Safety Culture Specialists as Resilience Professionals – Insights from NPP Construction

Nuclear power plant construction projects are complex endeavors involving hundreds of companies from all over the globe. Strong focus on nuclear safety is required from the very beginning of the life-cycle of the plant. The context and its conflicting requirements set demands for safety management, requiring adaptive working practices based on resilience thinking. Reiman et al. has proposed an adaptive model of safety management which identifies eight safety management functions with four tensions, each consisting of a conflicting pair of management goals. The paper builds on this model and uses it to elaborate the different roles of safety (culture) specialists in nuclear power plant construction. Based on our empirical experience, we propose ten integrative working practices for safety specialists that fulfill the management functions and promote resilience in the organization. The framework proposes that ideas and working practices from both Safety-I and Safety-II are required to ensure safety, especially in complex contexts such as nuclear power plant construction. These practices need to be balanced according to the contextual requirements.