Shaping concepts, practices and strategies: Arbitration and expert appraisals on defects

the purpose of this paper is to analyse how the concept of defects is being shaped by arbitration and expert appraisals along with construction practices and strategies. This study applies the social-constructivist concept of technological frames. The research design included participant observation, documentary methods and qualitative interviews. This paper will illustrate the interpretative flexibility of the concept of defects. The four interpretations are deviance as normalisation, deviance as leverage/liability, deviance as a random effect, and deviance as precedent. Further, the paper will demonstrate how defects are constructed through three processes: concrete negotiations on the gap between expectations and realisation, setting and applying game rules, and by producing structures in the shape of codes of conduct. Finally, this paper will argue that the construction of defects is the result of interaction between two dominant technological frames: the building frame and the juridico-legal frame. Consequently, the system of arbitration and expert appraisals along with construction practices and strategies is co-shaping a culture of deviance/defects that both intentionally prevent defects but simultaneously foster defects unintentionally. defects, arbitration, constructivism, building process Keywords