Effective communication in the context of safe design decision making

The proactive practice of anticipating and 'designing out' health and safety (H&S) risks at the early stage of a construction project, known as safety in design, is a legislative requirement in Australia, as in many other countries. Effective communication between design participants and collaborative decision-making during the design stage have been highlighted in previous research as key factors contributing to effective safety in design. However, previous research has not explicitly identified what constitutes effective communication. To explore how the interactions between design and construction decision-makers impact on the quality of design decisions and their H&S outcomes in construction projects, six cases were studied in detail. In each case study, a multilevel framework was implemented representing the design process as a socio-technical network. Thus, communication activities were considered within the context of design decision-making, and the features of effective communication were investigated. The results indicate that effective interaction networks need to provide decision makers with access to suitable knowledge sources and enable the mobility and combination of existing knowledge and new or emerging project information to create design solutions with positive H&S outcomes. The study also revealed certain network features which contribute to alignment between the information inter-dependencies of design decisions and the communication patterns that underpin them, leading to better safety in design outcomes. The findings provide a realistic understanding of effective communication in the context of safety in design.