Using functional resonance analysis method to understand construction activities for concrete structures

This used FRAM (Functional Resonance Analysis Method) to map how everyday work is carried out in the construction of concrete structures. It also focused on how internal & external variability could propagate between coupled functions & thus, affect construction performance.

Data included on-site observations, document review & interview with 85 operators.

I won’t focus much on the FRAM modelling as this is specific to concreting on those sites, but some of the other findings are applicable across work.

Results

1: The construction health and safety plan (HSMP) is rarely used

The work-as-done focus of FRAM showed that the HSMP, which incorporates risk assessments and preparations produced at the start of the project, is almost never used in the day-to-day work routines. (This isn’t surprising for anybody familiar with construction projects…)

Subsequently, no part of the FRAM model describing concreting task functions makes mention of the HSMP; nor did anybody refer to it. From how the HSMP was perceived by staff, it was more of an artefact for government inspectors and was rarely updated.

Moreover, it was seen as more of an administrative requirement to start construction work. [** Which we called "enabling devices" in my research paper "writing plans instead of eliminating risks"; that is, written artefacts that allow work to progress past a process or contractual gateway.]

They note that "health and safety plan is often used to avoid problems with government inspectors and is not usually updated" (p9).

2: Organisational pressure affects safety

The majority of concreting work functions are human actions, which makes use of peoples’ skills, knowledge & experience to out-manoeuvre variability & achieve resilient performance. Nevertheless, competing goals, particularly safety-production trade-offs makes this challenging.

Based on interviews, workers were found to give priority to production and shed some safety activities to maintain performance. Some workers indicated how they were encouraged to prioritise production goals. Interestingly, one worker noted that:

?“There are two problems: either I'm fired for safety reasons, or my boss fires me. So you say, look at the pros and cons […] if I'm fired for safety reasons, my boss can send me to another site, but if my boss fires me, I'll be unemployed, because there aren't any more construction projects. Do you understand what I'm saying?” (p10).

Indicating that it’s easier to trade safety and maintain employment rather than trade job performance to remain safe.

Compensatory actions were discussed in the context of ETTO (efficiency-thoroughness tradeoffs), where workers took "less

care in their work to achieve their goals and have everything prepared for the delivery of the concrete. To achieve this goal, they take short cuts and omit parts of the process that are not strictly necessary" and therefore "thoroughness is sacrificed in favour of efficiency and the problem is that if the sacrifice is large, safety can be compromised" (p6).

3: Leading indicators focused on everyday work performance are rarely used in the construction industry

In this section the authors discuss the reliance on lagging safety indicators in construction. Where leading indicators are used, it is rarely focused on monitoring daily work & variability. Thus, organisations often have little real-time or close to real-time data.

Current indicators used on these projects result in significant lag between when the data is collected, analysed and acted upon, instead of helping to anticipate shortcomings in performance and essential resources, pre-conditions etc temporally close to the work.

Neither are people provided with this type of information in person to help them succeed.

4. Work-as-done drives action more than work-as-planned

They talk about how the crane on these projects is seen as the central determinant of action - or as one worker called it, the "cancer". That is, the crane and its operator determines what materials are moved and when and where, thereby facilitating or inhibiting work of different crews or trades (e.g. are steel materials moved first to allow the steelfixers to start work or some other material for other trades?).

While in theory, or work-as-imagined, it's the supervisor that directs the crane operator on what to move and when, in practice, work-as-done, it's the crane operator that makes the specific decisions regarding everyday work. Therefore, in these cases, decisions from the crane operator "play an essential role and can significantly increase the variability spread through the system as well as stress, workloads and labour disputes" (p7).

Variability relating to the crane and movement of materials is said to propagate variability across the system and also introduce additional risks.

An extract of the FRAM model pertaining to the crane operator decision is shown below:

Overall, based on these evaluated sites, the authors propose the following actions:

• Improvement of the plans and systems to assist in resilient performance (e.g. starting with variability due to WAI / WAD) & evaluating methods to dampen variability
• In-depth analysis of decision-making & everyday performance of work
• Development of leading indicators focused on monitoring everyday work

Disadvantages to FRAM included the difficulty in collecting and constructing the data. Given that this focused only on work performance, the authors suggest in reality it should be expanded to also include accidents and other more specific safety scenarios.

Authors: del Carmen Pardo-Ferreira, M., Rubio-Romero, J. C., Gibb, A., & Calero-Castro, S. (2020).?Safety Science,?128, 104771.

Link in comments.