This study explored the different ways that individuals and groups in construction perceived safety and risk and how these perceptions influenced behaviours and practices related to safety cooperation.
Over 4 months, 36 semi-structured interviews and 36 days of observations were undertaken across two construction projects.
First they cover a fair bit of background literature on different interpretations on how safety and risk are perceived, risk perception, and the relationship between rules and safety. I’ll touch on just a few points.
They cover the challenge of managers believing that safety is really about workers complying with rules without recognising that safety “rules are interpreted and acted on taking into account the current work situation and are modified as part of the social practice and the work groups’ specific ways of perceiving safety and risk” (p1).
Instead, safety is a plurality of different subcultures relevant to the different occupational groups and communities [amongst a range of other factors]. If “management implement safety rules that the workers consider to be too different from their reality” (p2) then this will lead to a sense of meaningless rules, thus precipitating informal safety rules and practices.
Safety rules are then discussed via the model 1 / model 2 view: model 1 takes a top-down rational view of risks which can be calculated and reasoned in advance with logics and risk assessments. Behaviour is thus seen as a result of a rational and conscious appraisal of risk. Model 2 takes a bottom-up, constructivist view: more about fast and intuitive judgements accumulated through experience. More subjective than objective. Model 1 thinking has been criticised for “reflecting on and understanding why rules can be difficult to adhere to in practice and why safety rules may be violated by workers” (p3).
In any case according to the authors, diverse interpretations and conflicting perceptions of risk and safety aren’t so much a cause of risk or injuries, but rather a way for the organisation to learn about itself; which this study sought to explore.
Results:
Overall it was found that senior managers, like Project Managers (PMs) tended to see risk in a model 1/rational way, whereas an intuitive view (model 2) was more prominent amongst workers. Forepeople/supervisors, reflecting their roles at the junction between management & work, were found to be in-between with their views.
PMs, site managers and OHS consultants tended to see risk as a function of planning: identify & minimise risks in advance, using risk assessments and rules for control. In their view, “planning was not just one way of ensuring safety, but the only way of ensuring safety, because the managers and the OHS consultants seemed to perceive planning as safety in itself” (p6); note, planning in this case isn’t so much prospective design, but rather sequential planning with rules, risk assessments & controls etc.
For workers, they emphasised identifying risks through sensing and experience. Their sense of safety was implicit in the daily work. In one example of working within an excavation, workers were found to “sense” and “see” the stability of the walls to assess the risk of collapse, rather than necessarily following all of the rules for shoring. The workers in this case felt safe without the shoring and highlighted “how safety rules are adapted on the basis of the workers’ appraisals of the situation” (p6). For workers, rules can sometimes be difficult to convert into practice.
The view of an OHS consultant was covered, which contrasted the workers. The consultant saw safety largely as behaviours and choice, where carelessness about selecting the right tools was a key explanation for an example hand laceration injury. The authors challenge this with the idea that perhaps it’s not about carelessness in this example but more the differing perceptions of what the worker found to be safe/unsafe.
As discussed in the paper, the importance of risk and safety is also strongly tied to the importance placed on social relations and not just about rule compliance.
The paper then covered the aspect of safety via trust and cooperation. For workers, trusting their own skills and their colleagues was foundational for their sense of safety at work. They explained the different ways that the two construction sites addressed cooperation.
At site 1, the main contractor used a formal structure of cooperation and consultation with safety meetings, safety walks and more. An example of a safety walk by the safety manager was a significant source of conflict for the workers, since they saw this walkaround and the associated “findings” by the safety manager as nit-picking nonsense for something which wasn’t, in the workers view, risky at all. The worker felt angry and exposed.
The use of a model 1 rational view of safety was seen to impose one way of seeing safety, highlighting power imbalances and the privileged position of those few people that get to draw the line in the sand on what is risky or not [usually not the workers].
In the case of site 2, they had an almost too friendly approach where some safety issues may not have been discussed and addressed.
Forepeople were seen to be in a position in-between the approaches. They ensured compliance where possible with rules while at the same time achieving safety through trusting and supporting workers. They preferred to cooperate with workers to maintain the relationship than applying sanctions to workers. This often involved talking to workers to find solutions over enforcing rules. Forepeople were seen to be central in moving beyond just communication (as in, management communicating with workers), towards creating trust between managers and workers and thus developing “coherence between abstract rules and concrete practice and between words and actions” (p11).
The paper then expanded on the findings. The model 1 / model 2 views were evident, with managers preferring to see risk mechanically, whereas workers preferred a subjective and intuitive view. Although both views have a place, the authors argue that the “professionalisation of safety management” which has come about in part from a model 1 focus on safety runs the risk of “being decoupled from the experiences of people working in the production phases” (p10).
In recognising both approaches, they note that safety isn’t only a question of knowledge but also needs to recognise that different occupations and subcultures influence risk perception and behaviour.
At site 1, there was a formal system in place for incident reporting and sharing; however, this wasn’t coupled with a culture of trust for people to effectively use the reporting system. Moreover, whereas site 1 had other formalised systems for investigation, auditing, licensing etc., what could be considered a “proactive safety culture”, it didn’t account for worker’s perceiving all of these management systems and activities as ways for management to exert control and power, rather than for learning and improving.
E.g. workers “felt that the discussions, reflections, and action points were the management’s attempt to articulate their way of perceiving risk and safety at the expense of the workers’ practical knowledge and perception” (p10). This impacted the trust and cooperation between management and workers.
Site 2 was at the other end of the spectrum, having less in the way of formalised approaches and also a lack of systematic learning about incidents. Further, management and workers tended to attribute accidents to one offs and unforeseeable factors.
They discuss how to move forward based on these findings. One way is to recognise there isn’t one homogenous culture or way of perceiving safety and risk but a plurality, where safety is based on both a rational logic and sensing and intuition, which directly leads into the approach used between rules and practice.
Link in comments.
Authors: Lars Peter Sønderbo Andersen & Regine Grytnes, 2021, Construction Management and Economics
Study link: https://doi.org/10.1080/01446193.2021.1904516
Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/different-ways-perceiving-risk-safety-construction-sites-hutchinson
SafetyInsights.org 