Organizations of all kinds are increasingly concerned with achieving and demonstrating sound occupational health and safety (OH&S) performance by controlling their OH&S risks, consistent with their OH&S policy and objectives. In view of this, the study is a detailed assessment of the cost of Health and Safety performance of building contractors in South East, Nigeria and the relationship between the cost of performance and success of building projects. It provides a framework through which contractors’ health and safety actions can step down the rate of accidents on construction sites. It employed survey research method where a questionnaire was structured and randomly distributed to a total of 150 respondents comprising three construction stakeholders (clients, contractor sand professionals) across the zone. Data obtained were statistically analysed using Chi Square statistics (X2) to ascertain if statistical relationships exist. Cramer’s V test is conducted to establish the strength the relationship. The result reveals that health and safety performance of contractors affects the success of building projects in terms of delivery time, quality, cost and productive, while non-performance induces litigations/legal costs which inadvertently increase the overall building project cost. The result also portrayed the believe of the stakeholders that implementation of health and safety programmes and policies increases the overall project cost and as a result health and safety programmes are really implemented on site. The study recommends that the stakeholders especially the contractors should look beyond the immediate effect of implementing health and safety programmes and policies and focus on their long term comparative advantages which include quality reliability, profitability and timely delivery.
Keywords: Building Contractors, Cost, Health and Safety, Nigeria, Performance
