Sharing incident experiences: a roadmap towards collective safety information in the Norwegian construction industry

Abstract

This article presents a study on sharing practices after incidents across organizations in the Norwegian construction industry as a means towards improvement of occupational safety. Interviews were performed with safety personnel from different actors, including clients, contractors and designers. The findings show that several arenas for sharing of safety-related information across actors exist; however, the sharing is limited, not structured, and occurs occasionally. Furthermore, the information is not widely shared across all actors in the industry for whom the information could be valuable, e.g., early phase actors. As a willingness to share and an excitement for new technology are present, the work goes on to propose how and where the industry can improve on information sharing after incidents to move towards inter-organizational learning. A roadmap for the Norwegian construction industry is suggested for collective information sharing with a focus on technological and digital solutions.

Keywords: accident prevention; digitalization; inter-organizational learning; occupational safety; safety information sharing.