Construction injuries and fatalities remain a significant social and economic problem. Current theories and practices of construction accident prevention have important limitations as they ignore the role of work organization and team processes. With regards to safety, the challenge for researchers and practitioners is to develop work systems that are simultaneously highly productive and highly reliable and can function effectively in the dynamic, complex and competitive conditions that infrastructure projects face. The primary objective of this research is to generate such new knowledge that will enable systematic development of productive and reliable production teams and processes. This requires new understanding of safety beyond the current normative models. This research is based on a new conceptualization of safety as an emergent property of the production system. From this perspective, the work practices at the crew level (the way the production task is organized) and the team processes of the work crew shape both the work situations that the workers face (the task demands), and the likelihood of the workers' successful response to these situations (capabilities). Consequently, the goals of this research are: (1) to discover what work practices and team processes at the crew level support both higher productivity and higher reliability (reduced likelihood of accidents); and (2) to reveal the mechanisms by which these practices interact and determine the likelihood of accidents. The research will perform a series of in-depth field studies of the work practices and team processes of 'High Reliability Crews' that is, construction crews who have consistently very high performance in both productivity and safety compared to crews performing similar work. Research activities: (1) Identify relevant constructs regarding effective work practices and team processes that influence the likelihood of accidents. (2) Develop a methodology to analyze the effect of such practices on task and safety performance. (3) Document and analyze the practices of High Reliability Crews (HRC) through videotaping, interviews and ethnographic-type data collection. (4) Compare the HRC practices to the practices of average performance crews in similar high-risk operations. (5) Develop empirically grounded theory to explain what work practices and team processes affect task and safety performance and how. (6) Validate the theory by predicting the overall performance of additional crews based on observed practices; and (7) Disseminate the results. Intellectual merit. This research will generate fundamental knowledge regarding how the production practices and team processes shape the safety and performance of construction operations. It will develop a new comprehensive theory of construction accidents grounded on several fields of knowledge and validated with empirical studies. This theory will integrate the concepts of production with safety and open the way for new directions towards error-tolerant systems. The research will also develop a new risk analysis methodology to evaluate the 'safety margin' of construction operations. The new theory and methodology will be of value to other researchers of construction accidents. Finally, the findings will provide a basis for future modeling and simulation of the performance of construction teams. Broader impacts. Capturing and formalizing the practices of High Reliability Crews will enable systematic development of production teams and processes. This will have a significant impact on how the industry trains field personnel and organizes the work, leading to increased accident prevention. The educational and outreach activities will increase the participation of industry and students in the study of production systems and accident prevention. Dissemination activities include: (1) Workshops and seminars for practitioners, apprenticeship programs, and community colleges. The close collaboration with industry associations and centers will function both as a source of expertise and access to projects, and as channels for systematic dissemination of the effective practices. (2) Integration of the research with graduate and undergraduate productivity and safety courses. Case studies and research-based field assignments will increase the students' exposure to the actual work practices, and provide them with a framework for understanding and interpreting practice. Field assignments will also be used for data collection during validation. (3) Development of simulation games as learning modules for ASU's TEAMS and WISE-Up programs. These activities will increase awareness of the issues of teamwork and workplace safety, and will attract underrepresented students to engineering disciplines as they see how engineering and production integrate with teamwork and safety.
