Institutional logics influencing compliance with excavation regulations
Léon olde Scholtenhuis
Organisation || The Dutch Authority for Digital Infrastructure (RDI)
Project type || M.Sc. Thesis
Candidate || Steven Keemers
Project duration || March 2025 – September 2025
Excavation work is essential for maintaining and developing infrastructure. But it also brings serious risks. Damaging underground infrastructure during excavations can have major societal consequences. Because excavation damage affects society as a whole, governments try to reduce these risks. In the Netherlands, the WIBON law, the CROW 500 guideline, and the KLIC system were introduced to limit excavation damage. Despite these regulations, the number of incidents remains high.
Construction Site with damage to buried pipeline - visited during this study (photo by Steven Keemers)
Current prevention strategies assume that people follow rules rationally. But in practice, compliance is shaped by competing logics that influence how safety rules are interpreted, prioritised, and applied. Institutional logics shape how actors make decisions about safe digging by directing their attention, meaning, and legitimacy. This qualitative research uses institutional logics as an analytical framework to better understand decisions, behaviour, and safety related thinking in Dutch excavation practices.