Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

One of the major causes of fatalities during construction is the use of cranes or derricks during lifting operations. Using the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) case files from fatality investigations during the years 1997–2003, the writers examined the data to determine the proximal causes and contributing physical factors. The research results showed the use of mobile cranes with lattice and telescopic booms, truck or crawler mounted, represented over 84% of the fatalities in the use of cranes/derricks. To reduce the rate of crane fatalities the writers believe that crane operators and riggers should be qualified and requalification should occur every $3\text{years}$ . Crane safety training must be provided to specialty trade crafts before they are allowed to work around cranes during lifting operations. In addition, a “diligent” competent person [as defined in 29CFR 1926.32(f)] should be in charge of all aspects of lifting operations. Finally, OSHA should improve its system of collecting information during fatality investigations, placing emphasis on intervention strategies to improve usefulness of the investigations to researchers and policymakers inside and outside the Agency.

Automated tracking of materials on construction projects has the potential to both improve project performance and enable effortless derivation of project performance indicators. This paper presents an approach by which materials tagged with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be automatically identified and tracked on construction sites, without adding to regular site operations. Essentially, this approach leverages automatic reading of tagged materials by field supervisors or materials handling equipment that are equipped with a RFID reader and a global positioning system receiver. To assess the technical feasibility of this approach, a mathematical model has been formulated such that the job site is represented as a grid and the location of materials within the grid is determined by combining proximity reads from a discrete range. Field experiments were conducted using an off-the-shelf RFID technology, and several metrics were developed to quantify the field performance and compare it with the theoretical positional accuracy derived from the discrete formulation.

Currently, backhoe excavator operators have to depend on color-coded markings applied by utility locators to expect the location of utilities buried in the ground. As accidents prove time and time again, this method is unreliable. While more efforts should be spent on subsurface engineering and as-built documentation, excavators should have their own tools to “see” cables, wires, and pipes while working underground. This paper presents the result of work aimed at supplying backhoe operators with a device capable of scanning the ground for metallic objects. The “fishfinder” type tool is thought to be the last “barricade” against horrific accidents caused by the damage of buried utilities. The writers not only present the results of extensive tests in the laboratory and the field but also highlight that the outdated contractual principles used by the government, utility companies, and insurers establishes insurmountable barriers for transferring this novel technology into the industry. The relevance of the presented work is in the experimental data that has been collected and analyzed both in the laboratory and in the field.

According to Dede Bonner in 2000, employees hold a wealth of knowledge and experience about their companies, including the products, customers, internal processes, histories, technologies, and competitors. But this knowledge is usually dispersed across scattered individuals and locations. Although learning happens at an individual level, it is usually as a one-time event, without an organizational context or a sense of continuity. Knowledge is kept in people’s minds but not shared in an organization. Not until the 20th century did people start to realize that knowledge is critical to the success of a company and considered to be the pivotal point for aggressive organizational growth in today’s highly competitive marketplace. This is also true for the Hong Kong construction industry. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the current situation of knowledge sharing at the departmental level in contracting companies, this research was carried out with the aims of investigating the main barriers to and finding out the critical factors for and benefits resulting from effective knowledge sharing in the tendering departments of contracting companies in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. The research reviews existing theories of knowledge and knowledge sharing. It seeks to contribute to the theory of organizational knowledge sharing by providing an explorative account supported by empirical evidence. It also allows management to continuously anticipate and support knowledge sharing activities related to the successful management of construction projects within their particular organizations.

To increase the quality of decision making in construction companies, organizational memory should be enhanced and utilized effectively. Experiences of other companies should constitute an important part of organizational memory so that a construction company may have the chance to learn from the experiences of others and modify its behavior in the light of acquired knowledge. Within this study, a case-based reasoning (CBR) decision support tool is constructed to demonstrate how experiences of competitors in international markets may be used by contractors, to support international market selection decisions. 215 cases from the Turkish construction industry have been used to build the model, namely CBR-INT. The reliability of CBR-INT in predicting potential profitability of international projects and the level of competitiveness of Turkish contractors is around 90%. Moreover, CBR-INT has proven to be an effective tool for practitioners due to its high explanation capability and ease of use. Using the conceptual framework of CBR-INT, different CBR models can also be constructed for other countries.

The ability to create new knowledge is a key to success. This paper explores two facets of the process of knowledge creation and their impact on project outcomes. The first deals with knowledge that is related to learning about the project. It is associated with the arrangement of the planning process, the characteristics of the project, and the behaviors of the project participants. The second type of knowledge creation deals with the project participants’ learning about each other. It examines the activities and behaviors that take place early in the project and their affect on the activities that take place during the project. The results raise some provocative questions related to the efficacy of planning. The ability to manage change on an ongoing basis rather than the ability to plan appears to be the key to project management success. The results also suggest that the conditions necessary to manage change evolve over the duration of the project. The planning activities that occur early in the project are important in determining the path of evolution.

Best value is the ultimate goal of the public client in infrastructure development through public–private partnerships (PPPs). A best-value approach necessitates a sound best-value source selection methodology, which encourages creativity and innovation from the private sector and allows the public sector to make a right tradeoff between cost and noncost criteria in tender evaluation. Through a factor analysis of the relative significance of the best-value contributing factors (BVCFs) based on a previous questionnaire survey of international PPP experts, this paper has determined the major common dimensions of the public clients’ best-value objective in infrastructure development and the key BVCFs that measure each of these dimensions. Statistical tests confirm the adequacy and quality of the survey, the soundness of the factor analysis and the internal consistency of the BVCFs, and they also indicate that the public, private, and academic sectors consider BVCFs rather similarly. The establishment of the best-value objective dimensions and the BVCFs that measure each of these dimensions would direct and concentrate the efforts of the private sector in crafting innovative project delivery models to offer the best value, the public sector in efficiently evaluating project proposals to award a defensible contract, and the consequently formed PPPs in continuously enhancing the best-value objective through long-term contractual arrangements.

China has been attracting overseas construction enterprises with its vast expanding business market. The country is further opening its construction market to overseas businesses as the result of its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. In line with this development, there are an increasing number of foreign-invested construction enterprises (FICEs) entering into the market. Using Porter’s competitiveness factor analysis method, this paper identifies the FICEs’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the Chinese construction market. Data used in the analysis stem from multiple sources including statistical reports, literature review, regulations and policies, and interviews with construction professionals. These findings should provide a valuable reference for overseas construction enterprises who are interested in developing business in the Chinese construction market.

The technical advancement of earthmoving equipment during the 20th century includes many improvements in key parts of machines. This paper uses five systems that make up earthmoving equipment (implement, traction, structure, power train, and control and information) to analyze this technical advancement. The analysis of each system includes its purpose and operation, technical limitations and key technologies, and a chronology of major advancements. The findings are the benefits of using the five systems for analysis of technical change, the sequence and timing of key technical advances in each system, the fundamental technologies that fostered these advances, and the integration of systems into balanced equipment designs. This increased understanding from this analysis results in significant implications and relevance for civil designers working on integrated teams, contractors selecting methods and planning operations, equipment suppliers developing new machines, construction educators teaching the technical basics of equipment, and researchers developing advanced modeling and simulation tools.

The technological advancement of earthmoving equipment during the 20th century includes the introduction of at least seven completely new forms. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the introduction of five new forms (track-type tractor, off-highway truck, wheel tractor scraper, hydraulic excavator, and loader-backhoe) and their subsequent incremental improvement. The description of innovation for each machine includes markets and the state of technology at introduction, differences of the new form, and changes during subsequent development. The major findings from this analysis are the key role of new technology for machine systems in the development of the new forms, the continued importance of each form in earthmoving markets, and the significant continued advancement of the equipment through incremental improvements. These findings are relevant for practice to assist in identifying possible improvements in equipment capability and work procedures. The results will also assist educators in courses concerning equipment capability and technical advancement and researchers in considering new equipment forms and capabilities as a part of developing new tools to model and improve equipment-intensive construction operations.

The construction industry has witnessed the failure of many contractors due to varying reasons such as financial problems, poor performance, or accidents arising from the lack of adequate safety consideration at worksites. All these incidents have led to the impression that the current system of awarding the contracts is inefficient in selecting the contractor capable of meeting the demands and challenges of present times and hence needs to be reviewed accordingly. Therefore, in an attempt to investigate the current situation of the Singapore construction industry a questionnaire survey was conducted for accruing the data required to identify the important contractor selection criteria (CSC) and to draw upon construction practitioners’ opinions regarding the importance of those CSC in assessing the capabilities of the candidate contractors during the selection process. The research reported upon forms part of a larger study that aims to develop a computer-interactive multicriteria decision system for contractor selection involving identification of CSC for inclusion in the system, investigation of CSC preferences of construction practitioners, and establishment of weights for those CSC from their perceived importance determined through the questionnaire survey of Singapore construction practitioners. The study highlights that there are statistically significant differences in opinions regarding the degree of importance assigned to some CSC among public clients, private clients, and contractors. Findings from the study may act as an aid in improving the Singapore construction industry by helping construction clients identify multiple CSC apart from cost which should always be considered when assessing the capability of candidate contractors during the selection process, by assisting contractors in improving their attributes in line with clients’ preferences and by facilitating Singapore construction clients and researchers to develop a contractor selection system capable of assessing multiple attributes of the candidate contractors so that the risk of the project failure due to the selection of an inappropriate contractor is minimized.

Wireless technology offers a first efficient avenue to communicate data within a construction site in real time. This paper presents the integrated wireless site (IWS) concept that is based on a meshed communication network that not only reaches almost every location of a site but is also connected to the World Wide Web. Lessons learned from installing and evaluating wireless mobile and fixed video devices during ongoing construction are shared. The relevance of this study to both practitioners and researchers are the experimental field data that assert technical feasibility as well as a series of benefits such as reduced non-value-added activities, quick response to safety hazards, and automatic as-it-was-built for documentation and training. Equally important was the finding that the success of this technology in the long run depends on trust, collaboration, and information sharing among participants. Expanding the IWS by incorporating a semantic network that integrates individual equipment, tools, specialty devices, and construction personnel promises to provide the necessary incentives for a revolutionary change in the way construction resources communicate.