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Managing design : conversations, project controls and best practices for commercial design and construction projects
\"For many years the way the design process was managed in the commercial design and construction industry was a topic of great interest to academics and a small cadre of professionals who were early adopters of new project delivery methods. The issue has now burst into the mainstream as the pace of change has quickened the industry's transformation to team-approach design and construction. Through candid interviews with 40 industry luminaries and a set of actionable tools and best practices, the book helps readers do the impossible : manage design. Written in a relatable style this book is a welcome lever for owners, contractors, and designers in search of better ways to work together\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Evaluation of Ecological Environmental Pollution in Green Building Construction
The long-term extensive development mode of China’s construction industry has resulted in the enormous consumption of energy resources, increasingly severe environmental pollution, and serious ecosystem degradation. Green construction is an essential route to implement the ecological civilization construction policy and achieve green building in China’s construction industry. However, enormous environmental pollution has been generated because of a series of problems in China’s green building construction, such as the lack of a scientific evaluation system for green building construction, loose field construction management, and weak awareness of environmental protection among constructors. Therefore, in this study, a pollution evaluation index system for green building construction was established from three aspects, namely, resource utilization, environmental load, and environmental management, to evaluate the class of ecological environmental pollution triggered by green building construction. Next, a model combining the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation was built, followed by a case study. The results revealed that resource utilization was the main factor causing ecological environmental pollution in green building construction, accounting for 63.70%. Energy conservation and application of new pollution control technology were level III factors that should be given considerable attention. In the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, the degree of membership of “good” was 0.4855, which was the maximum, indicating that the ecological environment of green building construction in this study was at “good” level, thereby indicating the environmental friendliness of green building construction. This study will be of positive reference values for identifying the ecological influencing factors of green building construction, reducing the waste of resources of green buildings, promoting green construction technologies, and innovating green con
Journal Article
Governance and participatory co-construction processes: case Cerro San Eduardo in Guayaquil
The case of intervention in two communities settled on Cerro San Eduardo in Guayaquil is presented. It started as a community engagement Project from University, with the aim of improving the built and natural environment of its inhabitants. The goal is to enhance the quality of the living spaces under the Social Production of Habitat, applying the Participatory Action Research methodology, seeking to involve them in governance processes and territory strengthening. This has resulted in various proposals for knowledge transmission, growing from the community (from the bottom to the top) to achieve a resilient, visible, and integrated territory aligned with current urban improvement processes. The main outcomes from this participation go from a diagnosis of territory to multiple proposals for urban and architectural systems at the neighborhood scale to improve the communal spaces.
Journal Article
Automated and adaptable construction work scheduling: a roadmap
In recent years, automation in construction scheduling has gained popularity due to advancements in digital construction, yet it has not achieved widespread adoption. Significant challenges remain in developing adaptive schedules that effectively manage unforeseen events and construction delays. This study addresses a critical research gap by evaluating the automation levels of individual construction planning processes, an area previously underexplored. Employing a systematic literature review, this study investigates the state of the art in automated, dynamic and adaptive scheduling techniques. The review examined proposed planning procedures, assessing the extent of automation in key aspects of construction scheduling, including task sequencing, resource allocation and task duration estimation, with a focus on building information modelling (BIM) integration. The analysis reveals limited adoption of automated scheduling, BIM technologies and adaptive scheduling methods. Future research should explore advanced automation approaches, enhance BIM integration and develop adaptive scheduling solutions to improve efficiency and responsiveness in construction management.
Journal Article
The Role of Executive Functions in Reading Comprehension
Our goal in this paper is to understand the extent to which, and under what conditions, executive functions (EFs) play a role in reading comprehension processes. We begin with a brief review of core components of EF (inhibition, shifting, and updating) and reading comprehension. We then discuss the status of EFs in process models of reading comprehension. Next, we review and synthesize empirical evidence in the extant literature for the involvement of core components of EF in reading comprehension processes under different reading conditions and across different populations. In conclusion, we propose that EFs may help explain complex interactions between the reader, the text, and the discourse situation, and call for both existing and future models of reading comprehension to include EFs as explicit components.
Journal Article
Administrative risks challenging the adoption of smart contracts in construction projects
PurposeAs a remedy to usually voluminous, complicated and not easily readable construction contracts, smart contracts can be considered as an effective and alternative solution. However, the construction industry is merely known as a frontrunner for fast adoption of recent technological advancements. Numerous administrative risks challenge construction companies to implement smart contracts. To highlight this issue, this study aims to assess the administrative risks of smart contract adoption in construction projects.Design/methodology/approachA literature survey is conducted to specify administrative risks of smart contracts followed by a pilot study to ensure that the framework is suitable to the research question. The criteria weights are calculated through the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process method, followed by a sensitivity analysis based on degree of fuzziness, which supports the robustness of the developed hierarchy and stability of the results. Then, a focus group discussion (FGD) is performed to discuss the mitigation strategies for the top-level risks in each risk category.FindingsThe final framework consists of 27 sub-criteria, which are categorized under five main criteria, namely, contractual, cultural, managerial, planning and relational. The findings show that (1) regulation change, (2) lack of a driving force, (3) works not accounted in planning, (4) shortcomings of current legal arrangements and (5) lack of dispute resolution mechanism are the top five risks challenging the adoption of smart contracts in construction projects. Risk mitigation strategies based on FGD show that improvements for the semi-automated smart contract drafting are considered more practicable compared to full automation.Originality/valueThe literature is limited in terms of the adoption of smart contracts, while the topic is receiving more attention recently. To support easy prevalence of smart contracts, this study attempts the most challenging aspects of smart contract adoption.
Journal Article
Conceptual and Measurement Issues in Assessing Democratic Backsliding
During the past decade, analyses drawing on several democracy measures have shown a global trend of democratic retrenchment. While these democracy measures use radically different methodologies, most partially or fully rely on subjective judgments to produce estimates of the level of democracy within states. Such projects continuously grapple with balancing conceptual coverage with the potential for bias (Munck and Verkuilen 2002; Przeworski et al. 2000). Little and Meng (L&M) (2023) reintroduce this debate, arguing that “objective” measures of democracy show little evidence of recent global democratic backsliding.1 By extension, they posit that time-varying expert bias drives the appearance of democratic retrenchment in measures that incorporate expert judgments. In this article, we engage with (1) broader debates on democracy measurement and democratic backsliding, and (2) L&M’s specific data and conclusions.
Journal Article
Lean construction and simulation for performance improvement: a case study of reinforcement process
PurposeThis research seeks to evaluate the impact of applying lean construction principles on the performance of reinforcement operations using a discrete-event simulation (DES) approach.Design/methodology/approachProcess mapping of reinforcements operations was first established through field observation and interviews with construction managers involved in the selected project. Subsequently, quantitative data were gathered and then used to identify the best probabilistic density functions for each activity duration based on the fit-quality tests. Upon testing the validity of the real-world model, a lean simulation model was developed, using ARENA software, to investigate the impact of lean construction principles on the performance of such processes.FindingsLean principles are effective in enhancing the performance of the selected construction process. Output performance measurements for real-world model and lean model revealed that lean construction principles led to 41% improvement in process productivity, 14% enhancement in process efficiency and 17% reduction in cycle time.Research limitations/implicationsThe statistical findings only represent the process under study (reinforcement process) and cannot be generalized to other construction activities. In order to draw generalizable conclusions, future works are needed to extend this study to different project sizes and more complex construction processes (e.g. bricklaying process and concrete pouring operations). Moreover, there are other factors such as labor skills, rework and uncertainty, site conditions that require further analyses for leaner construction projects.Originality/valueThe methodology and the techniques presented in this work can be used for decision making by analyzing various lean construction scenarios and evaluating their impacts on performance outcomes of any construction process prior to real-world implementation.
Journal Article
BIM-Based Dynamic Construction Safety Rule Checking Using Ontology and Natural Language Processing
Real-time identification and prevention of safety risks in dynamic construction activities are demanded by construction safety managers to cope with the growing complexity of the construction site. Most of the studies on BIM-based construction safety inspection and prevention use data from the planning and design stage. Meanwhile, safety managers still need to spend a lot of time gathering reports about construction safety risks in certain periods or areas from inferred results in BIM. Therefore, this paper proposed an automatic safety risk identification and prevention mechanism for the construction process by integrating a safety rule library based on ontology technology and Natural Language Processing. An automatic inspection mechanism integrating BIM and safety rules is constructed, and a presentation mechanism of intelligent detection results based on Natural Language Processing is designed. The construction process safety rule checking system was developed, and the effectiveness of the system was verified by a case study. The outcome of this paper contributes to the development and application of ontology in construction safety research, and the NLP-based safety rule checking result presentation will benefit safety inspectors and construction managers in practice.
Journal Article
Simulation of construction shape-forming process of cable domes
A cable dome has no stiffness or load carrying capacity unless it has been prestressed. Analyses of cable domes are based on successful prestressing designs, making force finding analysis very important. A new force finding method named the imbalance force iterative method is proposed, which can overcome some limitations of the integrity feasible prestressing method. For instance, even if groups are assigned by mistake, the pretension distribution that satisfies the known geometry form can also be found. This method possess good stability and calculation efficiency, and a case study indicates that it is applicable to the force finding of large and complicated cable domes. On the other hand, form finding analysis of cable domes is also a key engineering problem. However, rigid displacement occurs in this process, which makes the analysis more complex. In this paper, the dynamic relaxation method was selected, and the problem of rigid displacement was therefore effectively solved. The method includes two steps: first, the stretching cables are released, and secondly, an axial force is imposed on the two ends of each released cable. This method is convenient in its calculation and clear in its conception. A case study indicates that the method is suitable for the simulation of the construction process of various cable domes and cable-strut tension structures. Moreover, a form finding experiment was conducted on a model of a cable dome with a diameter of 4.8 m by tensing diagonal cables. The behavior of the model in the form finding process was investigated. The experimental results indicate that the initial lengths of members and prestress loss are key issues in cable domes design. The results also prove that the methods of form finding and force finding proposed in this paper are reliable and effective.
Journal Article