Building a safety culture: the importance of "shared mental models" in the Australian construction industry

Managers of construction organizations often speak about the inmportance of OHS. Some organizations move beyond the rhetoric to implement OHS management systems, supported by programmes of OHS training and audits. Yet in the face of deadlines or budgetary pressures, managers at all levels of construction organizations sometimes change their priorities to pursue performance in the traditional areas of cost, time and quality - at the expense of OHS. It would be rare for a manager to openly diminish the importance of understanding about how important OHS 'really is'. This paper discusses research currently underway in the Australian construction industry into the role played by managers at different levels in creating OHS sub-cultures in construction organizations. The paper explores how the existence of these sub-cultures should be identified and managed to create shared mental models of OHS within participating organizations.