In search of safety on construction sites -implications of culture, organizational structures and structural change on safety

The Danish construction industry is presently confronted with societal and market challenges concerning cost reduction, productivity issues and quite high rates of occupational accidents. Conforming to changing project organizations and work strategies, construction standards and meeting owner specific safety requirements has become a divers challenge for contractor companies. How contractors' organizational structure relates to these features and what are their implications for safety and safety culture on the sites is the focus of this paper. Drawing on symbolic, interactionist conception of organizational and safety culture and sociological institutional theory the presented research covers two qualitative studies seeking to get a deeper understanding of these relations, barriers to and conditions under which safer work environments could be established. Whilst one investigation follows the implications of work strategy restructuring on the site and of the applied environmental management procedures for safety and safety behavior, the other case relates about safety implications of the integrated safety culture, safety practices and more or less explicit safety management policies of a progressive contractor company. The results point out, that centrally issued safety policies and systems may be conceived ambiguous or of limited effect when related to prioritizing goals of the built project and because of traditions in the daily work practices. Approaches, oriented at intensified site communication, learning and participative processes, sating emphasis on a greater horizontally integration of safety, seem to be more promising.