Conceptual argument about drift into failure masked by work pressures on construction sites in South Africa

People as a problem to control mostly accounts for human failure studies focused on an industrial workplace. An argument from some of the studies pertains to the proposition that drifts into failure in adaptive organisational processes is influenced by local workplace factors, which is inclusive of human contributions. This paper makes a conceptual argument against embedded violations in the work of artisans and supervisors because such a situation slowly and incrementally moves the system to the edge of the safety envelope. Through an inductive approach that used a semi-structured instrument for face-to-face interview data collection, the views of twenty-five construction practitioners were obtained on the safety violations embedded in the work of site operatives. The textual data from the interviews and on-site observations confirm that violation that is not limited to poor housekeeping, and inappropriate or non-usage of personal protective equipment (PPE) exist as part of regular work routines in construction. The muted causes of the violations by the interviewees include the lack of management commitment, safety training, worker involvement in safety, safety communication and feedback, and the refusal to adhere to safe work procedures (SWPs). Given that regular work executed by normal people precede failures in a sociotechnical system, the notion of 'drift into failure' is used to make the conceptual argument that generates insight into how to curtail the loss of safety control occasioned by violations on project sites. The conceptual argument reinforces the idea that persistent work pressure that site operatives have to confront in construction is a fuel for a drift into failure.