Recent accidents in small- and medium-sized construction sites indicate that the occupational safety and health (OSH) management system is not functioning adequately in practice. Although OSH management expenses are intended to support essential safet...
Recent accidents in small- and medium-sized construction sites indicate that the occupational safety and health (OSH) management system is not functioning adequately in practice. Although OSH management expenses are intended to support essential safety activities, their current allocation structure—particularly the heavy concentration of costs in labor—fails to sufficiently contribute to safety facility improvement, provision of protective equipment, or risk assessment processes. The continued stagnation in construction accident rates even after the enforcement of the Serious Accident Punishment Act further reflects structural limitations in the existing cost management framework. These issues are more pronounced in small- and medium-sized sites, where budget and manpower constraints amplify the inefficiency of the current expenditure structure.
Previous studies have offered various improvement measures such as enhancing safety culture, strengthening training programs, and institutionalizing risk assessment. However, these approaches alone have been insufficient to resolve the structural limitations faced in smaller construction environments. This study therefore analyzes how the subcomponents of OSH management expenses—labor costs, safety facility costs, and protective equipment costs—affect safety management operationality across the PDCA (Plan–Do–Check–Act) cycle. Furthermore, the study examines the mediating role of the emerging policy alternative of classifying safety managers’ wages as direct construction costs rather than OSH management expenses.
A survey was conducted with safety managers, supervisors, and construction engineers working at small- and medium-sized construction sites. Questionnaire items were developed based on the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the 2025 OSH expense calculation guidelines. Collected data were analyzed using Jamovi through validity and reliability testing, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and mediation analysis.
The results showed that all three OSH expense components had statistically significant direct effects across the PDCA stages, confirming that OSH expenses function as essential resources for maintaining and strengthening on-site safety activities. However, mediation analysis revealed clear differences among components. Labor and safety facility costs demonstrated partial mediation effects in the planning, evaluation, and improvement stages, while protective equipment showed no mediation effects across all stages. These findings suggest that the characteristics of consumable items such as protective equipment limit their responsiveness to structural changes in cost allocation, and that the execution stage is more heavily influenced by practical factors such as worker skills, site operations, and supervisory systems.
The results indicate that the functional characteristics of OSH management expenses vary across PDCA stages and demonstrate that classifying safety manager labor costs as direct construction costs is a viable institutional alternative for enhancing safety management operations in small- and medium-sized sites. Such a reclassification can increase budget flexibility and strengthen the systematic operation of the PDCA cycle.
This study contributes academically and practically by identifying structural issues in OSH management expense allocation and empirically demonstrating how changes in labor cost classification influence safety management operationality—an area not fully addressed in prior research. Nonetheless, the study is limited by reliance on self-reported survey data, insufficient differentiation by project type and scale, and the use of pre-policy implementation data. Future research should include comparative analyses across project characteristics and longitudinal studies following policy implementation to verify the actual impact of OSH expense restructuring on accident reduction.