Drivers of resilience for safety management systems of building repair and maintenance companies: An empirical study

Developing resilience for safety management systems (SMSs) involves enhancing the capabilities of an organisation’s SMS. A resilient SMS would adjust its people, workplace and system on reactive, concurrent and proactive bases by anticipating, monitoring, responding to and learning from safety risks. This study aims to identify the drivers that enable a higher level of resilience for SMSs in the context of building repair and maintenance. Data were collected using a questionnaire survey from 145 professionals in building repair and maintenance contracting companies in Australia. The gathered data were analysed using the structural equation modeling technique. The results revealed that the level of resilience in SMSs of building repair and maintenance companies can be developed by enhancing learning through accommodating failures and successes, identifying dependencies among functions instead of only focusing on causes and effects, and learning continuously from experiences. Organisational cognition improvement practice has a positive impact on people resilience, place resilience and system resilience; organisational mindfulness practice has a positive impact on place resilience; and organisational learning practice has a positive impact on system resilience. The findings of this study reinforce the development of the concept of resilience for SMSs by introducing mechanisms by which a higher level of resilience can be created in SMSs of building repair and maintenance companies. These findings provide a systematic framework to initiate safety intervention programs for improving the safety performance of building repair and maintenance companies.