A relational approach to high reliability organising for construction project safety: a conceptual framework

Abstract

In Hong Kong, current safety management regimes in the construction industry are largely based on compliance, error detection and prevention, and safety climate intervention. While these approaches have improved construction project safety performance, significant limitations still exist. First, compliance and error detection/prevention approaches are based on rigid and ideal formulations of construction work processes. Second, safety climate interventionist approaches have a limitation of mixing psychological and human factors issues that are somehow detached from construction work contextual consideration. As a result, current safety management approaches are less effective in ensuring safety in construction operations which are emergent and dynamically complex. These situations require adaptive human inputs and interactions to ensure safety on projects that are grounded in the social capital among project team members. However, as social capital is a primordial feature of human interactions that is likely to lie dormant, its impact on safety performance is likely to be indirect and mediated by some organising processes such as high reliability organising (HRO) processes. Adopting the systems view of safety, we draw on these concepts to highlight the relational aspects in the management of construction project safety, and explain how these relational aspects can contribute to improving project safety. We accomplish these objectives by putting forth a conceptual framework and methodological suggestion.