631 Sixth International Conference on Construction in the 21 st Century (CITC-VI) “Construction Challenges in the New Decade” July 5-7 2011, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Impact significance of construction clients’ culture on contractors’ health and safety (H&S) culture- An exploratory Delphi study Innocent Musonda (PhD Candidate, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa) Wellington Thwala Didibhuku (Associate Professor, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa) Theodore Conrad Haupt (Professor, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa) Abstract Contractors’ top management has been identified in many studies to be of great importance to H&S performance and continual improvement. Therefore developing strategies that support and motivate contractor top management, implement H&S elements would ensure a gradual and sustained improvement of H&S in the construction industry. This way construction workers’ H&S can be assured and in so doing achieve sustainability in the industry through skills preservation. The paper reports on an analysis of impact significance of clients on contractors. It will underscore the point that has been made before using different methodologies that client H&S culture is critical to contractors’ H&S culture because it is crucial to H&S performance Keywords Clients, Contractors, Culture, H&S, Impact significance 1. Introduction H&S performance improvement in the construction industry has increasingly received attention in recent years. Some authors argue that the commitment might be influenced by the introduction of major pieces of legislation, coupled with increased personal responsibility of senior managers and organizations for H&S (Fitzgerald, 2005). Other reasons for the focus on H&S include a need to develop good or better image of the construction industry (Misnan and Mohammed, 2007) and in some ways to address the H&S record which in comparison to many industries is really undesirable. For lager multi-national organizations, the need for H&S improvement could be a corporate social responsibility issue. Therefore these countries are working at improving their H&S performance (Smallman and John, 2001). For example, these methods include designing for construction worker safety (Gambetese and Hinze, 1999; Gambetese, Behm and Hinze, 2005; Hecker, Gambatese and Weinstein, 2005), continual improvement of safety management systems (Chua and Goh, 2004), addressing H&S culture (Molenaar, Park and Washington, 2009; Parker, Lawrie and Hudson, 2006; Chinda and Mohamed, 2007), the model client framework (Lingard, Blismas, Cooke and Cooper, 2009), use of incentives and disincentives (Tang, Qiang, Duffield, Young and Lu, 2008). Other methods include multi-stakeholder involvement (Suraji, Sulaiman, Mahyuddin and Mohamed, 2006). Even though many ways of improving H&S have been