AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

As a high hazard industry, it is important to pay high attention to the health and safety of the working. Nowadays, with the fierce market competition and the complexities that construction projects face, the presence of multiple and conflicting objectives that needs to be achieved for the successful completion of the project objectives has been impact on safety. This master thesis is a follow-up study on the project study in last year on the interface management. Considering the multiple interfaces in construction projects that would appear among various involved parties, the objective of the thesis is thus to study the conflicting objectives between safety and economy/efficiency in interfaces between different stakeholders in the construction industry. As guidance, three research questions have been conducted, which include what kinds of conflicting objectives can occur in construction projects, why the conflicting objectives occur and how to deal with them.In the search of answering the research questions mentioned above, the existing theories have served as a tool to get deeper insight into safety and accidents, conflicting objectives that are usually described as a conflict between safety and production, and the approach to handle conflicting objectives. In order to acquire more knowledge and understand the current situation of the construction industry that how conflicting objectives impact on safety, comprehensive literature review is presented. Further, the empirical study is carried out by e-mail interview. The results are further analyzed and discussed based on the theory study and literature review. The finding shows that the five critical conflicting objectives are time, cost, quality personnel/interest, and safety. Combing with the knowledge of interface management, the causes of conflicting objectives are discussed in terms of the three types of interface problems, which are physical, contractual and organizational. With understanding of the causes, then the recommendations are introduced in both theoretical and practical way to handle conflicting objectives. The conclusion suggests that conflicting objectives can be handled by following the theory and making good scheduling and planning, and also building a safety culture. However, to do a more comprehensive research on conflicting objectives needs to apply theoretical measures into the practical work, and conducting an in-depth investigation in the future.