Critical essay: sociotechnical construction

Abstract

The Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme is the UK’s largest ever. The cultural value, funding model, risk profile, and fragility of the building exposes an uncomfortable truth. Construction business-as-usual has become an enterprise risk. Current levels of productivity, health, and wellbeing are not acceptable on a project of such high national importance. The Programme joins calls made in the Farmer Review, Project 13, the Construction Play Book , and now the Building Safety Bill for transformative change. It is in the unique position of being able to proactively drive this change. It is an exemplar project intended to deliver a learning legacy for the sector at large. It is also the first project to show an interest in a new approach called Sociotechnical Construction. The focus of this new approach is the joint optimization of socio/human and technical/organizational factors. The evidence points to these being instrumental in resolving the construction sector’s long-standing productivity and wellbeing paradox. This critical essay describes and defines Sociotechnical Construction, sets out the call to action, and presents the case for why it is needed now.

Keywords:

• Sociotechnical construction
• human capital
• teamworking
• sectoral change

Introduction

The Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme is the largest project of its type ever undertaken in the UK. It is a trigger for a wider debate about business-as-usual in the construction sector. The Houses of Parliament, in London, were constructed between 1840 and 1876 but incorporate structures built as far back as 1097. The world-renowned Gothic Revival architecture was designed by Augustus Pugin onto building plans developed by Charles Barry. These designs went on to influence the 19th-century architectural fabric of the nation (Hill, 2007). The building is iconic in the true sense of the word. It is a UNESCO world heritage site. Its cultural value is difficult to overestimate. The building has played a unique role in the United Kingdom’s, and the world’s, political history for over 900 years. Today it remains home to the UK parliament, is a workplace for thousands of people, and host to millions of visitors per year. The restoration and renewal of this iconic structure is about creating a parliament building fit for the future. This includes project delivery methods to inspire the construction sector at-large.

The Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme is, therefore, a unique undertaking. It is unique in terms of construction challenges but also in terms of public and political scrutiny, funding, and the need to deliver both value for money but also quality outcomes to last for generations. The age, fragility, cultural value, and risk profile is such that human adaptability, creativity, intelligence, craft skill, and care are essential for the Programme to succeed. These distinctly human attributes will be how safety, risk-mitigation, efficiency, productivity, wellbeing, and value for money are delivered. The reality the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal forces the wider construction sector to confront is that “business as usual” represents a significant enterprise risk. Current levels of productivity, health and wellbeing are not acceptable on a project of such high national importance. To address this risk, the Programme has taken an interest in a new approach called Sociotechnical Construction (STC). In this essay we will describe and define STC, et out the call to action, and present the case for why such an approach is needed.

Sociotechnical origins and principles

The phrase “sociotechnical” is a familiar one within the construction literature but is used in various, and sometimes imprecise ways. The term is most often used descriptively to refer to a mix of people and technology (e.g. Dowsett et al. 2017) or with specific reference to sociological change and transition (e.g. Larsen, 2005). None of these usages are incorrect, but the phrase “sociotechnical” does have a more widespread and formal meaning outside the construction literature. A meaning rooted in organizational research and application stretching back to pioneering studies conducted in the 1940s. Notably a seminal paper by Trist and Bamforth (1951) entitled, “Some social and psychological consequences of the longwall method of coal getting”. Very few of the papers in the construction literature invoking the phrase sociotechnical do so with reference to this and the global scientific tradition that followed.

Trist and Bamforth’s original 1951 paper took place in an entirely different sector yet the parallels with construction are clear. At the time Trist and Bamforth were writing about the mining sector it too was encountering a “productivity paradox”. The implementation of large-scale mechanized work practices saw productivity and work-force retention drop, despite higher wages and better amenities. Table 1 reveals the parallels with construction in more detail.

Table 1. Sociotechnical drivers are shared with construction.

Origins (1950’s Coal Mining)	Future Application (21st Century Construction)
Large scale coal cutting machinery led to a simplification and specialization of the miners’ tasks.	The commoditization of construction work, and increased job standardization in the post Egan-era, led to a simplification and specialization of construction tasks?
The method of working became driven by the needs of the mechanized method with the pattern of the shift and its social organization changing as a result.	The method of working became driven by the needs of an increasingly enterprise driven construction environment, and its social organization changed as a result?
This new organization required an intermediate level of supervision and management that was previously absent.	This new construction organization required more intermediate levels of supervision and management, and a more complex supply chain, that was previously absent?

Adapted from Walker et al. (2008).

Trist and Bamforth argued that the new mechanized method of mining was a retrograde step in sociotechnical terms. The new mechanized approach may have been “technically optimized” but it was not “jointly optimized”. Despite its arcane outward appearance, the older hand-got method of working was characterized by teamwork. In the equally arcane language of 1950s academe, “these interactive technological and sociological patterns will be assumed to exist as forces having psychological effects in the life-space of the face worker” (p. 5). The term “sociotechnical” stems from the root idea that “technical and sociological patterns interact” (Walker et al., 2008). In exploring the productivity paradox within coal mining, Trist and Bamforth elaborated three enduring sociotechnical principles which lie at the heart of the Sociotechnical Construction (STC) concept we wish to elaborate on in this critical essay.

Responsible autonomy

To quote from the founding work, “the outstanding feature of the social pattern with which the pre-mechanized equilibrium was associated is its emphasis on small group organization at the coal face”. Indeed, “under these conditions there is no possibility of continuous supervision, in the factory sense, from any individual external to the primary work group” (Trist and Bamforth 1951, p. 7). This is not dissimilar to construction which, historically, has also relied on “crews”, “gangs” and teams. It is important to declare that teams can have different conceptual meanings and are not always created equally (Moldaschl and Weber 1998). The sociotechnical meaning of a team refers to “joint work”, “partial autonomy and self-organization”, “decoupling from machine cycles” and “co-determination” (p. 374). Continuous supervision becomes vested in the small group – because it must - and is labelled “responsible autonomy” (Trist and Bamforth 1951, p.6). Workers use this proximity and small group membership “…to produce continuous, redundant and recursive interactions to successfully construct and maintain individual and mutual awareness…” (de Carvalho 2006, p. 51). This facilitates pre-emptive decision-making and problem-solving at source while at the same time fostering team cohesion, trust, respect, fairness, collaboration, and empowerment. Responsible autonomy reflects a more fundamental reality about where the control should be located in organizations. Higgins and Jessop’s 1965 work used the construction sector as an example of how responsible autonomy could reduce fragmentation and improve inter-organizational communication. Shirazi et al. (1996) say: “as projects become more technically interdependent then informality and flexibility are the principal mechanisms of project control”. Informality is an attribute of responsible autonomy.

Adaptability

The true story of construction is adaptability. The “work as imagined” (Hollnagel et al. 2006) is normally governed by a formal contract. This is “moderated by informal understandings and practices which have evolved to cope with the unforeseen, sometimes unforeseeable, difficulties that characterize construction projects.” (Cherns and Bryant 2006, p. 177). “Work-as-done”, therefore, includes “delays, variations, changes in circumstances, changes of mind and errors” (p. 177). The key benefit of locating control within small groups, as observed by Trist and Bamforth in the founding paper, was a type of “human redundancy” (Clark 2005). “Groups of this kind were free to set their own targets, so that aspiration levels with respect to production could be adjusted to the age and stamina of the individuals concerned” (Trist and Bamforth 1951, p. 7). There were, of course, constraints, parameters, and “handrails”, but the outcomes to be achieved assumed prime importance rather than the precise means by which they were achieved. Trist and Bamforth (1951) go on to note that “A very large variety of unfavourable and changing environmental conditions is encountered at the coalface [or construction site], many of which are impossible to predict. Others, though predictable, are impossible to alter.” (p. 20). The contrast between the sociotechnical outcomes-based team approach, and the factory methods then applied to mining (and arguably today to construction), are clear. Manufacturing principles of “factory production” involve “a comparatively high degree of control [to] be exercised over the complex and moving “figure” of a production sequence, since it is possible to maintain the “ground” in a comparatively passive and constant state” (Trist and Bamforth 1951, p. 20). Apart from the most extreme instances of factory pre-fabrication this level of control is very hard indeed to achieve in any construction project, and even less so in a complex and fragile restoration such as the Houses of Parliament. Whilst all endeavours will be made to maintain the building (ground) in a passive and constant state, it is fully anticipated that a very large variety of unfavourable and changing conditions will still be encountered, many of which will be impossible to predict. Not only does this actively require human adaptability, it also severely limits “the applicability […] of methods derived from the factory” (Trist and Bamforth 1951, p. 20).

Meaningfulness of tasks

As the founding paper puts it (in the gendered language of 1950s scientific literature), “though his equipment was simple, his tasks were multiple”, the miner “…had craft pride and artisan independence” (Trist and Bamforth 1951, p. 6). The “hand-got method” was an example of a simple organization within which humans were performing complex tasks (Sitter et al. 1997). The mechanized method of mining – and perhaps some facets of modern construction – can be the other way around. Highly complex organizations with an equally complex managerial and technological infrastructure, within which at least some humans are performing low value simplified tasks. Job simplification has long been associated with lower moral, motivation, engagement and diminished job satisfaction (e.g. Hackman and Oldman 1980, Arnold et al. 1995). Trist and Bamforth (1951) go into detail as to how this was realized in their mining example. They identify the hand-got method as having “the advantage of placing responsibility for the complete coal-getting task squarely on the shoulders of a single, small, face-to-face group which experiences the entire cycle of operations within the compass of its membership.” Examples like these can also be found in construction (e.g. tunnel boring gangs) where the self-regulating nature of the group gives rise to High Reliability Organizations (HRO). The key is that “for each participant the task has total significance and dynamic closure” (Trist and Bamforth 1951, p. 6). It is, in short, a meaningful task

Joint optimisation

The major influence of Trist and Bamforth’s pioneering sociotechnical work was to change the prevailing viewpoint in which organizations were then considered. From a purely technical perspective (i.e. various forms of industrial age, Tayloristic thinking) or as purely social entities (an organizational or industrial relations perspective) to instead “…relate the social and technological systems together” (Trist 1978, p. 43). This was part of a wider post-war trend which included the new discipline of Ergonomics/Human Factors. Pioneering studies into human error revealed the strong negative interactions that can occur between people and their environments (e.g. Fitts and Jones 1947, Chapanis et al. 1949, Green and Swets 1966, Reason 1990). The flip side of human error is joint optimization. Instead of socio and technical factors interacting to give rise to errors, they interact to give rise to synergy and jointly optimized performance greater than the sum of its parts.

The term joint optimization runs the risk of sounding a little vague and indeterminate. It is important, therefore, to paint a picture of what it actually looks like in practice. For this the most ambitious implementation of sociotechnical principles – and one of the most closely studied – is that which took place at Volvo in the late 1970s (Sandberg 1995, Knights and McCabe 2000). In Volvo’s case they faced a similar situation to that currently facing construction. In the 1980s the auto industry in Western Europe had an image problem. People – especially young people – wanted to work in a car factory about as much as they wanted to work on a construction site (Farmer 2016). In an era of near full employment there was ample competition from other sectors of the economy (Adler and Cole 1994). As a result, car production was plagued by absenteeism and employee disengagement. Quality and efficiency had declined. Volvo recognized that traditional car production line did not meet a central requirement “that machines should serve people” (Lindholm and Norstedt 1975). 700 workers on a production line were replaced by groups of nine who were tasked with the whole, meaningful task of building a complete car inside a factory that now resembled a honeycomb. Each team worked in its own “cell” or “dock”. Advanced technology was applied to the task of supporting humans in the most efficient manner, rather than the other way around. The focus was on outputs. Team members were multi-skilled and adaptable. The pace and method of work could be tailored to the characteristics of the team by the team members themselves (Sandberg 1995, p. 147). A “group ombudsman” worked at the team boundaries to solve problems and connect teams to the wider organization. Managers were able to focus on designing the work outputs to be achieved rather than scripting and controlling the work inputs to be performed. Features like these are highly attractive within construction generally, and the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal specifically.

As a direct result of the new sociotechnical factories, all European market Volvo cars could be offered as customer orders tailored to individual buyer’s preference (Berggren 1994). The sociotechnical plant was able to deliver more value to customers at a premium price for the company. A simpler organization which enabled humans to perform more complex and skillful tasks also had the effect of reducing equipment costs by 25%. It sped up model changes by between 25 and 50% and achieved a parallel saving of 60% in training costs due to the increased human capital in the factory (Berggren 1994). In short, the sociotechnical plant was significantly more adaptable to changing circumstances, indeed, it seemed to thrive on change. In addition to all this, the sociotechnical plant was quieter and more space efficient because the skilled, responsibly autonomous groups required less “production support” and the “multi-cornered” building made a large car factory seem much smaller (Lindholm and Norstedt 1975). The work groups also proved remarkably adept at discovering problems and innovating solutions that similar staff at the production line plant did not detect (Blomgren and Karlson 1995). Once again, the complex, skilled, fine-grained work required on the Houses of Parliament would benefit enormously from a jointly optimized work system that delivered outcomes like these. Particularly noteworthy is the ability to detect problems at source: a critical factor in ensuring the worksite remains safe and protected.

Across all the key technical metrics – productivity, lead times, quality – the sociotechnical approach was as good as, if not better than the production line approach, and consistently improving. On the “socio” side the results were, if anything, even more dramatic. Like many sociotechnical case studies before it, “whereas the former organization had been maintained in a steady state only by the constant and arduous efforts of management, the new one proved to be inherently stable and self-correcting” (Trist 1978). On wellbeing, worker surveys showed that 90 percent preferred the flexible, team-based work to the more regimented assembly line, even when the pace of assembly operations was faster. A survey of workers who had prior experience of assembly line production found the new way of working “overwhelmingly superior” (Lindholm and Norstedt 1975, p. 74). The cultural shift which occurred in this case study is the same one that is written about in construction. It can perhaps be summed up by these quotes from individuals who were actually there. Readers are encouraged to imagine similar sentiments being expressed about construction:

Consulting Academic: “It was agreed that [the plant] should be a work place for women and men of varying ages, as a mixed workforce should be viewed as an asset.” (Sandberg 1995, p. 76)

Visiting Engineer: “They are outstanding. Their entire attitude is quite wonderful. Nothing is impossible, only a bit difficult maybe. There is an atmosphere that is hard to describe. They always want to improve and become better.” (Berggren 1994, p. 115).

First-time visitor: “It is quiet. People are working together in small groups and they communicate frequently. The car stands at the same place for a long period of time. People are moving around the body, performing their different tasks [.] while the car stands still. The same persons do all their work in a small assembly area. Many hand machines are in use. Human learning and human knowledge is used as the starting point for developing new production techniques” (Ellegard 1994, p. 37–38)

The Volvo experiment lasted for twenty years and was “an irrefutable success” (Berggren 1994, p. 107). After just three years of operation the sociotechnical factory had matched a comparator factory using production line principles (Volvo’s Torslanda plant in Gothenburg) on productivity, surpassed it on quality, and continued to improve. “It became Volvo’s internal benchmark in terms of market responsiveness and customer orientation” (Berggren 1994, p. 107). Nonetheless, it was eventually displaced by Lean Production. Why? Globalization opened up cheap labour markets which removed one of the key drivers for the experiment (i.e. a labour shortage). In 1999 Volvo itself was acquired by Ford, the inventors of the production-line.

The outcomes of the Volvo experiment are still instructive for the construction sector. This sector also desires mixed, motivated workforces with high human capital. It also desires methods of working which harnesses human capabilities to allow flexibility and adaptability. It also seeks an enthusiastic and committed workforce with high wellbeing. Figure 2 brings the question back to construction and the present day. It maps the core principles of STC across to the strategic aims of the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme. STC helps enable a broader “delivery approach” founded on people-centered visions and values (Restoration & Renewal 2022). Key phrases include the creation of a high performing organization, building strong relationships, valuing human potential, and working collectively and collaboratively. Much as was delivered in the Volvo case study. Aims such as these are shared with many similar projects. STC becomes an important enabler.

Looking to the future in Table 2 we also see how STC, and the picture of joint optimization painted by the Volvo case study, maps across to core features of “relational project delivery arrangements” (e.g. Lahdenpera 2012) such as Integrated Project Delivery (IPD: AIA California Council 2007, 2014, Walker and Rowlinson 2020). IPD, like STC, advocates flatter structures, peer-to-peer relationships, early involvement, co-design, collaboration, respect, and trust. All of these factors – once again - connect to the core principles of STC. On the one hand, IPD (and similar arrangements) have an important role to play in creating the contractual conditions for sociotechnical joint optimization to arise. STC, in turn, brings with it a suite of methods, interventions, and an evidence-based philosophy to bring about the desired teamworking, co-creation, and mutual trust. It is pointed out that “many projects use IPD as a philosophy via incomplete models of integration” (Brahmi et al. 2022, p. 187). STC offers one.

Table 2. The future: Sociotechnical Construction (STC) maps onto relational project delivery approaches such as IPD.

Key Features of Relational Project Delivery Approaches (Lahdenpera 2012)	Examples of practical sociotechnical interventions (Pasmore et al. 1982)
Cooperative culture	Autonomous work groups
	Open feedback on performance
	Self-inspection and maintenance
	Action groups
Team formation
	Selection of peers
Administrational consistency	Status equalization
	Facilitative leadership
Planning emphasis
	Managerial information used by operators
Teamwork premises	Reward systems
	Minimal critical specification
	Skills development
Operational procedures	Action groups
	Peer review
	Minimal critical specification

Authors’ original.

A dominant dialogue

The message of possibility communicated above stands in contrast to current business-as-usual. What makes the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme particularly interesting is the extent to which it exposes the challenges construction, as a sector, faces globally. There is a prominent, perhaps even dominant dialogue that speaks repeatedly, loudly, and sometimes unfairly about how construction lags all other sectors in productivity (e.g. Emmerson 1962, Banwell 1964, Chrichton 1966; National Economic Development Office 1983, Latham 1994; Egan 1998, Koskela and Vrijhoef 2001, Green and May 2003, Koskela 2003, Fernie et al. 2006, Green et al. 2008, Farmer 2016, ICE 2017, Office for National Statistics 2019, and many more). Attempts to address these challenges seem not to have worked. The widespread adoption of methods inspired by manufacturing, such as Lean Construction, have had some positive impacts and clearly have a role to play, but in thirty years have not fundamentally closed the productivity gap. Since 2005 the gap has widened. Ninety eight percent of large-scale projects face cost overruns or delays (McKinsey 2021). Three decades since the publication of the Egan report in the UK there is still “dissatisfaction with construction among both private and public sector clients” (Egan 1998, p. 7). Four decades after Cherns and Bryant’s influential 1984 paper on client roles, “delays, overruns and difficulties still continue to plague the UK construction industry” (p. 177). Fully six decades after the Emmerson report of 1962 a “need for greater confidence in their own future” (p. 2) still rings true. Were it not true then present day investors would not be frustrated by the “stop-start-change” nature of projects and “a prevailing culture of accepting the lowest (and ultimately unrealistic) price as best value [resulting] in projects being delivered either late, over budget, or both” (Karunaratne 2019).

The dominant dialogue paints a negative picture of a sector plagued by obstacles and stubbornly resistant to improvement. Like many such dialogues it masks considerable successes as well as issues which are not easily controllable by the sector. The effect of this dominant dialogue is perhaps more important than its veracity. It has created more pressure to raise productivity. The pressure that comes at the expense of construction personnel. A “survivalist” business culture which focusses on the bottom-line, uses management methods from other sectors in sometimes incomplete and erroneous ways (e.g. Koskela 2004, Jorgensen and Emmitt 2008; Bryde and Schulmeister 2012, Babalola et al. 2019), and demands compliance with ever more stringent safety standards, is also a high-pressure environment. It is no coincidence that mental health problems in the construction sector are rising fast (Health and Safety Executive 2020). The suicide rate among UK construction workers is three times the national average and six times more than the rate for falling from height (Conway 2019). Even when these pressures can be managed in an enlightened way by a lead organization, and there are examples of truly world-class practice and innovation (e.g. One Million Lives by Jacobs, Thrive Plans by Costain, and Flexible Working by BAM, among many others) issues of health and wellbeing can be difficult to address at the level of sub-contractors and other lower tiers of the supply chain. As such, workplace fatalities in the sector are currently running at three times the all-industry average (Health and Safety Executive 2020). Construction has the unenviable position of being the third most deadly sector to work within, and because it employs approximately 7% of the UK workforce (far more than the other lowest two sectors, agriculture and waste) it recorded the greatest number of deaths of any sector in 2019/20. This rate has remained largely stable since 2007/8 (Health and Safety Executive 2020).

It gets worse. The same productivity drivers which demand a focus on the lowest cost also create recruitment and retention problems. Low paid and low skill work, combined with limited opportunities for training and development, lead to reductions in the quality of human capital at the front line. These issues are made painfully transparent in the Farmer Report (2016). Adversarial business models run counter to the kinds of skills, creativity and collaboration needed to leverage new digital trends (Winby and Mohrman 2018). Instead, innovation is often considered an unacceptable risk. R&D spending in construction is the lowest of all other sectors, currently running at well below 1% of output (Farmer 2016, p. 35). In the UK at least, construction SME’s have access to £1.75 billion of potential tax relief for R&D spend: only 324 businesses have taken advantage of it (p. 35). A lack of investment in human and organizational factors is a particular problem (Damodaran and Shelbourn 2006).

All told, the industry has an image and self-esteem problem. As Farmer (2016) notes: “it is the fundamental story that is being told that reflects poor health and safety, physicality, austere working environments, embedded prejudices and perhaps crucially job security” (p. 40). Poor industry esteem is hardly helped by clients who now plan for poor performance, thus completing the circle. The Farmer report joins a phalanx of other isolated reports dating from at least the 1960s (e.g. Emmerson 1962). All share a similar message about construction’s pathologies, but different – often flawed – prescriptions for action (Green 2016). In the words of Green (2016), what the leaders of construction seem to want “are contractors who can somehow defy commercial logic and work miracles with the compromised hand they are dealt” (p. 27). STC may not be a miracle, but in a world where business-as-usual has become an enterprise risk its strong track record of delivering success could surely help.

Defining sociotechnical construction (STC)

The origins of Sociotechnical Systems Theory have been set out, along with the call-to-action for its utilisation within construction. Like other business process methods (e.g. Lean) it is helpful to define a version of a wider concept as it applies specifically to construction. Lean Construction, for example, stems from Lean Manufacturing. Sociotechnical Construction, likewise, stems from wider Sociotechnical Systems Theory. As such, the definition of Sociotechnical Construction derives from the varied literature on Sociotechnical principles, specifically Trist and Bamforth (1951), Cherns (1987) and Clegg (2000), and can be put forward thus:

Sociotechnical Construction is about the application of human-factors methods to achieve joint optimization of technical and human aspects of systems.

STC can be described in several ways. As a toolbox of research-informed methods and solutions; as a way of viewing humans in construction; as a way to manage enterprise risks. For example:

Sociotechnical Construction is a toolbox of methods and solutions that can be used across the full lifecycle of construction projects. It is about creating the conditions for workers to thrive and deliver their full potential, boost human capital, increase productivity and wellbeing, and reduce risk

Sociotechnical Construction is about humanizing construction work, leveraging human capital to cope with project complexity, reduce risk, and deliver increasingly human-centered programme visions and values. It is about seeing humans as the solution rather than the problem

Sociotechnical construction directly addresses key enterprise risks for construction projects. People are often the component of complex projects best able to solve problems, manage risk quickly at source, and deliver quality outcomes. Sociotechnical Construction helps unlock this potential

STC is multi-faceted. It is about shifting construction endeavours along a continuum. From hierarchy to high performing teams; from command and control to responsible autonomy; from job simplification to job enrichment; and so on (Figure 1). Clearly, existing projects can, and will, fall anywhere along this continuum. The sociotechnical side of Figure 1 will, for some readers, already seem quite close to what they may regard as business as usual. For others, the “business as usual” side will seem charitable at best. The point of STC is to “problematize” the call to action, “operationalize” the human and organizational factors which lead to a solution, and “rationalize” the response by making solutions quicker, cheaper, and more repeatable to apply in practice.

Figure 1. Sociotechnical Construction is a whole system approach that is about shifting projects along a continuum from technical optimisation to joint optimisation.

A diagram with a list of key phrases describing business as usual on the left, a list of key phrases describing sociotechnical construction on the right, and a slider bar graphic in the middle showing movement towards the right-hand list.

Figure 2. The present: Sociotechnical Construction (STC) maps to the strategic aims of the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal and is able to inform an overall delivery approach.

A flow diagram showing how core STC principles feed into a specific delivery approach, which feeds into a broader focus on project outputs, feeding into headline benefits to safety, delivery etc.

Sociotechnical Construction has seven key features:

1. Sociotechnical construction is values led

   Values are the fundamental motivation behind action and behaviour (Hofstede 1998). STC has a strong values-base in humanizing and democratizing work. It foregrounds the growth needs of workers and job enrichment: “Average human beings have the capacity to learn about complex production systems and manage them and should be given the opportunity to do so” (Niepce and Molleman 1998, p. 284). STC embodies a belief in the harmonization of social/human and technical/organizational systems. Both can be balanced so that productivity, worker satisfaction and safety are optimized in parallel (Cherns 1976, 1987, Clegg 2000; Waterson et al. 2015, Imanghaliyeva 2021).

2. Sociotechnical Construction is outcomes focused

   According to Hollnagel et al. (2006) there are four lenses through which work can be viewed: work-as-imagined, work-as-prescribed, work-as-disclosed, and work-as-done (Hollnagel et al. 2006). Work-as-prescribed may be how work is imagined but far from work-as-done or even disclosed. These misalignments are damaging symptoms of a lack of joint optimization. STC is about the alignment of these four perspectives on work so that work-as imagined is the same as work-as-done. Moreover, work-as-done is the same as work-as- disclosed and – critically – the same as work-as-prescribed. Constructive alignment between these four lenses on work reflects a deep form of joint optimization. Joint optimization is how both productivity and wellbeing are maximized not merely in an additive sense, but a multiplicative, synergistic sense. Optimization of both socio and technical factors leads to outcomes far in excess of optimizing either factor in isolation (e.g. Cummings et al. 1977, Pasmore et al. 1982, Beekun 1989).

3. Sociotechnical Construction is theoretically grounded

   A pragmatic definition of a theory is a “general principle[s] or a collection of interrelated general principles that is put forward as an explanation for a set of known facts and empirical findings” (Reber 1995, p. 793). Some currently popular approaches in construction management (e.g. Lean Construction) are strongly criticized for lacking a theoretical basis even by these pragmatic standards. For example, authors write of Lean as being “highly unconvincing in terms of its research base”, “guru-hype” (Green 1999, p. 134), and “magnanimously [ignoring] 30 years of sociotechnical research and practice” (Moldaschl and Weber 1998, p. 373). Worse is that Lean and other contemporary approaches lack a structure for even achieving a theoretical base (Pasquire and Connor 2011). Where a theoretical base is revealed, it is often disappointingly outdated and widely discredited, referred to as “Neo-Taylorism” (Niepce and Molleman 1998), “the most perfect form of Fordism” (Dankbaar 1997) or, most harshly, as research that has “rarely depended so strongly on recycled and limited empirical material in the secondary and tertiary literature” (Moldaschl and Weber 1998, p. 373). All of this is mentioned because STC is different. It is founded on the axioms, theorems, principles, relationships, and evidence within action research specifically, and organizational psychology more broadly (Mumford 2006). This social (socio) theory-base is paired with the (technical) concepts, metaphors, language of open systems theory (Bertalanffy 1950, Emery 1959) and complex adaptive systems (Walker 2008, 2013, Walker et al. 2009, 2010; Fernandez-Solis 2008, 2013). The sociotechnical theory is strong and evidence-based. Inserting the sociotechnical lens creates powerful diagnostic views of the construction problem domain.

4. Sociotechnical Construction is methods based

   It is important to emphasize that STC is not a purely theoretical construct. To paraphrase the founders of the sociotechnical school of thought, there should be “no theory without practice, no practice without research” (Mumford 2000). Theory is the lens through which research to discover new facts and solutions can proceed. It also provides the underlying evidence-base upon which a toolbox of sociotechnical methods is founded. This toolbox is large in size and filled with many individual methods. A systematic review of the wider sociotechnical literature dating back to the 1940’s reveals over 2000 studies that have applied sociotechnical methods (Imanghaliyeva 2021). 103 of those methods meet the criteria of: addressing both socio and technical factors, application to more than one practical case, evidence for method reliability and validity, and freely available. The challenge is not a lack of practical tools, but more to do with method selection, integration, and adaptation to a construction context. As an example, on the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme, key near-term questions are how to design new post-Covid smart working practices. A suggested method is the Cognitive Work Analysis Design Tool Kit (Read et al. 2017) which enables a map of the work domain to be created, and areas of flexibility identified. Another question is how to ensure major project set-ups are preconditioned for success. A suggested method is the ACCIMAP (Rasmussen 1997, Salmon et al. 2020) which enables a network of causal factors implicated in project success (and failure) to be mapped, and common trajectories/issues identified. Yet another question is how to create new forms of jointly optimized procurement ecosystems to lower barriers to entry. A suggested method is to use Work Domain Analysis (Jenkins et al., 2009) to look at how domains, or even entire industries, are structured, and how existing entities and artefacts can facilitate (or hinder) high performance. Probably the most important near-term question of all is how to protect the Houses of Parliament from fire during the renovation. Again, a suggested sociotechnical method is Event Analysis for Systemic Teamwork. This can be used to flush out a range of Human Factors Leading Indicators before serious incidents occur (Walker and Strathie 2015, Stanton et al. 2019). Each construction enterprise will have its own shared and unique challenges that would benefit from tools in the STC toolbox.

5. Sociotechnical Construction is contingent

   It is difficult to imagine many situations where sociotechnical joint optimization would not be of value, but they do exist. In these situations, alternatives to STC are entirely appropriate. STC is not a panacea (e.g. Dunphy and Bryant 1996, Niepce and Molleman 1998) or a contest between competing products (e.g. Womack et al. 1990). STC is contingent (Mintzberg 1979). The argument being put forward in this essay is that STC is particularly well matched to conditions in full force today (Shirazi et al. 1996). The values-base, outcome focus, theoretical grounding, and practical methods enable a contribution to be made across numerous fronts alongside, and even embedded within, other construction management approaches. What makes STC particularly prescient is that the wider sector increasingly shares its value-base. The Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme, like many, foregrounds teams and “working together”. All of which is situated within a wider national context where both the UK Government’s Construction Playbook (Cabinet Office 2020) and the recently announced Building Safety Bill (2021) make renewed calls for transformational culture change. The timing for STC is right. The Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal is providing a renewed focus on human and organizational factors. STC is an appropriate contingent response.

6. Sociotechnical Construction is a whole life-cycle approach

   People are involved in every aspect of the built environment’s conception, design, construction, commissioning, operation, use, maintenance, retrofit and eventual disposal. The entire construction endeavour is a sociotechnical system of interacting human, technical and organizational factors across the entire lifecycle (Fernandez-Solis 2008, 2013). STC approaches can, therefore, be deployed at every stage to help deliver value for money, safety, wellbeing, productivity, and quality.

7. Sociotechnical Construction has a legacy

   The sociotechnical theory has a legacy of practical application and transformational impacts stretching back to the 1940’s (Trist and Bamforth 1951, Cummings et al. 1977, Pasmore et al. 1982, Beekun 1989) including legacy works performed in the construction sector itself (e.g. Higgins and Jessop 1965, Chrichton 1966, Cherns and Bryant 2006, Shirazi et al. 1996, Davey et al. 2002). It has been applied by companies as diverse as ICI, Rolls Royce, Shell, Digital Equipment Corporation and Phillips (Mumford, 2006). Meta-reviews report that 94% of companies who used sociotechnical approaches to design human and organizational solutions saw improvements in employee attitudes and wellbeing. Eighty seven percent of those studies reported simultaneous improvements in productivity (Pasmore et al., 1982). In terms of the bottom line, the productivity improvements rendered the employee engagement, wellbeing, and safety benefits essentially free of charge, if not generating a strong positive balance. The outline case for sociotechnical approaches is strong, yet sociotechnical approaches have not previously been applied in a comprehensive way to construction despite the clear potential. This essay makes that connection and points to a way forward.

Construction is a people business

The dominant dialogue in construction, as characterized above, appears almost entirely negative. It is a distillation of all that is currently going wrong and needs to be done. Yet, there is a strong counterpoint that is often forgotten. When construction projects go well, they can go “spectacularly” well. There are numerous examples, but the case of the 2012 London Olympics is particularly instructive. Here was a capital project worth over £1bn that was delivered on time, within budget, and with a workforce 15–30% smaller than original estimates. This was a project that achieved £80 million in savings from fewer personnel movements, had high efficiency, minimal rework, and low waste. A project in which the accident frequency rate was significantly below sector norms and aligned – perhaps for the first time ever – more closely to the all-industry average. It was also a project that had a productive, committed workforce with few industrial relations issues.

The root of this success, as identified in the Olympics Learning Legacy (Bolt et al., 2012), was “the underpinning role of human characteristics like respect, trust, clarity, challenge, early engagement, consistency, motivation, collaboration, empowerment, communication, openness, fairness and assurance” (p. 1). A key learning was that these “two aspects – systems and people – work in tandem; neither is sufficient on its own” (p. 2). Even better was that this human and organizational optimization led to success that was “all pervading” (p. 8). Case studies like these point to a serious underestimation of the influence of human and organizational factors (Bordass and Leaman 1997, Harty 2005, Cherns and Bryant 2006, Vischer 2008, Sunding and Ekholm 2015). For this reason, the formal learning legacy has assumed some importance for projects wishing to emulate the success of the Olympics.

The success of the Olympics is invoked because STC enables critical success factors – which at first glance appear a little nebulous – to be made explicit and operational. The Director of Infrastructure for the Olympics Sponsor Board notes how “they worked strategically to build the programme from core organizational values around team building from the start. The Olympics did not know at the time they were using many STC principles” (Wright 2021). The Head of Health and Safety for the Olympics Delivery Authority notes that “trust, mutual respect, building strong relationships – linking arms right down the supply chain and being focused on people – were held up as hallmarks of success.” (Waterman 2021). At the top level of this project, it was observed that while mistakes were made and lessons learnt, perhaps fewer could have been made with more research oversight applied to human factors optimization. Furthermore, while STC has great potential to operationalize the human and organizational success of projects like the Olympics, the preconditions for this success need to be modernized with each successor programme (Wright 2021). The Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal is a successor programme and the use of STC is expressive of just such a modernization. Table 3 shows how closely the critical success factors implicated in the delivery of the Olympics align to STC and, by implication, their future role within the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal.

Table 3. Critical success factors identified by the London 2012 Olympics Learning Legacy (Bolt et al., 2012) are highly relevant to the houses of parliament restoration and renewal programme.

LONDON 2012 OLYMPICS CONSTRUCTION PERFORMANCE
INFLUENCE LAYER (Bolt et al. 2012)	Success factors (Bolt et al. 2012)	Sociotechnical construction (STC)
DIRECT LEVEL INFLUENCES	Competence	STC is about enhancing human capital
	Motivation and morale	STC is about job enrichment
	Teamworking	STC is about high performance teams
	Situational awareness	STC is about cohesive teams
	Fatigue	STC is about adaptability at the team-level
	Health and wellbeing	STC is about job enrichment
	Frontline comms.	STC is values-based
	Availability of information and advice	STC is about supporting teams
	Compliance	STC is about teams that are inherently stable and self correcting
	Availability of suitable human resources	STC can help to improve the image of construction and make it attractive
	Quality of inspection and maintenance	STC is about improved quality outcomes
	Equipment and material suitability	STC is about matching technology to people
	Internal working environment	STC is about an improved internal working environment
	Operating conditions	STC is about human-centred working conditions
ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL INFLUENCES	Recruitment and selection	STC is about enhancing human capital
	Training	High performance team working can be trained
	Procedures and permits	STC can be used to put people to work in more optimum ways
	Planning and risk assessment	STC methods can be used to plan and risk assess work
	Incident management and feedback	STC methods can be used to manage risks and create learning organizations
	Supervision	High performance team supervision can be trained
	Management	STC favourably impacts the management task
	Comms.	STC is values based and this can be reflected positively in comms.
	Culture	STC is values based and can drive positive culture change
	Equipment and material purchasing	STC is about matching technology to people
	Inspection and maintenance policy	STC methods can help to shape policy
	Design	There are numerous STC design methodologies
	Audit and monitoring	STC methods can help define what needs to be measured
Policy level influences	Contracting strategy	STC approaches align to the Construction Playbook
	Leadership, ownership and control	STC foregrounds responsible autonomy
	Standards and culture	STC is values based and can drive positive culture change
	Organizational structure	STC can inform organizational design
	Management systems and KPI’s	Sociotechnical leading indicators, metrics and KPI’s.
	Worker engagement	STC is about job enrichment
	Finance and profitability	STC helps deliver quality and value
ENVIRONMENTAL LEVEL INFLUENCES	Political influence	STC aligns to
	Regulatory influence	STC aligns to health and safety regulation, the Building Safety Bill, safety case regulations etc.
	Market influence	STC aligns with desired forms of supply chain ecosystem
	Societal influence	STC aligns to the safety, (mental) health and wellbeing agenda
	Industry standards	STC aligns to the Construction Playbook (and similar)

Furthermore, they map to the values, principles and methods of Sociotechnical Construction (STC) [Authors’ original].

Why now?

Throughout the 1990s the UK mirrored global trends. Construction was widely perceived as delivering poor productivity and value for money. In 1997 a Construction Task Force chaired by Sir John Egan was established and reported a year later in the eponymous Egan Report titled “Rethinking Construction” (Egan 1998). It is worth pointing out that Egan’s personal testimony appears on the front cover of “Lean Thinking” by Womack,Jones and Roos (1990). It should, therefore, come as no surprise that the Egan report recommended “the UK construction industry should also adopt Lean thinking as a means of sustaining performance improvement” (p. 22). Extensive structural change within the sector took place from this point forward, not always to the benefit of those at work within it.

An in-depth treatment of Lean and STC is the topic of a future paper. Suffice to say there are points of sharp divergence – mainly on values and underlying theory (or lack thereof; Green 1999) - but also areas of potential overlap and synergy (Dankbaar 1997, Adler and Docherty 1998, Niepce and Molleman 1998). What the dominant dialogue in construction in 2023 points to is a world in which Lean, at least as currently implemented, has reached the limits of its capability and no longer delivering improvements. This point is certainly arguable but it is worth pointing out that more recent developments in Lean thinking have witnessed a form of “creeping sociotechnical-ism” in all but name (e.g. Gronning 1994, Benders 1996). Even Toyota have reorganized “the very production system upon which Lean production is based” (Shimizu 1994) in order to re-humanize it.

None of this is to suggest that Lean has no role to play or should be fully displaced. There are tasks within the Houses of Parliament restoration, notably decanting high value historic items, that will benefit from the minimum of handling and the maximum of efficiency. Lean approaches lend themselves well to these, and others. To be clear, the argument around Lean and STC being advanced in this essay is not one of complete displacement. Just as Lean has benefitted from the “mainstreaming” of some key sociotechnical concepts, so too could STC benefit from aspects of Lean. There is an acknowledgement of a potential synergizing of both approaches. With that being said, faced with productivity, safety, and wellbeing metrics that lag all other areas of the economy there is justification to challenge ideas like Lean which, after 33 years, have become business as usual. STC provides the basis to do so in an evidence-based way.

The story of Lean Construction is also the story of STC. Context has been key. As Mumford (2006) notes, “strategies that work well at one time may not be successful at another” (p. 331). The original “labour market” drivers of sociotechnical approaches vanished to be replaced with a “product-market” of commoditized construction work and, arguably, commoditized construction workers. This was the context in which Lean Construction (Koskela 1992) became ascendent and sociotechnical systems approaches became subordinate. It was not – and has never been - because of fundamental problems with sociotechnical theory or efficacy (Walker et al. 2009, Walker 2015). Of course, this is not to suggest that literally all instances of sociotechnical interventions have been successful. A very significant majority have been (e.g. Pasmore et al. 1982) but there are potential trouble spots. These again relate to context. According to Mumford (2006) there is a need to guard against idealism and over-optimism. There is also a need to mitigate the risk of sociotechnical interventions being embarked upon by innovators with local rather than national, regional, or even global sector buy-in. The emergence of STC within the Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal is noteworthy because it could signal a new phase of ascendency in which these trouble spots could be addressed.

Conclusions

This critical essay has presented the case for Sociotechnical Construction (STC). This is a values-led, theoretically grounded, and actionable approach for humanizing construction work to yield significant benefits in health, safety, wellbeing, constructability, and productivity. It is often said that “construction is a people business”. Sociotechnical solutions can be innovated for all phases of the construction lifecycle to ensure people and organizational factors are jointly optimized. A unique confluence of factors has brought this approach to the attention of the UK’s largest ever restoration project. The commercial arguments in favour of STC are simply that business as usual is now an enterprise risk, an unenviable position for any sector to be in. Current levels of productivity, health and wellbeing are not acceptable on a project of such high national importance. The opposite is required. The very highest levels of human capital and joint optimization are essential to meet the project’s outcomes. The productivity and wellbeing paradox which has beset the construction sector for decades can no longer be set aside. The newly announced Building Safety Bill, Construction Play Book, Project 13, and Farmer Report call for urgent, radical, transformative change. It really is “time to decide the industry’s future” (Farmer 2016, p. 0). Readers and industry practitioners are invited to consider whether STC could be the paradigm shift and whether the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme is the trigger.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Delivery Authority overseeing the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme.