A systematic review of occupational safety and health in modular integrated construction

The construction industry is facing increased pressure to enhance efficiency and safety, owing to its high incident rates. Modular integrated construction (MiC) has gained significant attention as a viable means of enhancing the overall performance of the industry. Despite its numerous advantages, MiC presents occupational safety and health (OSH) challenges due to its unique characteristics, like off-site manufacturing, standardisation, and specialised assembly processes. These complexities necessitate comprehensive management of OSH risks. Although existing studies have addressed some OSH issues in MiC, a comprehensive review that thoroughly covers OSH hazards, risk outcomes and management strategies throughout the entire lifecycle of MiC is lacking. To address this gap, a systematic literature review (SLR) following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach was conducted, resulting in the identification of 130 relevant articles from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS). This SLR identified the OSH areas addressed by MiC, types of OSH hazards and risk outcomes associated with MiC, hierarchies of control, types of construction work and MiC lifecycle stages, technologies used for OSH management, challenges in OSH management of MiC, and future research directions. The results show that the most commonly researched hazards that have been mitigated and introduced by MiC are fall- and health-related hazards, respectively. Additionally, administrative controls are the most common hierarchy of control in the previous studies. This in-depth knowledge offers practitioners valuable insights into hazards and risk outcomes associated with MiC while emphasising the technologies used in various studies to mitigate these risks.