scholarly journals Opportunities and Challenges for Construction Health and Safety Technologies under the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chinese Construction Projects

Author(s):  
Yang Yang ◽  
Albert P. C. Chan ◽  
Ming Shan ◽  
Ran Gao ◽  
Fengyu Bao ◽  
...  

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in significant delays and cost overrun in construction projects. The implementation of health and safety (H&S) technologies is one of the most important strategies to alleviate the adverse impacts of COVID-19 on the construction industry and help the industry adapt to the new normal. This study aims to evaluate the adoption of H&S technologies for pandemic management in the construction sector under the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured interviews with eighteen practitioners engaged from construction companies and technology firms were conducted to collect their views on the driving forces and issues of the adoption of H&S technologies for pandemic management in Chinese construction projects. The results reveal that the major H&S technologies used included the health quick response (QR) code system, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered fever monitoring, and site access control system. These technologies were reported to be effective in preventing the spread of the pandemic in workplaces. The findings of the study amplify that the pandemic may serve as an acceleration of the adoption of H&S technologies in the construction sector. Other technologies, such as building information modeling, drones, AI-based safety monitoring, and robotics, however, were seldom used in the studied projects. The interviewees addressed several problems regarding the implementation of these technologies. High costs of technologies, a lack of client support, and disruptions to the normal work process were the main hurdles of the adoption of these technologies. The results indicated that the external influence factor—the COVID-19 pandemic—could considerably drive the use of H&S technologies, whereas the internal influence factors—cost and compatibility of technology—might be the major barriers to technology adoption. To encourage the wider use of H&S technologies in construction, the government is recommended to support the technology transformation by granting financial subsidies for costs involved in innovation adoption. Project owners may consider investing substantially in H&S technologies that can strengthen their resilient and innovative ability to adapt to the post-COVID-19 landscape. The present results will be useful to industry stakeholders and researchers interested in developing H&S technologies for combating the COVID-19 pandemic and future crises.

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 1062-1066 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Mirzai Matin

Water construction projects in Iran frequently face problems which cause cost overrun and time delay, the two most common issues in construction projects in general. The objective of this survey is to identify and quantify these problems and thus help in avoiding them. This survey represents a collection of the most significant problems found in the literature, classified into 11 groups according to their source. The questionnaire form used contains 84 questions which were answered by random engineers who work in water construction projects. The Relative Importance Weight (RIW) method is used to weight the importance of each one of the 84 problems. The focus of this survey is on overall top ten issues which are: bureaucracy in bidding method, inflation, economical condition of the government, not enough information gathered and surveys done before design, monthly payment difficulties, material cost changes, law changes by the government, financial difficulties, mode of financing and payment for completed work and changes made by the owner. A section for each of these issues provides additional information about them. In the full text of this survey the same weighting method is used to classify the main groups, and the results show that issues related to the groups of government, owner and consultant has the most significant impact. The last part of this survey describes the point of view of the engineers who took part in this survey and the recommendations they made.


2021 ◽  
pp. 44-48
Author(s):  
Anikwe Nnaemeka J ◽  
Agha Kalu A

Economic transformation and the provision of basic infrastructure to engender growth and development in any nation is vested in the construction industry hence the massive investment of the government in this sector. However, the expected gains of the construction industry have been eroded by the failure of many construction projects due to unethical professional practices on the part of the construction professionals. This study analyzed the causes and effects of unethical practices on the industry and project delivery with measures to combat the unethical practices among the stakeholders. The study adopted the survey design and a stratified random sampling technique was used to select 140 respondents. A structured questionnaire was designed and administered to construction professionals (Architects, Quantity Surveyors, Builders and Engineers). The relative importance index tool was used to analyse the severity of the factors identified. Findings revealed the absence of punishment for unethical practices (0.94), collusion between officials, consultants and contractors (0.91), availability of loopholes in project monitoring (0.89), weak law enforcement institution (0.87) and greed for money (0.83) among others as major causes of unethical professional practices which have serious effects on the construction industry. The result also revealed poor workmanship and substandard project delivery (0.88), high cost of construction (0.86), the collapse of structures/buildings (0.82), inflated contract sums (0.81), high maintenance cost (0.79), time and cost overrun (0.76) as the extremely severe effects of unethical practices in the industry. Prosecution and punishment of offenders (0.98), the whilstle blower protection policies and rewards (0.84), strengthening of institutionand anticorruption agencies (0.78), award of contracts on merit (0.75) and civil society participation and oversight (0.68) were identified as highly effective measures to curtail unethical professional practices. The study recommends that the government being a major actor should abide by the due process of contract award and letting, using Public Procurement Act (PPA) guidelines in executing all its construction projects. The professionals, contractors and clients’ representatives should also exhibit high professional excellence through adherence to professional ethics and codes of conduct.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1184
Author(s):  
Ashem Emmanuel Egila ◽  
Oluwaseun Abdulakeem Balogun ◽  
Saheed Olanrewaji Yusuf

Poor road infrastructure in Nigeria is a significant challenge, just like poverty, insecurity, and unemployment. The construction of road in the country is characterized by numerous challenges throughout the project life cycle. Some of these challenges are project delay and cost overrun, corruption and fraud, faulty contractual process among others. Objectives of this study are to identify factors influencing delays and cost overruns in road construction project, to rank these factors base on their impacts and importance, and to suggest conservative ways to address the future challenges that can result from delays and cost overruns of future road construction projects. The research instruments include in-depth literature review, fieldwork, questionnaire administration, and interview. Inferential statistics such as Relative importance index (RII) and Mean Value techniques were used to analyze collected data. The result of the study identified factors influencing delays and cost overruns in road construction projects as; man related, money-related, machine-related, material related, environmental-related, and method related factors. Analysis using RII and MV ranked man and money related as the highest factors for delay and cost overrun respectively. Hence, the research recommends that the Government should create an enabling environment, making suitable policy for the construction company to operate.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-254
Author(s):  
Shehryar Idrees ◽  
Muhammad Tariq Shafiq

Abstract The construction industry in Pakistan is experiencing a surge in public sector projects due to major investments in infrastructure projects. Project delays and cost overrun are common features in public sector construction projects in Pakistan. Therefore, an understanding of the causes of time and cost overrun in public projects is essential. This paper investigates delay and cost overrun factors within the context of public sector projects in Pakistan. This study identifies 48 potential factors from existing literature and semi-structured interviews were used to refine the identified factors into ten categories. A questionnaire survey was used to establish a hierarchy of factors using descriptive statistics. The results showed that the major causes of time overruns in public projects were (1) legal issues, such as court stay orders, land acquisition, relocation of public facilities; (2) technical errors leading to low-quality drawings, rework, and errors at bidding stage; and (3) Poor project management. The findings of this research contribute to understanding the causes of project delays in public sector projects in Pakistan.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Anue Marry Mathew ◽  
Neena S Lal

As infrastructural investments are vital in developing countries, it’ll not solely facilitate to foster the economic growth of a nation, however it’ll additionally act as a platform within which new kinds of partnership and collaboration may be developed. The developments of BOT have attracted participation of native and foreign non-public sector capitalist to secure funding and to deliver projects on time, within the budget and to the desired specifications. There are many complexities in projects because of the variety of factors in project’s trend and also the dependence of project primarily on national factors. Because of these complexities and their long-term operation, the projects meet with uncertainty and numerous risks. Effective risk management methods and good managerial skills are required in guaranteeing the success of the project. In recent years, due to substantial increase in the amount of construction companies along with the changes in the government administrations, the construction projects are exposed to cost and time overrun and has huge impact on the progress of works within the industry. Although, the sector is considered to be a key driver of economic growth, time and cost overruns threaten to limit the sector’s potential to help achieve the desired growth and ensure efficient capital expenditure. Keywords—BOT, cost overrun, delays, risk


Author(s):  
Aryani Ahmad Latiffi ◽  
Suzila Mohd ◽  
Juliana Brahim

Building Information Modeling (BIM) represents a new paradigm in the Malaysian architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. BIM technology provides virtual models (including 3-D models) to generate a building’s entire lifecycle. The model can also be used for analyzing design clashes, project scheduling, cost estimation, and facility management. The use of BIM in construction projects can reduce time to develop a project, reduce construction cost, and increase project quality. This paper aims to explore roles of BIM in the Malaysian construction industry. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with project consultants and BIM consultants involved in two government projects. The projects were the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Malaysia and Sultan Ibrahim Hall (formerly known as the Multipurpose Hall of Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, or UTHM). The interviews revealed effects of BIM in both projects and potential improvement in implementing BIM in construction projects in Malaysia. A literature review and the interviews revealed that BIM is increasingly used and accepted by construction players in Malaysia, and is expected to grow in future.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 1402-1413
Author(s):  
Anrio Wira Putra Lim ◽  
Yusuf Latief

One of the most influential factors on the project success in the construction industry is the safety management system. The rate of the occupational accidents in the construction sector is still very high according to the report of the Institution of Social Security Employment in Indonesia. One of the causes of the high rate of the occupational accidents that occur is due to the unnoticed work activities which is caused by the lack of control on the risks of the work activities. To discovered all of the activities on a work package, we can use a tool called WBS or Work Breakdown Structure. Besides that, by using the advancement of technology, it is expected to be used to improve safety performance on the construction projects effectively and efficiently. One of the advancements of technology which is already been used in the construction sector on this era is the BIM (Building Information Modeling). With using the BIM system on the construction projects, the quality of the work during the planning and construction phase will be increasing. Therefore, the development of a safety plan using WBS for BIM-based building structure work will be carried out in this study. The research method in this paper is a qualitative method and a case study will be presented on this paper to find out the effectiveness with using BIM in the safety management process. The results of this research are the occupational accident risks that are dominantly using the WBS and the development of the safety plan using WBS for BIM-based building structures work. The case study results the integrating of safety building information with the 4D model is very effective and efficient method to use on the safety management process. With the BIM system in the safety management process, the budget and the duration for safety inspection can be reduced because the hazardous of the occupational accidents can be identified faster according to the construction schedule. This research is expected to create a safety management strategy and can improve the safety performance on building construction projects in Indonesia.


The government of Indonesia is targeting a supply shortage or housing backlog in 2019 to be 5.4 million. With the shortage of rental housing needs that are still very large, the development needs of rental flats in the future are still very high. But on the other hand, the implementation of construction projects in Indonesia, in general, the number of work accidents also increased. Referring to Labor Social Service Agency (BPJS) data, nationally the number of occupational accidents in the construction sector is recorded as the most national sector of the number of occupational accidents. Managerial finance is important to assist the process of making decisions related to work safety. While the regulations and provisions concerning occupational, health, and safety (OHS) financing in Indonesia in the construction sector, especially in buildings, have not been clearly and measurably regulated. In its implementation, the existing regulations have not been fully followed by construction actors even within the Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing itself. Architectural works on building construction, in this case, the construction of rental apartments is a job that has the highest number of work items compared to other types of work items. This study resulted in standardized Work Breakdown Structure, safety risks identification, mitigation risks and the component of safety cost for Architectural Works in Rental Apartments Building Construction Project.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Dennehy ◽  
Bobby Kennedy ◽  
John Spillane

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to identify the factors relating to the integration and compliance of Building Control (Amendment) Regulations 2014 (BC(A)R 2014) in large Irish construction organisations.Design/methodology/approachTo achieve the aim, a mixed method approach is adopted, initially, providing a critique of the literature review, followed by a combination of 7 semi-structured interviews and 30 questionnaires from industry practitioners.FindingsFindings demonstrate that BC(A)R has had a significant positive effect on the industry, eliminating previous bad practice, by increasing the accountability for professionals signing-off on new buildings, and highlights the emphasis on certification in successfully achieving practical completion on projects.Practical implicationsThe findings provide further justification on the need for compliance, and integration, of BC(A)R in the Irish construction sector, offering further evidence, where needed, on the benefit of its adoption.Originality/valueThe originality and value of this research lies in the limited number of studies in the area, particularly in the context of large Irish construction projects, which this study aims to fulfil.


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