Investigating design office dynamics that support safe design

Converting an idea into a complex facility such as an offshore platform, an oil refinery or a petrochemical plant requires many individuals and groups with differing professional norms and organizational interests to contribute their effort and expertise over an extended period of time. Despite the complexity of this social system, little research has investigated the social processes in those workplaces where the physical form of these potentially hazardous facilities is determined. Based on 34 interviews plus workplace observation and document review in six organizations, this article addresses social relationships and attitudes within and around design teams, and factors that influence outcomes. Using concepts of power and conflict drawn from sociology and organizational psychology, the research findings address structural contributions to conflict between discipline engineers and project managers and the influence of discipline engineers on senior management decision making. In the design environment, primary responsibility for differing project goals is divided between discipline engineers (safety and quality) and project managers (cost and schedule). This research suggests that the best long-term safety outcomes are likely to be fostered where these groups have similar levels of power over key decisions so that competing goals can be openly discussed. An ethnographic study such as this necessarily provides data with depth, rather than breadth. Nevertheless, it has brought to the attention of the safety community some key issues regarding design team dynamics that have, to date, been largely ignored by social science researchers.