High hazard organizations are often praised for their ability to remain stable and reliable. In this paper, we draw on a longitudinal case study from 2019 to 2023 from a high hazard organization and its project work to examine how such an organization reacted to the COVID 19 pandemic. As we show, an organization prone to avoid the use of new technologies and to favor on-site work can experience a seemingly significant change while its actors do not perceive such change as significantly different. We argue that an important consideration is not whether change has happened but whether it is significantly different in light of core aspects of organizational practices, such as their teleological structure and core concerns. Indeed, a high hazard organization might thus change meeting and communicative practices while remaining the same in aspects that matter more – leading to paradoxical narratives of change and non-change to manifest simultaneously.