FINAL SCOPE

What gets measured gets improved. For the safety and health of state departments of transportation (DOTs) employees, the primary, historic metric used has been the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recordable incident rate. This incident rate measures how often a state DOT employee sustains an injury that demands more than basic first aid. This metric is important for understanding injury frequency but does not assist with programmatic management of state DOT personnel's safety, health, and overall well-being. Functionally, the OSHA recordable incident metric and others like it are known as lagging indicators, which provide data after an incident. 

Recently, public and private sector organizations with high-hazard tasks have turned to safety-leading indicators as metrics to manage occupational safety and health. These safety-leading indicators provide relevant data before an incident occurs and thus can lead to predictive insights that allow state DOTs to take action to avoid incidents altogether. Research efforts in the private sector have sought to identify, document, and measure the impact of safety-leading indicators; however, state DOTs do not have similar, comprehensive studies. Additionally, how state DOTs coordinate with other agencies that protect workers may provide valuable insights, such as departments of labor or state police. For example, DOTs may depend on those agency actions or roles and whether their indicators are shared or utilized. 

There are safety risks for different work areas in a state DOT, such as maintenance (mobile and short-term activities), construction (stationary and long-term), or driving/fleet (mobile and continual). Factors like employee attitudes, behavior, culture, psychological safety, and training may provide additional quantitative or qualitative data for developing and using indicators. 

The objective of this synthesis is to document practices used by state DOTs regarding the use of safety leading indicators to track and prevent occupational injuries and other incidents. 

Information to be gathered includes (but is not limited to):

• DOT characteristics that may influence the development or use of indicators (permanent or temporary employees, union or non-union workforces, civil service or non-civil service, human resources in the DOT or a statewide agency, a centralized DOT, semi-centralized, or de-centralized DOT)
• Employee characteristics and classifications (new or experienced employees, or supervisory capacity);
• Leading indicators related to employee attitudes, behavior trends, team culture, or psychological safety;
• Leading indicators related to training (mechanisms and methods, who gets trained and frequency, and does leadership participate in training);
• Frequency of safety leading indicators collection;
• Flow through requirements of private contractors at worksites or in state DOT-led activities;
• Method of data collection, tracking, and storage;
• Roles and responsibilities in the use of leading indicators;
• Results and analyses;
• Benefits and challenges;
• Successful implementation strategies; and
• Written policies and procedures. 

Information will be gathered through a literature review, a survey of state DOTs, and follow-up interviews with selected agencies for the development of case examples. Information gaps and suggestions for research to address those gaps will be identified.

Information Sources (Partial):

• Akroush, N. S., and El-Adaway, I. H. (2017). Utilizing Construction Leading Safety Indicators: Case Study of Tennessee. Journal of Management in Engineering, 33(5), 06017002.
• Al-Shabbani, Z., Ammar, A., and Dadi, G. B. (2022). Preventative Safety Metrics with Highway Maintenance Crews. Construction Research Congress 2022. American Society of Civil Engineer’s Construction Institute and Construction Research Council, Arlington, Virginia. March 9–March 12, 2022.
• Al-Shabbani, Ammar, A., Nassereddine, H., and Dadi, G. B. (2021). Development, Implementation, and Tracking of Preventative Safety Metrics. Research Report KTC-21-04/SPR19-568-1F. Kentucky Transportation Center, Lexington, Kentucky.
• Guo, H., and Yiu, T. W. (2013). How Traditional Construction Safety Performance Indicators Fail to Capture the Reality of Safety. The 38th Australian Universities Building Education Association Conference, Auckland, New Zealand.
• Hinze, J., Thurman, S., and Wehle, A. (2013). Leading Indicators of Construction Safety Performance. Safety Science, 51(1), 23-28.
• Maloney, W. F., Dadi, G. B., Cravey, K., Janusz, C., Liu, H., and Jazayeri, E. (2017). Improving Site Safety Performance through Operational Excellence–Volume 2. Construction Industry Institute. Research Team 317, Research Report 317-2, The University of Texas at Austin.
• NCHRP Synthesis 608: Practices to Motivate Safe Behaviors with Highway Construction and Maintenance Crews. 

TRB Staff
Trey Joseph Wadsworth
Email: twadsworth@nas.edu

Meeting Dates
First Panel Meeting: September 14, 2023, Washington, D.C., at the Keck Center
Conference Call: November 3, 2023, Teleconference
Second Panel Meeting: June 13, 2024, Washington, D.C., at the Keck Center 

Panel Members
Tracy Fletcher, Alabama Department of Transportation
Susan Herbel, SBH Consult
Larry Schwartz, Caltrans
Troy Whitworth, Kansas Department of Transportation
Zhenyu Zhang, Texas A&M University
Connie Tang, FHWA Liaison