Construction System Failures: Frame Notation of Project Pathogens and their Propagation Across Time and System Hierarchy

Abstract

A construction system is an organizational and technological system that produces buildings or civil engineering structures for human use by fabricating and installing materials into an integrated structure according to design specifications. Failures of such construction systems materialize in various forms, including defective design, rework, and dysfunctional building systems. Frequent accidents and building defects in the construction sector clearly indicate that our society still needs to improve the safety of construction systems. Research studies on how major accidents and minor defects occur are often conducted in isolation by different researchers, and existing system safety concepts and frameworks are not necessarily suited to handling the dynamic nature of temporary multiple organizations (TMOs)—a feature that characterizes the uniqueness of construction projects. We need a framework that can better describe failures specific to construction, and capture the wide spectrum of these failures. Here, we build on concepts from system safety research to develop a graphical notation with “frames” and system hierarchy as the main components to illustrate how pathogens are generated and propagated by defective processes and end up embedded in the physical structure.