The meaning of failure: Establishing a taxonomy of failure in the construction industry to improve organisational learning

Although failure is encountered by companies in the construction industry almost on a daily basis, its meaning and importance are not well understood.  Reporting failure can often be a non-uniform and tedious process, which is emphasised by the difficulty to define what constitutes failure. In an industry where mistakes can have significant consequences, such as loss of life, it is crucial that failure is properly understood and processes for capturing it are available. Developing an understanding of the underlying definitions and links behind 'failure in construction' will allow industry leaders to more effectively communicate about failure and advance industry-wide learning. To better understand the meaning of failure in the industry, 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the construction community across various business aspects and sizes. The aim was to explore the 'meaning' of failure within the construction industry and create a taxonomy which can be used to aid standardised reporting and development of searchable databases on past failures. Findings show that the meaning of failure in construction is non-uniform across the industry. In addition to fatalities and structural collapse, other definitions concerned financial losses, overdue time commitments, suboptimal quality, as well as safety failures such as injuries, incidents and near-misses. Despite the current focus on sustainability in the industry, environmental failures were hardly discussed. Thematic analysis showed that participants recognised three levels of failure; root, process and consequence, which were grouped into failure taxonomy. Besides top-down Root Cause Analysis, the taxonomy can aid bottom-up failure prevention, as well as improve industry-wide learning.