Key attributes for industry 4.0–enabled occupational safety and health management in modern methods of construction: a Delphi–VAHP approach

Abstract

The adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies presents significant opportunities to enhance occupational safety and health (OSH) management within modern methods of construction (MMC). However, organisations often lack clarity on which factors are crucial for the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies for OSH improvement in MMC. Existing studies have mainly investigated individual technologies, adoption barriers, or organisational capability factors, without systematically identifying and prioritising the comprehensive set of people, organisational, technological, and infrastructure attributes that enable effective Industry 4.0-enabled OSH management in MMC. This study addresses this gap by identifying, validating, and prioritising the key attributes for effective Industry 4.0-enabled OSH management in MMC using a four-stage methodological approach comprising SLR, expert verification, Delphi method, and voting analytic hierarchy process (VAHP). Through a combination of systematic literature review (SLR) and expert verification, 21 attributes were identified and grouped into four clusters: people, organisation, technology, and infrastructure. The 21 identified and validated attributes were then ranked by a group of experts through a two-round Delphi survey. Following this, the weights and importance of attributes were determined using the voting analytical hierarchy process (VAHP). The results indicate that organisation and people clusters achieved the highest relative priorities; Management support, workforce competence, and technology acceptance were identified as the highest-priority attributes. These findings reveal a sociotechnical hierarchy in which organisational and human capabilities are prioritised above technological and infrastructural capabilities, suggesting successful Industry 4.0-enabled transformation for OSH improvement depends more on social-subsystem capability than on technology deployment alone.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Safety Science, 2026 · DOI ↗