【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 ring system before accidents occur is that the audit measures the success of the system implemented, and thus reinforces positive achievement. A proper measure of the safety performance is also found to be crucial for effective safety management [7]. Cox and Cox [8] found that safety auditing is one of the major elements of an SMS. It provides managers with further information and on pliance with standards. This promotes safe work practices that stemmed from reliable and continuing feedback through the safety level observed. Thus, a safety audit conducted in a timely manner will help to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the current safety program, and any problem areas that might adversely affect the success of the program will be identified. This allows firms to derive the maximum benefit from the program consistent with the resources deployed [9].2. SMS for the construction industryIn Singapore, the MOM is the government regulatory body responsible for enforcement of legislations relating to safety. The main safety legislations that construction sites have to ply with are the Factories Act (Chapter 104) and the Factories (Building Operations and Work of Engineering Construction) (BOWEC) Regulations,1994. The BOWEC Regulations require all construction worksites that have contract values of S$10 million (US$1 _ S$) or more to implement an SMS based on the Code of Practice on Construction Safety Management System (CP) 79. Worksites with contract values of less than S$10 million do not need to implement an SMS,but these sites are encouraged to do so.The CP79 consists of 14 main safety management elements as follows:? safety policy,? safe work practices,? safety training,? group meetings,? incident investigation and analysis,? inhouse safety rules and regulations,? safety promotion,? evaluation, selection and control of subcontractors,? safety inspections,? maintenance regime for all machinery and equipment,? hazard analysis,? movement control and use of hazardous substances and chemicals,? emergency preparedness,? occupational health programmes.Each element provides specific guidelines on how construction firms should organise and manage their sites to ensure safety of their personnel and the public. However, CP 79 is not meant to be a stringent set of rules and regulations because each construction project is different. The project manager has to carefully interpret the clauses in the code of practice and adapt the guidelines to the context of his project.Besides Singapore, SMS is also a requirement in many other countries. From the review of the SMSs used in Hong Kong [3,10], Australia [11], UK [4] and USA [5,12] it was found that Singapore’s CP 79 is very prehensive and covers all levels of the construction project and organisation. However, the focus on the higher level issues like management mitment is inadequate as pared to Australia and the UK. The SMS approaches employed by the UK are not as extensive in terms of specific details, but they highlightthe need for management participation where their opinions and reviews are given very high importance. Many studies have shown that management mitment and involvement is the core element of any SMS [13–16]. Without management support, it is difficult to enforce safe practices and inculcate a safety culture into the organisation.3. Research methodologyThe research methodology is shown in Fig. 1. The first step was to review the various SMS standards and guidelines of selected developed countries that are known to have relatively high safety standards. These countries include Hong Kong, Australia, UK and USA.In step 2, relevant attributes were selected and collated based on the literature review and study of various countries’ SMS. A questionnaire was then designed to survey practitioners’ perception of the importance of the collated attributes. The developed questionnaires were sent to 420 randomly selected general building contractors who were registered with the Building Construction Authority (BCA) of Singapore(step 3).In step 4, a review was done on selected award winning panies of the Annual Safety Performance Award (ASPA) documents to determine their best practices and SMS used within these organisations.In step 5, preliminary interviews were conducted with three safety auditors to find out their auditing practices. A preliminary framework was developed (step 6) based on the literature review and the postal survey results(step 7). From the results a model to measure the effectiveness of SMS was invented (step 8). This model is based on multiattribute value technique (MAVT) [17]. In step 8, all possible attributes to be incorporated into the model were identified through reviewing the CP79, checklists, tools and practices adopted in other countries.In steps 9 and 10, the importance weights for the factors and attributes of the CSI framework were determined. For the first level factors and second level attributes, the weights were determined through Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) (step 9), where 30 industry experts were interviewed. Due to the relatively large amount of time needed to conduct AHP, and the large number of lower level attributes e4500T, the lower level attributes’ weights were determined based on 5point Likert Scale (step 10), where 1 ? not important。3 ? neutral。 and 5 ? very important/critical. Twelve industry experts were interviewed to obtain the importance weights.A rating method was developed (step11) and verified by nine industry experts. Thereafter the model was tested through three site audits (step 12). Based on the feedback,minor improvements were made (step 14) before the final version was presented (step 15). The survey results (step7) had been reported in Teo et al. [18]. This paper focused on step 8 onwards, describing the development of the proposed model and its validation.4. Model construction (step 8)From the literature review and s