Tariq Abdelhamid | Michigan State University (original) (raw)
Papers by Tariq Abdelhamid
Journal of the Construction Division and Management, Apr 1, 2009
Musculoskeletal disorders ͑MSDs͒ constitute more than half of the total injuries and illnesses wi... more Musculoskeletal disorders ͑MSDs͒ constitute more than half of the total injuries and illnesses within the construction industry. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of MSD among construction workers and identify the psychosocial and physical risk factors associated with their occurrence using an on-site survey instrument. One hundred forty seven construction workers ͑representing three trades͒ participated in the study. The 1-year prevalence of MSD was high with 61.2% reporting severe symptoms and 39.7% having some functional impairment due to MSD. Physical task requirement was the most important factor associated with MSD reflecting the physical nature of construction work. Economic and performance factors were the most stressful psychosocial factors reported and significantly increased the risk of reporting MSD. The findings of this research underscore the independent role that psychosocial factors play in the health and safety of construction workers. Understanding this role is imperative for practitioners and academics alike in the quest to make construction a safer work environment for all workers.
Productivity Press eBooks, Jul 25, 2023
The dynamism and the inherent interactive nature of construction projects make them highly uncert... more The dynamism and the inherent interactive nature of construction projects make them highly uncertain in nature and thus prone to unexpected events. Project level planning methods in construction assume a degree of certainty that is absent on projects. Unexpected events (such as equipment breakdown, coordination miscues, discrepancy between specs and drawings, etc.) are typically addressed by having the crew wait for a foreman or superintendent to find ways to handle the issue. This is a command and control structure that depends on a centrally controlling body. The research explores the question of whether the crew should wait for instructions or address the issue on their own. The research tests the hypothesis that a self-managed and autonomous construction crew will help combat the unexpected event more effectively than waiting for a resolution by a centrally controlling body. The two approaches are contrasted and compared for their effectiveness in dealing with unexpected events. An Agent based model shows; the delay caused by the same damage was on average 40% lower for the crew making its own decisions compared to the crew that depended on the superintendent. Considering that the model takes into account the erroneous decisions made by the crew, the prima facie result shows that allowing crews to be autonomous is an effective strategy on the long run. As a result of the crews solving problems, the superintendent is also expected to have more opportunities to concentrate on improving the coordination and planning of work on site.
Routledge eBooks, Nov 25, 2022
Construction requires the knowledge and experience of craftsmen. The knowledge and experience is ... more Construction requires the knowledge and experience of craftsmen. The knowledge and experience is gained through local coordination and local adaption at points of installation, which classifies the work as complex production. Information generated at these points of installation can be valuable in understanding how and why workers make decisions, especially at points of improvisation when they encounter obstacles. However, this information often goes unrecognized at least in explicit form by the workers themselves, and is therefore not documented and not captured. The author's experience and observations on construction jobsites, combined with literature review, show that the information generated from the point of installation has not been extensively studied or modeled in construction. However, other industries characterized as complex production have seen improvements by studying and modeling the information generated and propagated from the point where the knowledge and experience of skilled craftsmen do their work. The research postulate studied herein is that if this information is modeled and understood, the impact it has on jobsites would be known and work performance could improve. The literature shows that observation-based studies of information generation at the worker and crew level have only recently been conducted, and not from the standpoint of information propagation. In addition, the literature led to identification of agent based modeling (ABM) and social network analysis (SNA) as sound approaches for modeling the information generation and propagation from the point of installation. The research method included developing a conceptual information model, evaluating and improving the model based on pilot jobsite observations; data collection and observations used to develop a representative model of the information generation and propagation from points of installation. A unique approach of an SNA-informed ABM was used to simulate the final model, and test the result with select jobsite scenarios. The data collected showed that information is indeed generated and often not captured or reported from the point of installation. Workers encounter obstacles in 89% of their scheduled activities, and information about those obstacles only propagates beyond the crew level 50% of the time. The simulated SNA-informed ABM based on the data collection and conceptual model showed that there are differences in how workers handle obstacles in early vs. later stages of the jobsite, and also on large vs. small jobsites. Workers are more influenced by others in the early stages of a job and on jobsites with fewer workers. In conclusion, by studying the information generation and propagation from the point of installation with empirical data collection, observations, and conceptual model building, a simulation showed how this information could impact work performance. In addition, explorations of the simulated model showed how the information available from the point of installation propagates and influences jobsite outcomes.
The Lean Construction Institute defines Work Structuring as the fundamental level of production s... more The Lean Construction Institute defines Work Structuring as the fundamental level of production system design, which means developing a project‘s process design while trying to align engineering, design, supply chain, resource allocation, and assembly efforts. It‘s thinking construction during design - design of a production system before the start of construction operations. First run studies, computer simulation, and recently BIM have all been examples of techniques used to design production systems so that waste is minimized and system throughput improved. The design of crews has received less attention, and is typically considered adequate if the available resources are provisioned. This paper posits that crew design is an integral part in designing production systems. The purpose of this paper is to present lean rules to guide work structuring of construction crews. In this study, we focus on the crew design of a construction operation that has been well documented in prior res...
Construction operations are dynamic and time sensitive. The management response to issues on site... more Construction operations are dynamic and time sensitive. The management response to issues on site is typically a consequence of and the response to an event that has already taken place. Decisions and actions that are delayed are often rendered ineffective because of the constantly changing site conditions. The sudden emergence of the situation and the dynamic nature of its evolution needs to be addressed with flexibility and fluidity based on an appropriate assessment of the issues at hand. The need to increase the effectiveness with which self-managed teams perform under such conditions cannot be overstated and clearly requires a theoretical framework that can provide an interpretation of the underlying cognitive processes and selected responses in the face of dynamically evolving environments, and the intricate interrelationships among all constituents of the process. This paper presents the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop as the theoretical interpretation by which to under...
Question: What approach can be used to teach Lean Construction for university student(s)? What ar... more Question: What approach can be used to teach Lean Construction for university student(s)? What are the results of the current approach evaluation and what improvement can be made? Purpose: This paper describes the Lean Construction teaching approach at the School of Planning, Design and Construction (SPDC) at Michigan State University (MSU). Research Method: The course evaluation was conducted by: (1) analyzing students’ perception compiled from the Student Instructional Rating System (SIRS), which is independently administered and managed by Michigan State University; and (2) an anonymous survey managed by the first author of the paper. To compile students’ comments on what is going well and what needs to be changed, the authors used the Plus/Delta format. Findings: Most respondents found the course interesting, enjoyable, and intellectually challenging at the same time. Some highlights on the course evaluation results and the implications of the course in professional career are a...
Discrete Event Simulation has been advanced in the construction literature as a tool to design co... more Discrete Event Simulation has been advanced in the construction literature as a tool to design construction operations while incorporating performance variability to arrive at more realistic durations and cost estimates. This tool can enable Lean Construction work structuring (LWS), which is concerned with the selection and sequencing of work methods during the product design stage. LWS is “thinking production process during the product design stage”. This paper introduces system dynamics as a quantitative approach for LWS wherein an operation is designed and analyzed for effectiveness of production strategies before implementation. System Dynamics evaluates the actions in terms of dependencies and feedback loops among process variables. The proposed modeling approach will be qualitatively demonstrated and discussed using a bricklaying operation to illustrate the benefits of the proposed methodology.
International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process, 2015
&... more <p>The Australian housing supply has not been adequate to meet the constantly growing demand. Four main factors driving this undersupply in Australian housing are: (1) house completion time; (2) cost of finished house; (3) customer preferences and (4) level of skilled labor. Offsite manufacturing (OSM) could become a key innovation for the future of Australian house building as it provides capacity in meeting the growing housing demand, green construction and lesser requirements for a labor force. OSM is a modern construction method in which house building components are produced in offsite factories and then transported to the construction site to be assembled. The supply responsiveness of OSM can be enhanced by employing lean and agile concepts. In this study, four Leagile strategies are suggested to facilitate house builders decision making based on different combinations of housing supply factors. This paper matches these four strategies with the four studied factors in Australian house building using the Analytical Network Process (ANP). The data employed for the ANP model was derived from the actual specifications of 258 houses built in five Australian states by five major house builders. The results from the ANP model show the suitability in applying each strategy under different degrees influenced by the factors tested.</p>
The lack of an explanatory understanding of factors giving rise to low/high PPC highlights the im... more The lack of an explanatory understanding of factors giving rise to low/high PPC highlights the importance of investigating the relation between production constraints and PPC as implemented in the Last Planner™ System. As production is cumulative in nature, that is, underperformances and deficiencies multiply as we move downstream it is important to investigate the combined effect of constraints and underperformances on the next production performance output, and develop an association between production constraints and percent plan complete. The overall goal of this research is to understand the relation between production constraints and workflow reliability, as measured by the PPC metric, at the production level in a construction project. To approach this goal, the research focused on developing a method to investigate such a relationship. The research has concluded that production constraints are mostly subject to constructivist interpretation, i.e., they form as a result of a c...
The lack of an explanatory understanding of factors giving rise to low/high PPC highlights the im... more The lack of an explanatory understanding of factors giving rise to low/high PPC highlights the importance of investigating the relation between production constraints and PPC as implemented in the Last Planner™ System. As production is cumulative in nature, that is, underperformances and deficiencies multiply as we move downstream it is important to investigate the combined effect of constraints and underperformances on the next production performance output, and develop an association between production constraints and percent plan complete. The overall goal of this research is to understand the relation between production constraints and workflow reliability, as measured by the PPC metric, at the production level in a construction project. To approach this goal, the research focused on developing a method to investigate such a relationship. The research has concluded that production constraints are mostly subject to constructivist interpretation, i.e., they form as a result of a c...
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 2000
Construction accident investigation techniques and reporting systems idt:ntify what type of accid... more Construction accident investigation techniques and reporting systems idt:ntify what type of accidents {>ccur and how they occurred. Unfortunately, they do not properly address why the accident occurred by identifying possible root causes, which is only possible by complementing these techniques with theories of accident causation and theories of human error. The uniqueness of the construction industry dictates the need to tailor man} of the contemporary accident causation model~; and human error theorics. Tl1is paper prl'sents an accident root causes tracing model (ARCTM) tailored to tht: nceds of the construction industry. ARCTM proposes that a~cidents occur due to three root causes: (I) Failing to identify an unsafe col1dition that existed before an a~tivit} was started or that dc','eluped after un activity wa;, started; (2) ueciding to pro..eed with a work a':tiv:ty after the worker identifies an existing unsafe condition; and (3) deciding to act unsafe regardless of initial conditions of the work environment. In addition, ARCTM emphasizes the need to determine how unsafe conditions exist before or develop after an activity is started and proposes that these unsafe conditions are due to four causes: (I) Management actions/inactions; (2) unsafe acts of worker or coworker; (3) non-human-related event(s); (4) an unsafe condition that is a natural part of the initial construction site conditions. Thus, ARCTM acknowledges the possible contribution of both management and labor to the accident process. This perspective helps in better explaining accidents on construction sites and in identifying areas where prevention efforts should be directed, so that labor and management may provide more effective measures for preventing accident occurrence.
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 2002
Notwithstanding the use of earthmoving equipment, cranes, and other machinery, physically strenuo... more Notwithstanding the use of earthmoving equipment, cranes, and other machinery, physically strenuous and demanding tasks remain endemic to the construction industry. This research was motivated by the need to investigate the physical demands of construction work and to evaluate whether these physical demands are excessive. Physiological measures of energy expenditure, including oxygen consumption and heart rate data, were collected for 100 construction workers performing typical construction work. The average oxygen uptake for ...
Construction Management and Economics, 2010
The quality of papers in this journal could not be sustained were it not for our referees and the... more The quality of papers in this journal could not be sustained were it not for our referees and the high quality of feedback that they provide to us and to our authors. We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge their work and to thank them for undertaking this task so freely and enthusiastically. We are grateful to the following people for acting as referees during the last twelve months.
Construction Management and Economics, 2009
ascpro.ascweb.org
Construction site layout is an important activity that deals with the positioning of temporary fa... more Construction site layout is an important activity that deals with the positioning of temporary facilities that are utilized during the execution phase of a construction project. This paper presents a formulation for the construction site layout problem in terms of a combinatorial problem that is suitable for solution using simulated annealing algorithms (SA). SA is an evolutionary method motivated by an analogy to annealing in solids to avoid the solution from getting trapped in a local minimum. A case study is presented to demonstrate the ...
The dynamism and the inherent interactive nature of construction projects make them highly uncert... more The dynamism and the inherent interactive nature of construction projects make them highly uncertain in nature and thus prone to unexpected events. Project level planning methods in construction assume a degree of certainty that is absent on projects. Unexpected events (such as equipment breakdown, coordination miscues, discrepancy between specs and drawings, etc.) are typically addressed by having the crew wait for a foreman or superintendent to find ways to handle the issue. This is a command and control structure ...
12th Annual Conference on Lean Construction, Helsingør, Denmark, Aug 1, 2004
Manufactured houses represent a large proportion of factory-built housing in the United States. T... more Manufactured houses represent a large proportion of factory-built housing in the United States. There are as many variations in quality of materials used, construction techniques, and installation procedures, as there are manufacturers in this industry. This makes the decision of purchasing, given the variety of homes, difficult for the homebuyer. This study provides a framework for evaluation of manufactured houses based on a defined robust goal of construction (utility) value and utilizes the Analytical Hierarchy Process ( ...
Annual Conference on Lean Construction, Jul 1, 2003
Occupational accidents are unquestionably wasteful and non-value adding events in any system of p... more Occupational accidents are unquestionably wasteful and non-value adding events in any system of production. Safeguarding construction workers from occupational hazards, whether arising from traumatic, ergonomic, and/or exposure accidents, is part and parcel of the lean construction ideal of waste elimination. Howell et al.(2002) proposed a new approach to understand construction accidents based on Rasmussen's theory of cognitive systems engineering. One aspect of the model focused on worker training to ...
Journal of the Construction Division and Management, Apr 1, 2009
Musculoskeletal disorders ͑MSDs͒ constitute more than half of the total injuries and illnesses wi... more Musculoskeletal disorders ͑MSDs͒ constitute more than half of the total injuries and illnesses within the construction industry. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of MSD among construction workers and identify the psychosocial and physical risk factors associated with their occurrence using an on-site survey instrument. One hundred forty seven construction workers ͑representing three trades͒ participated in the study. The 1-year prevalence of MSD was high with 61.2% reporting severe symptoms and 39.7% having some functional impairment due to MSD. Physical task requirement was the most important factor associated with MSD reflecting the physical nature of construction work. Economic and performance factors were the most stressful psychosocial factors reported and significantly increased the risk of reporting MSD. The findings of this research underscore the independent role that psychosocial factors play in the health and safety of construction workers. Understanding this role is imperative for practitioners and academics alike in the quest to make construction a safer work environment for all workers.
Productivity Press eBooks, Jul 25, 2023
The dynamism and the inherent interactive nature of construction projects make them highly uncert... more The dynamism and the inherent interactive nature of construction projects make them highly uncertain in nature and thus prone to unexpected events. Project level planning methods in construction assume a degree of certainty that is absent on projects. Unexpected events (such as equipment breakdown, coordination miscues, discrepancy between specs and drawings, etc.) are typically addressed by having the crew wait for a foreman or superintendent to find ways to handle the issue. This is a command and control structure that depends on a centrally controlling body. The research explores the question of whether the crew should wait for instructions or address the issue on their own. The research tests the hypothesis that a self-managed and autonomous construction crew will help combat the unexpected event more effectively than waiting for a resolution by a centrally controlling body. The two approaches are contrasted and compared for their effectiveness in dealing with unexpected events. An Agent based model shows; the delay caused by the same damage was on average 40% lower for the crew making its own decisions compared to the crew that depended on the superintendent. Considering that the model takes into account the erroneous decisions made by the crew, the prima facie result shows that allowing crews to be autonomous is an effective strategy on the long run. As a result of the crews solving problems, the superintendent is also expected to have more opportunities to concentrate on improving the coordination and planning of work on site.
Routledge eBooks, Nov 25, 2022
Construction requires the knowledge and experience of craftsmen. The knowledge and experience is ... more Construction requires the knowledge and experience of craftsmen. The knowledge and experience is gained through local coordination and local adaption at points of installation, which classifies the work as complex production. Information generated at these points of installation can be valuable in understanding how and why workers make decisions, especially at points of improvisation when they encounter obstacles. However, this information often goes unrecognized at least in explicit form by the workers themselves, and is therefore not documented and not captured. The author's experience and observations on construction jobsites, combined with literature review, show that the information generated from the point of installation has not been extensively studied or modeled in construction. However, other industries characterized as complex production have seen improvements by studying and modeling the information generated and propagated from the point where the knowledge and experience of skilled craftsmen do their work. The research postulate studied herein is that if this information is modeled and understood, the impact it has on jobsites would be known and work performance could improve. The literature shows that observation-based studies of information generation at the worker and crew level have only recently been conducted, and not from the standpoint of information propagation. In addition, the literature led to identification of agent based modeling (ABM) and social network analysis (SNA) as sound approaches for modeling the information generation and propagation from the point of installation. The research method included developing a conceptual information model, evaluating and improving the model based on pilot jobsite observations; data collection and observations used to develop a representative model of the information generation and propagation from points of installation. A unique approach of an SNA-informed ABM was used to simulate the final model, and test the result with select jobsite scenarios. The data collected showed that information is indeed generated and often not captured or reported from the point of installation. Workers encounter obstacles in 89% of their scheduled activities, and information about those obstacles only propagates beyond the crew level 50% of the time. The simulated SNA-informed ABM based on the data collection and conceptual model showed that there are differences in how workers handle obstacles in early vs. later stages of the jobsite, and also on large vs. small jobsites. Workers are more influenced by others in the early stages of a job and on jobsites with fewer workers. In conclusion, by studying the information generation and propagation from the point of installation with empirical data collection, observations, and conceptual model building, a simulation showed how this information could impact work performance. In addition, explorations of the simulated model showed how the information available from the point of installation propagates and influences jobsite outcomes.
The Lean Construction Institute defines Work Structuring as the fundamental level of production s... more The Lean Construction Institute defines Work Structuring as the fundamental level of production system design, which means developing a project‘s process design while trying to align engineering, design, supply chain, resource allocation, and assembly efforts. It‘s thinking construction during design - design of a production system before the start of construction operations. First run studies, computer simulation, and recently BIM have all been examples of techniques used to design production systems so that waste is minimized and system throughput improved. The design of crews has received less attention, and is typically considered adequate if the available resources are provisioned. This paper posits that crew design is an integral part in designing production systems. The purpose of this paper is to present lean rules to guide work structuring of construction crews. In this study, we focus on the crew design of a construction operation that has been well documented in prior res...
Construction operations are dynamic and time sensitive. The management response to issues on site... more Construction operations are dynamic and time sensitive. The management response to issues on site is typically a consequence of and the response to an event that has already taken place. Decisions and actions that are delayed are often rendered ineffective because of the constantly changing site conditions. The sudden emergence of the situation and the dynamic nature of its evolution needs to be addressed with flexibility and fluidity based on an appropriate assessment of the issues at hand. The need to increase the effectiveness with which self-managed teams perform under such conditions cannot be overstated and clearly requires a theoretical framework that can provide an interpretation of the underlying cognitive processes and selected responses in the face of dynamically evolving environments, and the intricate interrelationships among all constituents of the process. This paper presents the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop as the theoretical interpretation by which to under...
Question: What approach can be used to teach Lean Construction for university student(s)? What ar... more Question: What approach can be used to teach Lean Construction for university student(s)? What are the results of the current approach evaluation and what improvement can be made? Purpose: This paper describes the Lean Construction teaching approach at the School of Planning, Design and Construction (SPDC) at Michigan State University (MSU). Research Method: The course evaluation was conducted by: (1) analyzing students’ perception compiled from the Student Instructional Rating System (SIRS), which is independently administered and managed by Michigan State University; and (2) an anonymous survey managed by the first author of the paper. To compile students’ comments on what is going well and what needs to be changed, the authors used the Plus/Delta format. Findings: Most respondents found the course interesting, enjoyable, and intellectually challenging at the same time. Some highlights on the course evaluation results and the implications of the course in professional career are a...
Discrete Event Simulation has been advanced in the construction literature as a tool to design co... more Discrete Event Simulation has been advanced in the construction literature as a tool to design construction operations while incorporating performance variability to arrive at more realistic durations and cost estimates. This tool can enable Lean Construction work structuring (LWS), which is concerned with the selection and sequencing of work methods during the product design stage. LWS is “thinking production process during the product design stage”. This paper introduces system dynamics as a quantitative approach for LWS wherein an operation is designed and analyzed for effectiveness of production strategies before implementation. System Dynamics evaluates the actions in terms of dependencies and feedback loops among process variables. The proposed modeling approach will be qualitatively demonstrated and discussed using a bricklaying operation to illustrate the benefits of the proposed methodology.
International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process, 2015
&... more <p>The Australian housing supply has not been adequate to meet the constantly growing demand. Four main factors driving this undersupply in Australian housing are: (1) house completion time; (2) cost of finished house; (3) customer preferences and (4) level of skilled labor. Offsite manufacturing (OSM) could become a key innovation for the future of Australian house building as it provides capacity in meeting the growing housing demand, green construction and lesser requirements for a labor force. OSM is a modern construction method in which house building components are produced in offsite factories and then transported to the construction site to be assembled. The supply responsiveness of OSM can be enhanced by employing lean and agile concepts. In this study, four Leagile strategies are suggested to facilitate house builders decision making based on different combinations of housing supply factors. This paper matches these four strategies with the four studied factors in Australian house building using the Analytical Network Process (ANP). The data employed for the ANP model was derived from the actual specifications of 258 houses built in five Australian states by five major house builders. The results from the ANP model show the suitability in applying each strategy under different degrees influenced by the factors tested.</p>
The lack of an explanatory understanding of factors giving rise to low/high PPC highlights the im... more The lack of an explanatory understanding of factors giving rise to low/high PPC highlights the importance of investigating the relation between production constraints and PPC as implemented in the Last Planner™ System. As production is cumulative in nature, that is, underperformances and deficiencies multiply as we move downstream it is important to investigate the combined effect of constraints and underperformances on the next production performance output, and develop an association between production constraints and percent plan complete. The overall goal of this research is to understand the relation between production constraints and workflow reliability, as measured by the PPC metric, at the production level in a construction project. To approach this goal, the research focused on developing a method to investigate such a relationship. The research has concluded that production constraints are mostly subject to constructivist interpretation, i.e., they form as a result of a c...
The lack of an explanatory understanding of factors giving rise to low/high PPC highlights the im... more The lack of an explanatory understanding of factors giving rise to low/high PPC highlights the importance of investigating the relation between production constraints and PPC as implemented in the Last Planner™ System. As production is cumulative in nature, that is, underperformances and deficiencies multiply as we move downstream it is important to investigate the combined effect of constraints and underperformances on the next production performance output, and develop an association between production constraints and percent plan complete. The overall goal of this research is to understand the relation between production constraints and workflow reliability, as measured by the PPC metric, at the production level in a construction project. To approach this goal, the research focused on developing a method to investigate such a relationship. The research has concluded that production constraints are mostly subject to constructivist interpretation, i.e., they form as a result of a c...
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 2000
Construction accident investigation techniques and reporting systems idt:ntify what type of accid... more Construction accident investigation techniques and reporting systems idt:ntify what type of accidents {>ccur and how they occurred. Unfortunately, they do not properly address why the accident occurred by identifying possible root causes, which is only possible by complementing these techniques with theories of accident causation and theories of human error. The uniqueness of the construction industry dictates the need to tailor man} of the contemporary accident causation model~; and human error theorics. Tl1is paper prl'sents an accident root causes tracing model (ARCTM) tailored to tht: nceds of the construction industry. ARCTM proposes that a~cidents occur due to three root causes: (I) Failing to identify an unsafe col1dition that existed before an a~tivit} was started or that dc','eluped after un activity wa;, started; (2) ueciding to pro..eed with a work a':tiv:ty after the worker identifies an existing unsafe condition; and (3) deciding to act unsafe regardless of initial conditions of the work environment. In addition, ARCTM emphasizes the need to determine how unsafe conditions exist before or develop after an activity is started and proposes that these unsafe conditions are due to four causes: (I) Management actions/inactions; (2) unsafe acts of worker or coworker; (3) non-human-related event(s); (4) an unsafe condition that is a natural part of the initial construction site conditions. Thus, ARCTM acknowledges the possible contribution of both management and labor to the accident process. This perspective helps in better explaining accidents on construction sites and in identifying areas where prevention efforts should be directed, so that labor and management may provide more effective measures for preventing accident occurrence.
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 2002
Notwithstanding the use of earthmoving equipment, cranes, and other machinery, physically strenuo... more Notwithstanding the use of earthmoving equipment, cranes, and other machinery, physically strenuous and demanding tasks remain endemic to the construction industry. This research was motivated by the need to investigate the physical demands of construction work and to evaluate whether these physical demands are excessive. Physiological measures of energy expenditure, including oxygen consumption and heart rate data, were collected for 100 construction workers performing typical construction work. The average oxygen uptake for ...
Construction Management and Economics, 2010
The quality of papers in this journal could not be sustained were it not for our referees and the... more The quality of papers in this journal could not be sustained were it not for our referees and the high quality of feedback that they provide to us and to our authors. We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge their work and to thank them for undertaking this task so freely and enthusiastically. We are grateful to the following people for acting as referees during the last twelve months.
Construction Management and Economics, 2009
ascpro.ascweb.org
Construction site layout is an important activity that deals with the positioning of temporary fa... more Construction site layout is an important activity that deals with the positioning of temporary facilities that are utilized during the execution phase of a construction project. This paper presents a formulation for the construction site layout problem in terms of a combinatorial problem that is suitable for solution using simulated annealing algorithms (SA). SA is an evolutionary method motivated by an analogy to annealing in solids to avoid the solution from getting trapped in a local minimum. A case study is presented to demonstrate the ...
The dynamism and the inherent interactive nature of construction projects make them highly uncert... more The dynamism and the inherent interactive nature of construction projects make them highly uncertain in nature and thus prone to unexpected events. Project level planning methods in construction assume a degree of certainty that is absent on projects. Unexpected events (such as equipment breakdown, coordination miscues, discrepancy between specs and drawings, etc.) are typically addressed by having the crew wait for a foreman or superintendent to find ways to handle the issue. This is a command and control structure ...
12th Annual Conference on Lean Construction, Helsingør, Denmark, Aug 1, 2004
Manufactured houses represent a large proportion of factory-built housing in the United States. T... more Manufactured houses represent a large proportion of factory-built housing in the United States. There are as many variations in quality of materials used, construction techniques, and installation procedures, as there are manufacturers in this industry. This makes the decision of purchasing, given the variety of homes, difficult for the homebuyer. This study provides a framework for evaluation of manufactured houses based on a defined robust goal of construction (utility) value and utilizes the Analytical Hierarchy Process ( ...
Annual Conference on Lean Construction, Jul 1, 2003
Occupational accidents are unquestionably wasteful and non-value adding events in any system of p... more Occupational accidents are unquestionably wasteful and non-value adding events in any system of production. Safeguarding construction workers from occupational hazards, whether arising from traumatic, ergonomic, and/or exposure accidents, is part and parcel of the lean construction ideal of waste elimination. Howell et al.(2002) proposed a new approach to understand construction accidents based on Rasmussen's theory of cognitive systems engineering. One aspect of the model focused on worker training to ...