This study explores the safety indicators of conventional and prefabricated construction methods at construction sites for the minimization of risks. Through a thorough literature review, four elements of safety indicators, including Safety Awareness (SA), Workplace Condition (WC), Safety Workshop (SW), and Organization participation (OP), have been developed. The survey questionnaires were distributed to construction company groups involved in building projects in Pulau Pinang. By using the Statistical Package of Social Science, 60% of duly answered questionnaires were analyzed, and the majority of respondents were senior engineers with experience of 10–20 years. The results of the reliability study indicated that the average Cronbach’s alpha value for conventional and prefabricated constructions were 0.70 and 0.87, respectively. The highest mean score and Pearson coefficient values were recorded for safety indicators of OP (3.32, r = 0.488, and p ≤ 0.01), and SW (3.27, r = 0.373, and p ≤ 0.01), SA (3.27, r = 0.470, and p ≤ 0.01), and WC (3.05, r = − 0.960, and p ≤ 0.01) of prefabricated construction. These findings indicate that both employers and workers maintain their safety efficiency as well as the company’s reputation in prefabricated construction thus, would lead to a better sustainability performance of this industry.