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Orstavik, F (2018) Negotiating and Knowing Built Quality. In: Gorse, C and Neilson, C J (Eds.), Proceedings 34th Annual ARCOM Conference, 3-5 September 2018, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK. Association of Researchers in Construction Management, 717–726.
- Type: Conference Proceedings
- Keywords: Aesthetics, Knowing, Practice, Project based production, Quality control
- ISBN/ISSN: 978-0-9955463-2-5
- URL: http://www.arcom.ac.uk/-docs/proceedings/80a9de53a7776d4cfb57c477f4969829.pdf
- Abstract:
Considering construction an assembly process, the obvious precondition for achieving high quality outcomes is managerial coordination and control. Only management can temper the fragmentation effected by specialization and division of labour. Doing ethnographic research on “the sharp end” in building sites – work operations rather than administration, that is – it is soon realized that building work really is not so much about assembly as it is about giving form and shape to what is produced. As Styhre has pointed out, aesthetical talents, creative powers and skills have to be mobilized for such work to be successful. This paper focus on the world of creative activity underlying the systemic level of elements and linkages modelled by engineers, architects and project planners. In this world of practice, “knowing” is the outcome of efforts as much as a precondition for efforts. Each worker and each team have to take into account that situations are complex and that no contributor in the project has a full overview of the process and future developments. What is enacted by some has implications for what can be enacted later, and by others. Creating the micro-conditions for efficient operations and high quality solutions (on the level underlying managerial coordination) depends on continuous monitoring and negotiations. Such negotiations are ongoing within and between teams but also between workers and material elements. Essentially, dealing with the material reality is not assembly; it is an ongoing struggle against stubborn resistance. While ANT concerns innovation, this paper deals with production of built objects. Based on fresh ethnographic data it is shown how tending to deviations, inaccuracies, errors and contradictions in the emerging built object is at the core of the production process. Understanding how high quality operational outcomes are achieved in this process, the irrelevance of formal quality systems also becomes obvious.