Abstract/Summary

Most construction project organisations often indicate safety is their number one priority because they want their workers to get home from work safely uninjured or unhurt. However, in terms of accidents, the construction sector is still noted to be one of the riskiest, particularly in developing countries where the rate of safety incidents are known to be high. Construction safety research indicates that production pressure, a widespread phenomenon in most construction projects, is a key contributing factor to these accidents on projects. However, our understanding of the managerial practices that unfold when construction projects are confronted with such pressures or their effect on safety performance is limited. Especially, empirical accounts on the management of production pressures at the project site level from a developing country context are rare. In response to calls for more research to explore the managerial practices used in managing production pressures on construction projects. An intensive four months of ethnographic-inspired fieldwork was mobilised, using moderate participant observations, semi-structured, informal interviews and project documents review on two large public sector building projects in Accra-Ghana. A practice institutional logics lens is developed to examine the tensions between production and safety during the production pressure periods. It was found that contract time management procedures for resolving progress delays were followed on the projects during the production pressure periods. Production logic was enacted, with two production management practices adopted to manage production pressure incidents. As a formal production management practice, production acceleration was used, while as an informal production management practice, productivity-based incentives were negotiated with workers to achieve a faster production rate. Strategic responses based on defiance and compromise were adopted on the projects respectively to cope with institutional complexity. The project teams' underlying rationale for the adopted practices and strategies was to recover the projects delayed progress to prevent cost and time overruns. However, the adopted managerial practices and strategies prioritised production over safety, which, it is argued, increased safety risks leading to accidents and near-misses on the projects. A reconciliatory logic was enacted following safety incidents on the second project, adopting a blended hybrid response. Consequently, safety and productivity goals were better integrated, resulting in a facilitative relationship. The study contributes to ethnographic insights into the complexities of, and inherent tensions between, safety and production in construction in this context. The insights from the study provide an understanding of how contract procedures for time management facilitate progress delay recovery, while at the same time impeding safety management during production pressure periods. The findings offer pragmatic recommendations for policymakers, project clients and construction firms, which, when implemented, can inform changes in contract drafting during the procurement process to improve health and safety performance.