Supportive hero and troublemaker? Diverging environmental work expectations in construction

Paper in proceeding, 2025

Despite being key agents in the transition toward a more sustainable built environment, environmental professionals often struggle with unclear responsibilities and ambiguous work expectations—hindering their ability to drive meaningful change. This paper explores how everyday dynamics in construction projects shape environmental professionals’ work expectations. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews and 80 hours of observational fieldwork from a large Swedish infrastructure project, the study analyses how project actors invest different meanings and activities into the use of space and time, using a practice-based lens. The findings suggest that diverging work expectations emerge from conflicting spatial and temporal understandings between the production and client organisations—tensions that environmental professionals must continuously navigate. This research contributes to the literature on environmental professionals in construction management and offers new insight into the spatial and temporal dimensions of environmental work that they are navigating.