Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

Abstract

Understanding the dynamic interactions in the construction worker’s cognitive process is the key to eliminating human errors on construction sites and designing safety interventions to facilitate better safety management. However, the existing literature lacks a systematic review of the construction workers’ cognitive-related factors from the perspective of competence and their application in safety interventions. This review aims to summarize the state-of-the-art cognitive-related studies of construction employee errors and provide a guide for considering cognitive-related factors for safety management. The selection of relevant studies was through a three-step process. Key findings from these papers are organized into three areas of interest, namely (1) extractions of cognitive-related factors in the construction worker’s cognitive process, (2) determinations of the cognitive-related factors, and (3) cognitive-based safety interventions. Key conclusions include: (1) cognitive-related factors have been studied piecemeal and the ones that show a worker’s competence have been missing; (2) sensing of cognitive factors has focused on the perception stage and mixed indicator matrix to determine the worker’s cognitive status is needed; (3) safety interventions lack personalization and need to incorporate usable cognitive factors. A synthesis of the concepts underlying the reviewed studies is provided to get a sense of the strengths and gaps in the current studies, with suggestions for future research provided.

Practical Applications

This review not only examines how cognitive-related factors are employed in causal explanations of the construction worker’s safety behavior but also surveys how these factors are measured and how these factors have been used as part of interventions in safety management. 17 indicators have been found in the studies reviewed and organized under the framework of cognitive-based competence. Usable factors in safety management can be identified based on the criteria of usability, detectability, and relatability. The organizational and managerial factors that influence the worker’s sociocognitive process can be tailored as tools in practical safety management. The design of safety interventions should not only consider the worker’s cognitive-based competence but also the methods of measurement of cognitive factors. In practical application, real-time data from sensor-based wearable devices such as smart helmets can be used together with data from psychological questionnaires to evaluate the worker’s cognitive-based competence. Safety interventions can be personalized based on the level of cognitive-based competence and personal factors such as personality traits. Personalization involves the customization of the management’s executive actions, mode of delivery, content, and delivery timing of the intervention.

The construction industry has been criticized for low productivity, lack of collaboration and information sharing, poor contract administration, and the like due to its decentralized and fragmented structure as well as sequential and chain-resembling nature. Recently, blockchain technology and its benefits have received wide attention and interest. This research synthesizes the research trends and needs of this growing area by means of a bibliometric-qualitative review method. Scopus and Web of Science were selected as the literature databases to retrieve relevant academic publications. Through a systematic literature search and screening, 181 related articles were identified for bibliometric analysis, and 149 publications were critically discussed in a qualitative review. The bibliometric results indicated the recent research regarding blockchain in construction is primarily directed into several clusters, such as “smart contract,” “Building Information Modeling (BIM),” “supply chain management,” “construction contract,” “construction and project management,” “digital twin,” and “smart city.” These clusters were further synthesized for a qualitative review revealing deep insight into research challenges and gaps. Both quantitative and qualitative review results were then mapped to the future directions. It was noted that future research needs to focus on (1) quantifying the cost-benefits of the blockchain applications in construction, e.g., return on investment, practitioners training, and improving industry readiness, (2) integration of blockchain with different project delivery systems, and (3) technology fusion with blockchain for construction management.

Abstract

Application of emerging digital technology (DT) is an attractive subject of research and is indispensable to the current goal of intelligent construction in many countries. Relevant studies have either focused on the status of a specific DT or proposed preliminary/qualitative comparisons among DTs. This paper provides a systematic understanding of research on applying DTs to the architecture, engineering, construction, and operation (AECO) industry using a mixed-review method. Ten emerging DTs are determined, and publications related to them in 2011–2020 are collected from the Scopus database. The overall status and comparisons of research on 10 emerging DTs by region, journal, and popularity are then presented. The content of research on them is examined through in-depth literature analysis (including research scenario, project stage, and literature evolution in a discipline) and theme classification. Future research directions including technology knowledge, development, application and management, and some practical implications for the country, industry, project, and enterprise, are finally proposed. This research will be informative for academics with regard to the emerging DT’s opportunities in this discipline and provide support for work on the digitization of the AECO industry.

Practical Applications

Some practical implications are proposed from the perspectives of the country, industry, project, and enterprise. For the government, the holistic planning and scientific coordination of emerging DTs need to be highlighted, such as vigorously promoting Building Information Modelling (BIM) and artificial intelligence (AI) and utilizing them to further support the progress of blockchain and digital twin. Establishing demonstration projects to play their radiating roles and accelerate the inter-regional promotion of emerging DTs is also effective. For the industry, it is suggested to build technology alliances to jointly develop integrated platforms covering multiple emerging DTs through in-depth synergy; industry associations are advised to strengthen knowledge diffusion and accumulation for emerging DTs through sharing and training. For projects, applying emerging DTs to the entire life of projects and making them be deeply integrated with off-site, lean, and green construction are advisable. For enterprises, improving the workflow and management model adapted to the application of emerging DTs is necessary. Through adjusting organizational structure and transforming corporate culture, the competitiveness of enterprises could be continuously improved.

The positive influence of owners’ safety management on the safety performance of construction projects has gained significant attention. Considerable research has been performed to examine the relationship of owners’ safety leadership (SL), safety culture (SC), and safety management behavior (SMB). However, there is a lack of understanding of the mechanisms of influence of owners’ leadership–culture behavior (LCB) and recommendations to improve owners’ safety management behavior. This study developed the influence mechanism of owner LCB and explored the optimal intervention plan to improve owners’ SMB. First, a longitudinal survey was undertaken, which included more than 2,000 construction projects across China, to collect data. Subsequently, a Bayesian network (BN) was constructed to characterize the influence mechanism of owner LCB. Finally, the effects of different intervention plans on SMB were compared. The results proved that the owners’ SL had considerable effects on behavioral improvement when SL and SC were at low levels, whereas SC became prominent when SL and SC were at medium or high levels. This shows that safety leadership and safety culture successively play a role in behavior improvement. Additionally, the combined improvement of role modeling and safety training achieved the best improvement effect on SMB in case projects, which reveals that a combination of safety leadership and safety culture plays a greater role in behavior improvement. This study contributes to the LCB approach and proposes a selection scheme for intervention measures to improve owners’ safety management behavior.

In previous research, it has been debated whether uncertainty moderates the relationship between asset specificity and governance mechanisms. The relationship between the owner and contractor is a typical interorganizational collaborative relationship, with contractual and relational governance as key mechanisms. Based on transaction cost theory and relational exchange theory, this paper establishes a competitive conceptual model of construction project transaction characteristics on contractual and relational governance to test the moderating role of uncertainty in interorganizational relationships. The questionnaire data were analyzed with partial least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to verify the theoretical hypotheses. This paper finds that there is a significant positive correlation between asset specificity and both contractual governance and relationship governance, with uncertainty as a moderator significantly enhancing the correlation between asset specificity and relational governance. The conclusions of this paper support the predictions of relational exchange theory and transaction cost theory. The findings enhance the understanding of project governance mechanisms and interorganizational collaborative relationships. Faced with high uncertainty, the owner and contractor are advised to adopt relational norms such as trust rather than designing more formal contractual terms to resolve conflicts caused by asset specificity.

This paper aims to produce a new concrete that combines the benefits of self-compacting concrete (SCC), polypropylene fiber (PPF), and magnetic water (MW). Slump flow, L-box, V-funnel, compressive strength, split tensile strength, and flexural strength approaches were performed to investigate the fresh properties and mechanical behavior of concrete. Various percentages (0.4%–1.2%) of self-compacted agent (SCA) and different percentages (0%–0.5%) of PPF by weight of cement were adopted. The results showed that 0.8% SCA magnetized concrete had very similar fresh properties to 1.2% SCA nonmagnetized concrete. This led the author to believe that using MW as an alternative to ordinary tap water in the manufacture of SCC has promising benefits, the most important of which is reducing the used dosage of SCA by approximately 33.3% (from 1.2% to 0.8%), resulting in a lower cost of production of such type of concrete while retaining the same workability. The optimum percentage of PPF to be used in magnetic and nonmagnetic self-compacting concrete is 0.35%.

Despite the prevalence of unsafe behaviors on construction sites, limited attention has been paid to why and when some individuals on construction crews imitate their coworkers’ unsafe behaviors. This research proposes a theoretical model wherein coworkers’ unsafe behaviors are transmitted to other individuals through two pathways: safety silence and role stress, which includes role conflict and role ambiguity. Furthermore, the psychological contract of safety acts as a boundary condition. Empirical data were collected using a questionnaire administered to 498 Chinese construction workers and were analyzed using structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear regression. The results indicated that individuals were more prone to violate safety rules when witnessing coworkers’ unsafe behaviors. These behaviors indirectly affected individuals through safety silence and role conflict. The psychological contract of safety could mitigate the adverse effect of coworkers’ unsafe behaviors on individual safety violations and role stress. The findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge by offering a deep understanding of construction workers’ responses toward unsafe behaviors. Practically, this research will assist managers in developing appropriate strategies for preventing the spread of unsafe behaviors within construction crews.

Construction workers are vulnerable to excessive workloads that may cause ergonomic risks, disturbing the construction schedule. Hence, ergonomic risks and the responding measures for mitigating them, namely ergonomic measures, need to be predicted and assessed so as to help make decisions about management policies. This study focuses on agent-based simulation to predict ergonomic risks and impacts of ergonomic measures on the construction schedule (ERIEMCS) along with the construction process consisting of physical or light tasks. Workers are regarded as the agents and their behaviors in performing tasks and ergonomic measures are modeled by considering different physical capacities due to different workers’ ages. Energy expenditure–based fatigue quantification and the Ovako working posture analyzing system (OWAS) –based quantification of work-related musculoskeletal disorder (WMSD) risk for an individual worker are the basis for quantitative prediction of the fatigue and the WMSD risks of a crew undertaking the construction process through agent-based simulation. An application study based on a prefabricated construction project is presented to demonstrate and justify the proposed method. The results indicate that ergonomic risks can be effectively reduced by adopting ergonomic measures to balance mitigating such risks and maintaining productivity. Prediction of the ERIEMCS through agent-based simulation prior to commencement of work facilitates investigating the effects of aging workers and planning their working schedules using ergonomic measures in combination with schedule management. This study contributes to the body of knowledge on simulation-based methodology for applying ergonomics in construction management, which is especially meaningful given the trend of labor aging and the direction of industrialization in construction.

This study establishes a tripartite evolutionary game model based on the assumptions of bounded rationality and the interaction behavior of governments, owners, and general contractors to examine how strategies are changing for three stakeholders regarding the building information modeling (BIM) application in engineering-procurement-construction (EPC) projects. The theoretical model was validated and the effects of critical factors on stakeholder decision making were discussed using case study and numerical simulation analysis. The results show that (1) the choice of the BIM application strategy in EPC projects is affected by the interactive behavior of participants in the game, (2) the reasonable subsidies contribute to the evolution of the ideal stable strategy, (3) the owners’ high standard of incentives for general contractors can accelerate BIM promotion, (4) the general contractors are more sensitive to the loss that may be caused by problems with the BIM application, and (5) the positive externalities generated by the application of BIM have a great impact on the wide application of BIM. And some suggestions are put forward toward improving the development of BIM in EPC projects on the basis of findings. This study may contribute to our current understanding of the interactions of stakeholders in EPC projects, as well as provide valuable management implications for the governments in order to promote the development of BIM.

Production planners in construction face several problems related to the lack of information regarding construction project status, changes to resource availability, instability in production rates, design changes, and limited situational awareness (SA). Poor SA leads to uninformed and suboptimal resource allocation decisions. As a result, the construction workflow is negatively affected, degrading project performance. This study focuses specifically on possible relationships between production planners’ SA and the resulting workflow quality. Such understanding can lead to the development of measures to improve production management in construction. Interviews with diverse production planners highlighted the nature of the information needed, issues related to the lack of SA, and the effect on workflow. A serious roleplaying game was devised to measure the correlation between production planners’ SA and workflow, and 14 live simulation experiments were conducted with two teams of nine players each. Finally, a qualitative analysis of the information flow configurations applied in the experiments evaluated the expected effects of information flows in the live experiment. The study found a positive correlation between the quality of information flow and workflow in construction, indicating causation in line with theoretical expectations. Specifically, free communication among planners together with management tools such as formal weekly work planning and a digital planning tool reduced the assembly time, working time, and non-value-added time of the subcontractors in the experiments. Good information flows among production planners and an up-to-date jobsite status diminish uncertainty and increase SA, which lead to improved workflow and productivity.

Although the influence of psychosocial hazards on mental health has been widely recognized, the complex pattern of psychosocial hazards in the prediction of mental health still needs to be identified. Bayesian networks serve as an important, and as yet untapped, method to achieve this aim. As such, a Bayesian network (BN) was developed to assess the influence of psychosocial hazards on mental health based on survey data from 186 site-based construction practitioners and informed by the literature and expert knowledge. Results indicated that 66% of this target population suffered from poor mental health (i.e., mild, moderate, and severe states). Poor physical environment, contract pressure, and lack of coworker support were the root nodes in the model, which played an important role in determining the probability of other psychosocial hazards. Lack of job control, lack of coworker support, role ambiguity, role conflict, and lack of supervisor support were, relatively, the most influential hazards to mental health. Jointly controlling multiple psychosocial hazards was found to be better for increasing the probability of good mental health than controlling one individual hazard. The predictive inference revealed that managing the combination of lack of job control, lack of coworker support, role conflict, and job insecurity achieved the highest probability (77%) of good mental health among all four-hazard scenarios. Based on this particular scenario, further optimizing poor physical environment resulted in the highest probability (83%) of good mental health for five-hazard scenarios. The proposed BN model can be used as a powerful decision support tool to improve mental health in the construction industry via managing a more targeted subset of psychosocial hazards.

Project information management in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) projects can be a challenging endeavor due to the complex nature of projects and the numerous sources and types of information required, including drawings, plans, specifications, and building information modeling (BIM), among others. AEC projects require stakeholders to develop temporary teams, develop work processes, and collaborate across organizational boundaries. Additionally, the numerous technologies used in information management, such as project management software, scheduling software, and BIM, require contractual agreements among project stakeholders to address these technologies’ potential risks while still allowing stakeholder collaboration to benefit project execution and delivery. Contracts are used to define project requirements and can be used to define different aspects of project information management, like required deliverables or stakeholder roles and responsibilities. While recent research has evaluated the relationship between BIM and contracts, there is a gap in understanding the relationship between contracts and information management more holistically. The objectives of this research were to gain insight into how contracts impact information management, identify barriers that exist in contracts related to information management, and to develop potential contract-related strategies to improve information management on AEC projects. Researchers implemented a qualitative analysis approach through semistructured interviews with 38 AEC professionals and the application of a systematic and iterative qualitative coding process. This research found that contracts can be used as a tool to influence the development and execution of project information management strategies. Specifically, contracts can be used to define deliverables, workflows, and software, as well as templates and forms. While interviewees discussed many contract-related challenges, they also proposed potential contract-related strategies to improve project information management. These strategies encompass three main categories: improving contract compliance, contract flexibility, and setting expectations. These findings provide insight into how contracts can impact project information management and provide practitioners with specific contract strategies to improve project information management.

Infrastructure public–private partnership (PPP) projects across the world have suffered early termination, premature change of ownership, cost and time overruns, among others, often resulting from a number of issues some of which are related to poorly managed dispute. Despite this, literature revealed that no process-centric attempt had been made to highlight the critical issues affecting dispute resolution (DR) in infrastructure PPPs. Through event sequence analysis (ESA) of 158 data sources (including 63 journal articles), this study examined the critical issues affecting infrastructure PPP DR practice, with the motivation of unveiling areas of potential improvement to the DR practice. Among other findings, the multiple roles of the public partner in the DR process were found to result in ambiguity on who was responsible for overseeing their actions. Relatedly, the effectiveness of dispute boards was on some occasions undermined when they were assigned multiple functions. Besides this study adding to the theoretical body of knowledge through application of ESA in infrastructure PPP DR research, it clarified the critical issues affecting current infrastructure PPP DR practice, thereby enhancing infrastructure PPP practitioners’ understanding of potential barriers to successful infrastructure PPP DR. Although the researchers acknowledge the plausibility of an in-depth investigation into ways in which the critical issues in DR practice can be addressed, the main focus of this study was to provide clarity on the critical issues affecting DR in infrastructure PPPs. A separate study focusing on improvements to DR in infrastructure PPPs is recommended.

Concurrent delays are multiple project participants incurring delays on parallel schedule paths. They have been controversial because it is challenging to apportion liability for liquidated damages fairly and equitably. To date, there exist neither a transparent solution, nor one that addresses all possible scenarios, including mixed, where some participants are ahead of schedule and others are behind. This study therefore proposes a comprehensive model that also newly includes incentive bonuses. This cooperative game theory–based approach has three steps: (1) identify as-planned and as-built schedule inputs; (2) categorize delayed and ahead activities; and (3) operate games to determine Shapley values. Compared with prior delay analysis methods, our model is more robust and apportions liability not just in days, but also in financial terms. A real-world case was analyzed to validate it and demonstrate the reasonableness of its results. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by creating an objective concurrent delay analysis using readily available project data. It also aids in incentivizing project participants to deliver their best possible performance.

Construction projects are premised upon contractual arrangements, and contracts constitute the basis of their success. A contract enables execution of work and transfer of payments, tracking of key performance indicators, and facilitation of collaboration among project stakeholders. Historically, construction projects have faced critical challenges due to poor alignment between clients’ expectations, contract terms, and contractor performance. The advent of advanced digital technologies under the concept of Industry 4.0 has the potential to benefit construction projects through application of blockchain-enabled smart contracts. However, the adoption of smart contracts in construction projects is in its early stages, and the factors that will influence its adoption remain unclear. Therefore, this study aimed to explore and establish the critical factors influencing adoption of smart contracts in construction contractual arrangements. This study administered an international questionnaire survey among experienced construction practitioners with involvement in smart contract initiatives and activities. The results obtained from descriptive statistics and fuzzy set-based analysis show that trialability, relative advantage, competitive advantage, and compatibility of smart contracts are the important predictors of the adoption of such contracts. The findings suggest that practitioners share a view that technological characteristics of blockchain-enabled smart contracts are critical to their adoption, regarding the technology’s perceived practicality in improving effectiveness and efficiency of construction projects. This study contributes to technology diffusion research in construction and highlights drivers that require practitioners’ and industry leaders’ attention to ensure successful adoption of smart contracts for cost-effective delivery of construction projects.

Employees’ mental health and well-being are a growing concern as countries grapple with heightened mental ill-health and suicide rates, with the construction industry ranking in the top five. Drawing from the context of a developing country, particularly Nigeria, data were collected using mixed methods (i.e., survey and postsurvey interview). The study investigated mental health among 382 construction personnel. The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-2) scales were employed in assessing mental health. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and logistic regression. The prevalence rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation were 55.1%, 16%, 9.8% among supervisors, 72%, 36.9%, and 15.3%, respectively, among tradesmen. Univariate logistic regression revealed that years of experience and organizational structure influence mental health. Multiple logistic regression showed that risk factors for mental ill-health include nature of work, little relationship with colleagues, job insecurity, occupational injury, low income, and unsatisfactory living conditions. The findings from this study will assist in intervention building and policy-making within the construction industry of Nigeria and globally.

The theoretical connections between off-site construction (OSC) and lean have only been marginally addressed in existing literature. This study analyses how distinct OSC strategies (1) affect flow and completion times, and (2) support simplification in construction (by reducing the number of parts and/or steps). Flow, which entails the smooth and reliable transfer of work across trades, is at the heart of lean whereas simplification is one principle of this management philosophy. Industry data based on three residential projects built in Australia using traditional construction or OSC strategies (panels/cassettes, and/or bathroom pods), and 15 hypothetical scenarios were used to develop a simulation exercise. The results show that OSC can substantially reduce schedule durations, particularly when different prefab elements are jointly used, but flow variability [measured by coefficient of variation (COV)] remains unchanged when compared to traditional construction. OSC was found to minimize the number of parts on-site by having building materials and components aggregated off-site and delivered as subassemblies. Yet, the number of steps did not reduce substantially, and the reductions only occurred when panels/cassettes were used. Alternative perspectives explaining the numerical results obtained are also discussed. The main contribution of this paper lies in measuring the impact of distinct OSC strategies from a flow viewpoint as well as in empirically examining their benefits from a simplification viewpoint. The study extends existing knowledge by leveraging industry data to quantify such impacts utilizing a tailored simulation approach. This provides an important addition to the still limited number of investigations measuring and comparing flow under different conditions.

Despite the significant amount of research undertaken to determine the causes of rework, construction organizations still struggle to mitigate its occurrence. This paper presents research from an ongoing longitudinal study using a sense-making lens to examine rework causation in a transport megaproject. It was observed that rework often emerges as a consequence of hold-ups, which are failures in negotiated order stemming from misunderstandings, misinterpretations, role ambiguity, and breakdowns in communications and interactions between project participants. Rather than adopting a reductionist view of rework causation that focuses on the use of prefixes such as poor, limited, inadequate, and lack of, which abounds in the construction and engineering management literature, this research unearths the nuances associated with errors and rework, enabling a richer understanding of the context within which it manifests in projects. The upshot is that a new theoretical framing is presented to understand better the why and how of rework causation in construction.