It is well established that design is a significant contributor to occupational injuries and illnesses in the construction sector. Consequently, design for occupational safety and health (DfOSH), also called "prevention through design" or "safety in design" is increasingly becoming prominent in the construction sector.

DfOSH in construction involves the identification and mitigation of occupational safety and health (OSH) risks right from the early stage of the design process of a building or structure. DfOSH requires that designers (e.g. architects and engineers) give careful consideration to how their design decisions would affect the OSH of builders, maintenance workers, and users of built assets.

In several countries (e.g., UK, Malaysia, Singapore, and EU countries) DfOSH is buttressed by OSH legislation. For instance, in the UK, DfOSH is buttressed by the Construction (Design and Management) (CDM) Regulations 2015, and in Malaysia it is buttressed by the Occupational Safety and Health Regulations (Construction Work) (Design and Management) 2024. These regulations (and others) seek to integrate OSH into the design and management of construction works from the inception stage. They stipulate that designers (organisations or individuals), when preparing or modifying designs, should eliminate, reduce or control foreseeable risks that may arise during the construction, maintenance and use of built assets. They also require that the appointment of organisations with design responsibilities should be based on their organisational capability. This brings to the fore the important issue of design firms having adequate DfOSH organisational capability for projects. Regardless of regulatory requirements, given that design is a significant contributor to occupational injuries and illnesses, it is then imperative that design organisations should have adequate DfOSH organisational capability. Responding to a lack of robust tools for profiling the DfOSH capability of organisations with design responsibilities, DfOSH-CMI was developed through a research project.