Implementing virtual reality - building information modeling in the construction management curriculum

As the industry transitions towards incorporating BIM in construction projects, adequately qualified students and specialists are essential to this transition. It became apparent that construction management programs required integrating Building Information Modeling (BIM) into the curriculum. By bringing Virtual Reality (VR) technology to BIM, VR-BIM would transform the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, and three-dimensional (3D) immersive learning can be a valuable platform to enhance students' ability to recognize a variety of building principles. The study carries out a methodology for implementing the VR-BIM in the construction management undergraduate program. Based on the previous literature review, in-depth analysis of the program, and accreditation requirements, VR-BIM will be implemented throughout the curriculum by combining stand-alone class and integration in the existing courses method. The challenges that may face the program planning to implement VR-BIM are discussed, and few solutions are proposed. The lab classroom layout appropriate for the applications is designed to be adjusted for several layouts to accommodate all learning styles and objectives. A comparison between different Head-Mounted Display (HMD) headsets is carried out to choose the appropriate equipment for the lab.

Evaporated Responsibility: The Collapse of the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne on 15 October 1970

On 15 October 1970, at 11:50AM, part of the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne, span 10-11 of 367 feet length, disintegrated and triggered the collapse of the bridge. Thirty-five men were killed in the disaster. The bridge was still under construction, all those killed were workers or engineers employed on the construction site. The investigation of a Royal Commission revealed a mismatch between an ambitious structural design of the bridge plus an unconventional method of erection and a fragmented, conflict-ridden construction management whose detrimental effects remained unchecked by public authorities. Regulatory powers and enforcement competence had been delegated to a QUANGO—a quasi-non-governmental organization—which diluted responsibility structures and decisively weakened the coordination and control capacity of the agency.

Expected Competencies of Construction Management Graduates Working in China

Construction manager competencies in today's construction industry are the key factors of project success. Compared to traditional roles, they are faced with a situation showing a gradual shift in their roles and functions especially projects nowadays are encountering more and more complicated issues during construction phase and the increasing complexity of projects poses huge demand for construction managers possessing competencies capable to adapt to this changing industry environment by their knowledge and skills gained through training especially during their early years of construction management education received in polytechnics or universities. Such kind of training builds the foundations for construction managers enabling to develop further a way to adapt to the escalating expectations of the clients and more important related to the development of leadership, management and problem-solving skills construction organisations are looking for. This paper aim to evaluate the expected competencies of construction management graduates in China focusing on the development of construction manager during their early training and how the education institutes can make sure their curriculums capable to prepare learners for the changing needs of construction industry in China. The result of this study is to provide a theoretical basis for the excellent construction management curriculum design, thus encouraging education institutes to adopt industry-oriented approach to deal with ever-changing construction industry.

The application of “deep learning” in construction site management: scientometric, thematic and critical analysis

Purpose The digital construction transformation requires using emerging digital technology such as deep learning to automate implementing tasks. Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate the current state of using deep learning in the construction management tasks to enable researchers to determine the capabilities of current solutions, as well as finding research gaps to carry out more research to bridge revealed knowledge and practice gaps. Design/methodology/approach The scientometric analysis is conducted for 181 articles to assess the density of publications in different topics of deep learning-based construction management applications. After that, a thematic and gap analysis are conducted to analyze contributions and limitations of key published articles in each area of application. Findings The scientometric analysis indicates that there are four main applications of deep learning in construction management, namely, automating progress monitoring, automating safety warning for workers, managing construction equipment, integrating Internet of things with deep learning to automatically collect data from the site. The thematic and gap analysis refers to many successful cases of using deep learning in automating site management tasks; however, more validations are recommended to test developed solutions, as well as additional research is required to consider practitioners and workers perspectives to implement existing applications in their daily tasks. Practical implications This paper enables researchers to directly find the research gaps in the existing solutions and develop more workable applications to bridge revealed gaps. Accordingly, this will be reflected on speeding the digital construction transformation, which is a strategy over the world. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind to adopt a structured technique to assess deep learning-based construction site management applications to enable researcher/practitioners to either adopting these applications in their projects or conducting further research to extend existing solutions and bridging revealed knowledge gaps.