Caught in the vicious circle of improvisation: how district heating construction teams cope with reliability

Net-zero ambitions transform the built environment and lead to the introduction of alternative energy infrastructures such as district heating networks. While deploying such large and rigid pipelines in the crowded underground, newly established project teams face logistical uncertainties and technical complexities that often cause rework, delays, and damages. Little is known; however, about how such emerging project team organisations cope with these events. We hence aimed to describe and assess emerging teams' reliability coping processes. Specifically, we conducted twelve semi-structured interviews with engineers, managers, and foremen. We then analysed responses through a narrative analysis and by drawing on principles for mindful organising. This resulted in our conceptualisation of reliability practices as a self-reinforcing cycle, which steers toward favouring improvisational tasks. Unlike suggested by the literature, the cycle refrains from most formal planning and anticipation activities while fuelling the development of troubleshooting skills. This shows that emerging forms of organising may lack the required minimal structure to effectively anticipate but may nevertheless improvise well as they face expected and unwanted surprises.