Background The mapping of the Finnish Transport Agency’s (FTA) occupational safety culture, or more briefly ‘OS culture’, will be conducted as a thesis project starting in January 2016. The project is carried out in cooperation with FTA, Laurea University of Applied Sciences and Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. The research’s aim is to develop FTA’s OS culture by defining its development phase.

Methods The mapping will be focused on FTA’s employees whose job description includes working at the worksites. The mapping will be executed through qualitative research method with interviewing the target group by using the standardised, open-ended interviews as well as surveys for cross-checking. The discussed factors in the research include the control of occupational safety (norms, instructions and procedures) and the safety management (managing human factors, creating a culture by leadership). The interview compilations will be brought to the target group for evaluation in a workshop to gain constructive and comprehensive data.

Results The mapping’s results will define the target group’s OS culture’s development phase and its level; positive, negative and neutral factors and how to develop the OS culture. These issues will be discussed from two points of views; the development phase in FTA’s and in its employees’ operations. Based on the results the thesis will give concrete suggestions on how to proceed to develop the OS culture. The mapping will be compared with earlier similar researches’ methods and results to gain value and versatile insight for the mapping and to create the possibility for other fields of expertise to utilise the data.

Conclusions The thesis project will be finished and the mapping’s results released in August 2016. Through the cooperation amongst the parties the results are to gain information on OS culture for advance and support the development of new procedures not just in FTA but also for other fields of industries.