Ensuring the reliable and
continuous operations of complex, unpredictable, and unstable smart
infrastructures, such as computerized and automated power grids or water
distribution systems, is a persisting organizational challenge and a
societal concern. As technologies are inherently unreliable and,
especially, the behavior of complex technological systems is
unpredictable, the reliability and continuity of such systems cannot be a
mere technological concern, but are precarious achievements that
require humans, technologies and other actors. Prior research has shown
that work creates variance in organizational performance and that
reliability and continuity emerges from what work is done and how it is
performed. This ethnographic research focuses on technicians’ IT enabled
workspace to analyze how the materiality of the workspace conditions
and enables technicians to perform the reliability and continuity of a
smart infrastructure (smart power grid). Building on sociomaterial
theorizing and infrastructure studies, a concept of infra-acting is
developed to denote the technicians’ possibilities for action in smart
infrastructure setting, and to foreground and make sense of the
reciprocity between the (materiality of) technicians’ workspace and
infrastructure continuity. Discussion and conclusions are provided.