Although the concepts of cognitive systems engineering (CSE) are usually applied in high-risk and highly automated complex systems, its insights might also be beneficial to the construction industry. This paper emphasizes how five safety management practices – process transparency, safety planning, proactive performance measurement, accident investigations, and identification and monitoring of pressures and performance migrations – can be improved and re-interpreted based on three CSE principles (flexibility, learning and awareness). Those practices were chosen due to their importance in construction safety and also for the availability of empirical data from six construction sites in which the authors have implemented a safety planning and control (SPC) model. Moreover, autonomation, a lean production concept that was not encompassed by the SPC model, was included in the discussion because of its potential role as an enabler of the application of the CSE principles discussed in this paper.