Moving Beyond a Zero Tolerance Mindset: Embracing Action Errors in Construction

Engineering ›› DOI: 10.1016/j.eng.2025.10.018

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Received	Accepted	Published
2025-07-06	2025-10-24	2025-10-30
Issue Date	Revised Date
2025-11-24	2025-09-21

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Abstract

Action errors—unintentional deviations from goals, rules, or standards—are an inevitable part of work in construction. Understanding how individuals and organizations can embrace and “learn through’ errors” (i.e., how to handle them effectively) is crucial for contributing to project success. However, within construction, a prevailing belief persists that errors can and should be eliminated, fostering a zero-tolerance mindset. Organizations that adopt this mindset risk stifling their capacity to learn, innovate, and improve profitability. While errors can indeed have negative consequences, they also play a vital role in enabling learning and innovation. Given the limited empirical research on action errors in construction, this paper aims to stimulate inquiry into this promising area of study. It briefly outlines different forms of error orientation and proposes directions for future research relevant to construction organizations. The contributions of this paper are twofold, as it: ① advocates for construction organizations to broaden their understanding of errors to enhance their learning capability and ② identifies ways in which organizations can improve their capacity to learn and innovate through error management.

Keywords

Action errors / Construction / Error prevention / Error management / Learning

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Peter E.D. Love, Jane Matthews, Weili Fang. Moving Beyond a Zero Tolerance Mindset: Embracing Action Errors in Construction. Engineering DOI:10.1016/j.eng.2025.10.018

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