Towards high-reliability project organising in safety-critical projects

High Reliability Organizations (HROs) claim to be special organizations, which have demonstrated consistently safe performance in operating environments which are simultaneously of high technical complexity, high consequence and high tempo. This paper argues that the literature on high reliability organizing, which emerged through studying day-to-day operations in the nuclear industry, air traffic control and US navy aircraft carriers, might hold important lessons for how the project management community can approach the management of safety-critical projects - projects in which safety is of paramount importance. Its aim is to consider how high-reliability organizing might be realised in these safety-critical projects.