Selection of internal safety auditors in an Indian construction organization based on the SWARA and ARAS methods

Background: The effectiveness and adequacy of occupational health and safety management system should be monitored and evaluated at organization level on a regular basis. Safety audit has a clear role in the development of organizations safety management systems. Internal safety audit is a method to appraise to the management the current status of occupational health and safety at workplace. Selection of internal safety auditors is a crucial decision making process which depend on several criteria. The purpose of the study was to select internal auditors among the safety officers in a construction organization using step-wise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) and additive ratio assessment (ARAS) method. Materials and Methods: The study is based on the subjective evaluation of performance criteria by decision makers and 19 safety officers eligible to conduct safety audit were considered. Finally, six safety officers were considered for the position of internal safety auditors. The SWARA method was applied to calculate weights for criteria of selection and ARAS method was adopted to rank the safety officers. Results: Seven criteria were considered as per the requirement of the organization and calculated the weights. The overall performance index was calculated based on criteria weights to rank the safety officers. Conclusions: The findings of this study showed that the SWARA and ARAS methods are useful to select the internal safety auditors. The analysis is simple and can be adopted in practical in situations where the number of criteria varies.