Extraction of Construction Quality Requirements from Textual Specifications via Natural Language Processing

Construction inspection is an essential component of the quality assurance programs of state transportation agencies (STAs), and the guidelines for this process reside in lengthy textual specifications. In the current practice, engineers and inspectors must manually go through these documents to plan, conduct, and document their inspections, which is time-consuming, very subjective, inconsistent, and prone to error. A promising alternative to this manual process is the application of natural language processing (NLP) techniques (e.g., text parsing, sentence classification, and syntactic analysis) to automatically extract construction inspection requirements from textual documents and present them as straightforward check questions. This paper introduces an NLP-based method that: 1) extracts individual sentences from the construction specification; 2) preprocesses the resulting sentences; 3) applies Word2Vec and GloVe algorithms to extract vector features; 4) uses a convolutional neural network (CNN) and recurrent neural network to classify sentences; and 5) converts the requirement sentences into check questions via syntactic analysis. The overall methodology was assessed using the Indiana Department of Transportation (DOT) specification as a test case. Our results revealed that the CNN + GloVe combination led to the highest accuracy, at 91.9%, and the lowest loss, at 11.7%. To further validate its use across STAs nationwide, we applied it to the construction specification of the South Carolina DOT as a test case, and our average accuracy was 92.6%.

Experimental Study on Combined Strength of Post-Installed Expansion Heavy-Duty and Wedge Anchors

Post-installed expansion heavy-duty anchors and wedge anchors have been used for fixing and bonding steel frames in the remodeling and construction of structures requiring a high level of safety. The use of post-installed expansion heavy-duty anchors and wedge anchors in the remodeling and construction of structural buildings have significantly increased since the 2000's. However, we observed that a reliable design standard or construction specification for post-installed expansion heavy-duty anchors and wedge anchors had not been established. Therefore, the objective of this study is to obtain basic technical data of post-installed expansion heavy-duty and wedge anchors in the remodeling and construction of buildings. Experimental tests were performed to evaluate the combined strength and fracture mode of post-installed expansion heavy-duty and wedge anchors implanted in concrete. The experimental variables were the loading angle and combined load (tensile and shear loads). The test results for the loading angles and combined loads were compared with the values obtained using the American Concrete Institute design standard.

Mesh-based tool path calculations for tubular joints

Manufacturing of large steel tube structures is faced with excessive welding, fit-up and rework times in tube joints, due to various types of deviation from nominal shape of the tubes. This article presents a procedure and geometry calculus for generating cutting and welding paths based on measured geometries. The procedure poses the two measured meshes as per construction specification and invokes a mesh intersection procedure to get the mesh intersection path; performs an optional smoothing; interpolates the smoothed path to a specified angular resolution; estimates the two surface normal vectors and the two surface tangents in the plane spanned by the normals at each interpolation point; calculates the cutting tool and welding tool approach directions for obtaining the specified welding groove geometry at each interpolation point; and finally stores all the data parameterized by the interpolation angle. Illustrations of results with both synthetic, representative meshes and meshes obtained from scanning of actual tubes at the shop-floor at a manufacturer are presented. The reference implementation for the developed software tool is based on Python and uses the mesh modeller from the 3D creation suite Blender as platform.

A Valid and Correct-by-Construction Formal Specification of RBAC

Controlling access to data is one of the primary purposes of security, especially when it comes to dealing with safety critical systems. In such systems, it is of paramount importance to rigorously define access control models. In this article, a correct-by-construction specification of RBAC using the Event-B formal method is proposed. The specification defines closely the model properties with the behavior aspect of RBAC as guards of events, which allows applying a priori verifications. Accordingly, the resulted specification is correct-by-construction and avoids the combinatorial explosion problem. As well, a number of refinement operations are performed leading to a specification with several abstraction levels, where each level implements selected RBAC entities. The approach is illustrated by an instantiation of a healthcare system.

Optimising the safety of road transport workers on IBS building construction projects: a review

Purpose The purpose of this study is to develop a new information and communication technology (ICT)-based approach for optimising safety transportation according to the needs of the current industrialised building system (IBS) building construction schemes. The improper handling and information management of road transport workers appears to be a major problem in the safety of the IBS building construction industry. Transportation activity is particularly problematic for IBS building construction projects in which traffic incident and safety management level are not in good condition to match with construction specification. Design/methodology/approach A new ICT-based approach is suggested for optimising safety transportation in accordance with the needs of the current IBS building construction schemes. As a precursor to this work, the concept of road transport workers practices is reviewed and the main features of ICT tools and techniques currently being used on such projects are presented. Findings The sophisticated road transport workers system solutions is described as an essential component of this optimisation to promote long-term safety and quality improvements of IBS building construction projects. Originality/value Finally, the potential for a research framework for developing such a system in the future is presented.

Faktor-Faktor yang Mempengaruhi Kualitas Konstruksi Rumah Menengah dan Mewah di Surabaya

The quality factor is considered when people will buy a house. People are willing to pay more for good quality house, as it will have high value to resell. Hence, it is important to realize quality factor in construction. The respondent answered how was the house construction quality in Surabaya and factors affecting it. The result of this research found 8 expected factors that affects the middle and high-end landed house construction quality in Surabaya. These factors were budget allocation for quality management and occupational health and safety, comprehensive review to the architecture and structure design, supplier management, process management, human resource management, written working standard, customer satisfaction oriented, and proper construction specification and drawing. Out of 8 factor, there was only 1 factor that affects the most, it was proper construction specification and drawing. This research also found there was a difference in factors affecting middle & high-end landed house construction quality in Surabaya.