Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

A decade ago, there were multiple calls for more ethnographic research in the construction industry in order to provide deeper insights into industry practice. Since those calls, methods under the umbrella of ethnographic methods have been more regularly applied, with various data collection techniques being adopted, often as part of multifaceted research designs. It is argued that it is now an appropriate time to critically review ethnographic research studies over the past 10 years in order to establish the kinds of knowledge they generate and the intervention they may inform. In doing so, this also begins to identify contributions and areas that deserve more attention. We reviewed 57 relevant studies that adopted approaches such as autoethnography, quasi-ethnography, ethnographic-action research, retrospective ethnography, and ethnographic interviewing, used both to explore problems and confirm results. Interesting intense forms of ethnography dominated, with alternative and shorter-term ethnographic work (as opposed to classic long-term approaches) forming the basis of the majority of the studies reviewed. The methods explicated within these papers suggested they were rooted within different ontological positions, with there being little consistency in terms of how the rigor of the approaches used was evaluated. There was also a distinct lack of researcher reflexivity on their emotions. This means that many researchers fail to reflect on their role within the social worlds they study, which, in a Western construction context, can be a macho, masculine, and potentially dangerous (physically and mentally) environment. Greater levels of appreciation and consistency in judging ethnographic research, and greater reflexivity on the influence of the researcher’s position and influence on the practices studied, are prerequisites for robust ethnographic practice.

Construction project managers (CPMs) need to handle project tasks through interpersonal interaction, which always involves emotion. Thus, CPMs must perform emotional labor. Different emotional labor strategies, namely, surface acting (i.e., faking emotional expressions) and deep acting (i.e., modifying feelings), may cause different levels of stress and influence job burnout. This paper investigates the impacts of two components of emotional labor, emotional display demands and emotional labor strategies, on CPMs’ job burnout. It also examines the moderating effect of emotional intelligence (EI) between emotional display demands and emotional labor strategies. Data from 234 questionnaire surveys were analyzed with structural equation modeling. The results show that CPMs who choose surface acting as a strategy to regulate emotions in the workplace will be under more stress and encounter job burnout. In addition, CPMs with higher EI are less inclined to choose surface acting and thus experience less job burnout. This paper extends emotional labor research into the construction project context and provides evidence that studying job burnout from an emotional labor perspective generates useful insights into the causes of CPMs’ job burnout.

Whereas extensive literature exists on repetitive scheduling to help projects benefit from repetition and resource continuity, its underlying formulations suffer from serious challenges that often create less-efficient lengthy schedules. This paper, therefore, presents a framework with novel visuals and enhanced schedule computations that can generate shortest feasible schedules that address the key constraints of deadlines, limited resources, and nonidentical units. On the visual side, the framework integrates the LOB and Flowline visuals to enhance schedule legibility. On the computational side, it presents a novel three-step procedure to guarantee the shortest feasible schedules: (1) critical path method-line of balance (CPM-LOB) formulation of the number of parallel crews needed to meet deadlines; (2) interruption-time formulation to reduce schedule delay under crew limits; and (3) first-come first-served multicrew assignment process to reduce the schedule time-gaps and delays under nonidentical units. Manually-solved examples are used to demonstrate the power and streamlined applicability of the proposed framework. The paper is beneficial to both researchers and practitioners and contributes to mathematically generating legible and near-optimum repetitive schedules, under key constraints, without extra measures or sophisticated optimization.

Concrete electrical resistivity has been performed as a durability parameter because this is a nondestructive, simple, fast, and reliable technique for evaluation of reinforced concrete field structures. The results obtained have been used mainly to verify the probable reinforcement corrosion risk. However, other applications for electrical resistivity are possible, such as service life estimation of concrete structures in a marine environment. This paper presents the applicability of concrete electrical resistivity as a parameter for the determination of modified Holliday equation variables for chloride profile modeling of field reinforced concrete structures present in a marine environment. For this, chloride profiles of reinforced concrete structures present for more than $40\mathrm{years}$ in different marine aggressive zones were analyzed. The results showed that all the modified Holliday equation variables can be estimated by electrical resistivity values presenting moderate to very high statistical correlations. The chloride concentration peak was observed near the concrete surface for concretes that presented lower electrical resistivity. Concretes that presented low electrical resistivity showed high chloride concentrations in the profiles, including concentrations up to 1.6% by concrete mass at the peak.

In mega projects, the stakeholders may be exposed to significant on-site construction risk, especially the owners and insurance companies who take the most responsibility for the risk loss. It is difficult for insurance companies to diversify their risks by undertaking enough similar policies, and participating in on-site risk management has become an important method of active risk control. Based on the principal-agent relationship between the owner, insurance company, and contractor, this paper establishes incentive mechanisms for risk management considering the common agency and exclusive agency models. The results show that an insurance company’s involvement in the common agency model creates external effects that can improve the utility of both the owner and the insurance company. The owner is then willing to provide a higher incentive coefficient, and the contractor’s nonrisk and risk management efforts increase accordingly. From the owner’s perspective, the influence of the participants’ characteristics and external uncertainties on the incentive strategy are discussed. The results recommend that it is better for the owners and insurance companies to jointly establish a good cooperative relationship and build the incentive mechanism. The spillover effect has a positive effect on the cooperation between the two parties, while the impact of the uncertainty in risk management output on the cooperative relationship is negative. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge for understanding the on-site risk management considering stakeholders’ participation and provides a practical mode for owners and insurance companies to implement active risk management in mega projects, thus achieving better risk governance of mega projects.

Environmental regulations can greatly affect the operation of new and existing infrastructure projects. In fact, the economic performance of infrastructure projects is closely related to environmental regulations whose landscape is extremely dynamic. To assist infrastructure project sectors in better coping with environmental regulatory changes, this study proposes guidelines for the robust adaptation to environmental regulations through information collected from an exploratory research process. As part of these guidelines, a process map model was developed that details the different stages in the environmental regulation development process, including prerulemaking, proposed rule development and publication, commenting period, final rule development and publication, and post-promulgation. Five adaptation subprocesses (i.e., regulatory horizon scanning, stakeholder engagement, risk and opportunity assessment, response strategy development, and compliance implementation) are examined to help regulated entities better adapt to regulatory changes across different regulatory stages. This information has the potential to provide companies with a structured stage-by-stage approach for dealing with uncertainties arising from environmental regulation changes.

The construction industry is a multiteam continuum, where in addition to the civil engineers, a wide array of experts and tradesmen provide necessary inputs to complete projects on time and schedule. Such essential inputs are provided by the skilled teams working in parallel and along with the civil engineers, but through separate leaders who are usually led by a project manager who is often a civil engineer or an architect. However, it is a growing concern that if such teams are given more autonomy in the form of shared leadership, it can lead to extended team creativity in a construction project. This study attempts to evaluate such an argument. This study also considers a mediating role of “professional identity salience” that highlights the fact that team members realize their specific professional roles in particular teams and then strive for better knowledge and performance. A moderating role of team coordination is then introduced in this study to assess professional identity salience effect to enhance team creativity. The authors collected a time-lagged data set from 84 working teams in construction projects. The analysis showed that professional identity salience positively mediates the link between shared leadership and team creativity. Furthermore, this relationship is also found to be moderated by the level of team coordination. Based on the results, this study explains how, when, and why shared leadership improves creativity in construction project teams. This study aims to help project managers to understand the shared leadership concept and its implementation in construction projects to enhance team creativity.

The compaction quality of the compacted layer is a major concern of roller compacted concrete (RCC). Current compaction quality evaluation methods, such as testing random sampling spots or predicting with common models, have strong deviation due to the limited amount of data points and the ignorance of the effect of parameter variability on the reliability of evaluation results. This study presents a dynamic quality evaluation method by incorporating reliability to account for the variability of material parameters. This method consists of three parts. First, the compactness of the compacted layer is predicted using genetic algorithm-based support vector machine (GA-SVM). Second, reliability analysis is proposed to incorporate the influence of material parameter variability on the credibility of compactness prediction. Finally, the index $R$ as an evaluation criterion is developed based on compactness and reliability by which the compaction quality of RCC is predicted. By using the kriging interpolation procedure, the compactness and reliability at any point of a work area can be estimated, and the overall passing rate of compaction quality of the work area can be analyzed. The advantages of the proposed method are as follows: (1) through minimizing structural risks, GA-SVM model can solve the problem of high deviation and low accuracy caused by limited sampling data in common models; and (2) to overcome the limitation of low reliability of single compactness evaluation, the reliability index is introduced to quantify the impact of material parameter variability on the credibility of the compactness.

Prior studies have focused on identifying and ranking critical success factors (CSFs), but both their interdependence and the vagueness resulting from human judgment have been neglected. Furthermore, there is a need to explain CSFs from the short- and long-term planning horizons. This study aims to identify, rank, and examine the interdependence of the critical factors affecting construction projects in low-income economies. The study applied the fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) to validate subfactors identified from the literature. The hierarchical relationship between success factors and linguistic preferences is considered by using a fuzzy analytical hierarchical process (FAHP) and a fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (FDEMATEL) methodology. The former is applied to rank the relative weights of the factors and subfactors, and the latter is used to discover the nature of their interrelationship. The results indicate that over the short term, the relationships with the clients, consultants, designers, top management, and the financial situation of the contractor are essential. However, for strategic management and long-term success, the most influential factors are the external environment and the types of projects undertaken. Therefore, the economic climate, technical and professional capabilities, and costs, funds, and resources should be the primary concerns when establishing the project goals. Furthermore, this study provides managerial and theoretical implications to guide construction projects from both short- and long-term perspectives.

The follow-up issue is one of the major factors that limit the application of construction automation and robotics. Specifically, many research results with fundamentally good ideas end up gathering dust on a shelf without any follow-up research and development (R&D) or applications. Nevertheless, some construction companies have successful experience in the follow-up issue. Therefore, this study presents and analyzes the processes from R&D to follow-ups of four representative Chinese construction companies that developed their own automation and robotic products and implemented them continuously. Based on the four cases, an intercase analysis was conducted, and 11 influential factors that lead to successful follow-ups were identified. To understand the identified factors effectively, they were then categorized according to an existing theoretical framework, i.e., the technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework, which is widely used in studies on innovation adoption. As a result, four technological factors (interdisciplinary cooperation, continuous R&D, pilot test, and technological foresight), five organizational factors (company size, human resources, development strategies, organizational structure, and management system), and two environmental factors (market demand and competitive pressure) are obtained. Suggestions are proposed for both the technology providers and adopters, such as establishing industrial alliances, training interdisciplinary personnel and skilled workers, and expanding the business scope to promote wider implementations. It is expected to be valuable for the stakeholders in many countries and regions with the need to implement construction automation and robotics because the analysis has not been confined to the practice in China.