcing OHS requirements [51,52]. The governments, as procurers, can also promote OHS by making it mandatory for the construction players to include safety measures, provision of safety budget, and safety management plans etc. [36]. In this regard, a UK-based group with the name Engineers against Poverty (EAP) published a briefing note on the topic of enhancing OHS implementation in construction sector of developing countries by means of efficient procurement. The briefing note demonstrated possible preservation of merits and profits of competitive and robust procurement and tendering without compromising on adequate provision of wellbeing and, health and safety of the workforce [53]. The profitable benefits, expected to be received due to effective implementation of safety standards include improvements in productivity, reduction in costs (associated with provision of compensation to heirs of injured or dead) due to reduction in accidents, efficient management over project lifecycle, and innovations in design and construction etc. [36].

On legal grounds, the tendering and procurement procedures and contract documents can serve as a timely reminder for all construction players to stick with the OHS standards as contracted. Hence, the process of tendering and procurement can directly enable the clients to influence OHS standards. As argued by Ref. [53], OHS is highly essential and plays important role during procurement processes due to two reasons. One, because, legislations related to OHS consider clients to be responsible for OHS of their workforce. Although, this responsibility can also be extended to contractors and consultants but both of them eventually and ultimately work to meet the requirements and safeguard the interests of clients and hence, the clients are nowadays being held responsible for OHS of workers at construction sites. Nevertheless, the monitoring and enforcement of OHS standards and check on their compliance is a duty of regulatory authorities [51] but the construction projects are many in numbers and dispersed in terms of site locations which make the inspection practically near to impossible. Therefore, the terms and conditions and safety clauses documented in procurement and contract documents can serve as an additional framework for guaranteeing strict obedience of OHS related standards, terms and conditions, and legislations.

The clients need to establish in contracts, minimum safety requirements other than those set in prevalent legislations, and to promote awareness of OHS by attaching the relevant legislations in tender documents. As claimed by Ref. [16], safety related clauses are added but usually the compliance to those clauses is very rare, hence, it is the job of owners/clients to ensure the application and enforcement of such OHS laws, and to make it clear to tenderers/contractors that non-compliance to the OHS requirements specified in tender documents can lead to termination of the contract [29,30,36,54]. The role of tender and/or contract documents is not only limited to only specifying that contractors are expected to comply with relevant OHS legislation, but the practical demonstration of such safety related capabilities should also made essential [30]. This can be achieved by contractors by providing evidences of third-party certified management systems, details about previous safety record, injuries, fatalities, accidents, prosecutions, litigations, and legal notices etc. Moreover, the contractor should be bound to submit the details of management practices being undertaken for safe work along with the safety qualifications and resource levels of project workforce, if any. The contract documents should also make compulsory for contractors to bring out the details about client communication processes, site inspection, safety audits, accident reporting processes, safety monitoring systems etc. [30,36]. Moreover, clients should bring in knowledge of tenderer, all the hazards identified by design team. The requirements related to OHS at site should be so presented to tenderers so that their awareness may get tested [21,29,32,34,39,40]. It should be accordingly mandatory that tenderer/contractors must produce OHS plans and/or emergency plans as part of tender responsiveness [21,30]. The inclusion of special clauses in tender documents, dealing with OHS related performance can also make the tenderer realize about significance of safety [21,29,32,39,40]. The owners need to involve an item of OHS in project cost estimate which is prepared by the consultants, and provide funds to contractors and subcontractors, above and beyond the contract budget, so that promotion of safety may be observed for realization to all construction players [7,30,32]. Also, the items related to OHS must be translated, interpreted, and considered with same significance as of other items [8,33].

The owner/clients can attain a better implementation of safety standards at project sites by selecting a safe contractor and appointing at least one full-time safety specialist as contractor's representative at site [8,29,30,33,34]. It should be very necessary in preconditions to check the past safety records of contractors as it is very significant in selecting public contractors [30]. The traditional criteria of selecting contractors, however, focuses on tender cost and lower bid or cheapest price systems. It has been reported in literature that in such cases of traditional contractor selection, the OHS standards are likely to be compromised [49]. Although, the past safety record is one of robust measures for evaluation of contractor in terms of accident history, but the clients should consider looking at more criterion to evaluate the safety performance of contractors. Other viable criterion can include safety programs of contractor and work experience of his safety staff. Moreover, clients can also evaluate contractor's safety by conducting site visits and interviews at ongoing construction projects undertaken by contractors, and by studying in detail about the commitment to his work shown by the contractor [30]. The clients also need to specify OHS responsibilities of all tenderers in documents, and before awarding any contract, the resumes of key safety personnel submitted by the contractor must be assessed and approved, if found satisfactory [8,[32], [33], [34],54]. In this regard, the South Africa OSH Act No. 85 of 1993 urges clients to make sure that principal contractor bidding for contract have provided capital for OHS measures and appoint only after being satisfied regarding his necessary competencies and resources. The owners should address OHS related matters during contract negotiations, and only consider the competing contractors presenting a satisfactory response to OHS clauses during the process of tender awards [29,32,36]. For prequalification of contractors, owners can also look at contractor's project management team and safety staff, contractor's total recordable injury rate (TRIR) on past projects, and quality of his safety program [21,29,30,33]. Moreover, clients can improve safety in construction projects by requiring contractors to include safety program elements such as daily job safety analysis and keep check on subcontractor's safety performances periodically [8,21,29].