# Improvements of Design for Safety in Construction through Multi-Participants Perception Analysis
## 5 Conclusions  
To realize safe construction projects, fatal incidents should ultimately be eliminated. To do this effectively, construction safety management should be taken into account in the design phase instead of the construction phase. Therefore, this study presented eight Design for Safety (DfS) alternatives for improving DfS in South Korea, and a questionnaire survey and fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (F-AHP) analysis were carried out to identify the priority levels of such DfS improvement alternatives. The research process that was employed here is as follows: (1) definition of the DfS improvement alternatives, (2) conduct of the questionnaire survey, and (3) calculation and analysis of the weighting factors. First, based on previous studies related to DfS, eight DfS improvement alternatives for South Korea were presented. Second, a questionnaire survey was carried out to identify the degrees of importance of the eight DfS improvement alternatives. The 27 respondents who participated here all had links to the construction industry. They were five clients, five designers, eight contractors, four construction managers, and five researchers. Nine respondents had less than ten years of experience, and eighteen respondents had more than ten years of experience. Based on the results of the questionnaire survey, the absolute importance of the eight DfS improvement alternatives was identified. An analysis of variance was carried out for validation. Third, the F-AHP analysis was performed considering the following three criteria: (1) the overall respondents' perspective, (2) the construction project participants' perspectives, and (3) the career level. The results of the study are as follows. First, the results of the absolute importance of the eight DfS improvement alternatives from all respondents' perspective showed that all respondents recognized the need for the eight DfS improvement alternatives. In particular, however, the absolute importance of the alternatives was highest among the researchers, as the researchers recognized through their research that the DfS process can effectively reduce the number of construction accidents. Second, the results of the relative importance of each of the eight DfS improvement alternatives from the perspective of all respondents showed that the perceived top priority with regard to improving DfS in South Korea was the 'Assignment of responsibility for DfS to the client' (0.196). This suggests that in South Korea, construction project clients lack a sense of responsibility during the DfS process. The least urgent improvement item was the 'Application of extended coverage' (0.089). Third, the results of the relative importance of each of the eight DfS improvement alternatives by construction project participant revealed that there is a significant difference in the recognition of the importance of improving DfS according to the roles and positions of the construction project participants. The clients of public construction projects, who implement the DfS process, recognized the relative importance of the 'Application of extended coverage' (0.160). Meanwhile, the designers, who want to reflect design alternatives regarding risk factors in the construction design, placed relatively more importance on the 'Application of a design alternative' (0.147), while the contractors perceived the 'Development of a decision support system' (0.215), helpful during the DfS process, as a relatively important alternative. In addition, the contractors, who cannot participate in the DfS process due to the conventional project delivery method in South Korea, recognized the relative importance of the 'Development of a collaboration program' (0.117).