Perceived Importance of Construction Safety Performance Factors and Industry 4.0 Safety Technologies in the Saudi Arabian Construction Industry: An Exploratory Assessment

Driven by Vision 2030, the construction industry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has expanded rapidly. This expansion has raised concerns about safety performance and created a need to identify the factors that most strongly influence safety outcomes. This study is an exploratory, perception-based investigation into the perceived importance of factors affecting construction safety performance and into the perceived value of emerging Industry 4.0 technologies in improving it. Data were collected from 68 construction engineering professionals using a structured questionnaire covering 50 safety-related factors across five domains: management, worker, equipment and environmental, organisational and policy, and technology integration. The Importance Index (I) method was used to analyse the responses, and the domain-level results are reported as descriptive prioritisations rather than as statistically validated constructs. The three highest-rated items were lack of management commitment to safety programmes (I = 91.2%), inadequate and infrequent safety training (I = 89.7%), and absence of safety awareness among top management (I = 88.5%), followed closely by weak enforcement of safety regulations (I = 87.4%). At the domain level, management-related factors recorded the highest mean (I = 81.7%), ahead of worker-related factors (I = 79.5%) and technology integration (I = 75.0%). Although respondents identified artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), building information modelling (BIM), and drones as valuable safety enablers, they rated organisational and human factors as more important than the technologies themselves. Extreme heat and adverse weather conditions (I = 81.7%) emerged as a leading environmental risk, underlining the need for climate-specific safety interventions in the KSA context. Heat stress could be considered a notable concern in this context, as construction work in KSA is often performed outdoors during extended periods of high summer temperatures, which can elevate the risk of heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and fatigue-related incidents. This contrasts with the more temperate conditions of many international comparator studies and helps to explain why respondents treat heat as a leading environmental concern. To the authors’ knowledge, this is among the few exploratory studies to bring management, workforce, policy, environmental, and Industry 4.0 technology determinants together within a single KSA-specific framework. The findings contribute to both theory and practice in construction safety by identifying priority areas for intervention and by providing a basis for future large-scale confirmatory studies.