Canadian Construction Industry Research Articles

Collaborative Construction Contracts

In recent years, construction projects across Canada have encountered significant challenges, including a global pandemic, disruptions in the supply chain, environmental disasters, geopolitical conflicts, war, protests, volatile financial conditions, and the everincreasing time and costs associated with dispute resolution. These challenges have contributed to a scarcity in competitive and reliable pricing under traditional project risk profiles in some regions and sectors. Canadian construction industry stakeholders are increasingly interested in collaborative contracting models like early contractor involvement, progressive design build, integrated project delivery, and alliance models. These models aim to achieve on budget and on schedule project completion, while minimizing disputes and incentivizing cooperative behaviours. Major projects in Ontario and British Columbia are proceeding under collaborative contracting models. Meanwhile, the energy sector in Canada appears to be one of the few industries slow to adopt collaborative contracting models. It is common to see traditional fixed price or costplus design-build or engineering, procurement, and construction contracts on large industrial projects, particularly in Alberta. But the energy sector is not immune to the market factors shifting the tides in various other construction sectors in Canada. If energy projects wish to attract bids from an experienced and varied pool of potential participants and take advantage of some innovative contracting strategies, change may be warranted. This article assesses the features and suitability of these collaborative contracts for the construction of energy-related projects in contrast to more traditional delivery models. The authors provide commentary on their risks and benefits and identify relevant opportunities for the energy sector in Canada to embrace collaborative construction contracting models.

Exploring Lean Practices’ Importance in Sustainable Supply Chain Management Trends: An Empirical Study in Canadian Construction Industry

To contend with the current economic conditions, construction managers are recommended to identify sustainable construction supply chain management (CSCM) trends over the forthcoming years and adopt suitable techniques to manage construction projects strategically, tactically, and operationally. However, there is a shortage of studies exploring Lean Construction (LC) practices’ contributions to sustainable CSCM trends in the forthcoming years. Thus, this paper applies the integrated fuzzy AHP–Delphi approach to identify key sustainable CSCM trends and uses them as strategic evaluation criteria to assess and rank LC techniques. The evaluation was done by 28 experts having more than four years’ experience and expertise in lean construction and sustainable CSCM. This work also provides managerial implications by proposing a framework for LC techniques to advance sustainability throughout construction project phases.

Awareness of the global sand crisis and sand substitutes in the construction industry in the United States and Canada: a stakeholder analysis

The urgent call to address the global sand crisis has been sounded by the United Nations and environmental organizations, yet it is unclear whether this message has reached key stakeholders who are major consumers of sand and who make decisions about using sand or sustainable sand substitutes. The construction industry is by far the primary consumer of sand. Using a stakeholder framework, this study focuses on stakeholders in the US and Canadian construction industry. A survey completed by 378 respondents found very little familiarity with the sand crisis, sand substitutes in cement, or sand substitutes in building materials. No differences were found for decision makers purchasing sand and non-decision makers. As for roles, no differences were found among academics, architects, engineers, or managers except for familiarity with sand substitutes. Recommendations are offered to increase awareness of the sand crisis and encourage adoption of sustainable sand substitutes, and suggestions for further research are discussed.

Construction work and the mobility imperative: changing rhythms along uncertain paths

ABSTRACT This article considers experiences of rhythmic change related to employment-related geographical mobilities in parts of the Canadian construction industry. Drawing on Lefebvrian rhythmanalysis and aspects of time-geography, we consider how workers and their loved ones negotiate changes in space-time patterns across careers in industrial construction, especially work at projects tied to resource development and extraction. Data are derived from in-depth career history interviews conducted with workers in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador between 2014 and 2018. Three “career path” cases illustrate mobile rhythms of differently positioned workers from their entry into construction to their career stage at the point of the interview, ranging from apprenticeship through mid-career journeyed to retirement. These workers pursue training and jobs involving variable mobilities between home and work across shifting locations. We contribute to recent efforts to highlight the compatibility of rhythmanalysis with an expanded, feminist, biographical approach to time-geography, and the applicability of such an approach for the applied study of mobilities. We also respond to recent calls to study experiences of rhythmic change in the lives of mobile and migrant workers. Findings reveal that changes in mobile rhythms may be small and incremental, as in the case of schedule or rotation adjustments, or sweeping and large scale, as in the case of shifts from working locally to working in distant locations amidst the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Experiences of disruption and responses to change are personal and familial, conditioned by social positions and subjectivities.

‘“Wherever I can work, I’ve got to go”: negotiating mobilities in the context of volatility in the Canadian construction industry’

ABSTRACT This article considers how construction workers based in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) negotiate the need to be mobile for work at different scales and with what effects. It tackles the seldom considered question of how travel becomes normalized as a facet of work in construction, an employment sector characterized by volatility. Specifically, we explore the experiences of workers and their families negotiating the shift from having extensive employment options in different places during a time of high labour demand, to limited and constrained options that may require significant changes (for instance, relocation, more time apart from family, or lower pay) in a period of economic contraction. How workers respond to these conditions contributes to conceptualizations of agency and mobility in construction workplace cultures. The article draws on 73 semi-structured interviews with workers, employers and industry and community stakeholders conducted between 2014 and 2018, and data from project employment reports and field observations. The article reveals how long commutes and extended periods away from home are understood to be inevitable aspects of construction work that shape the field of expectations of workers and their families, and what this dominant discourse means on the ground in lived experience.

By the numbers: the construction industry in Canada from 1986 to 2016

ABSTRACT Construction is an important employer in all developed countries, which bolsters the local and global economy. The construction industry is responsible for creating structure that improve productivity and quality of life not only in Canada but also in other developed and developing countries. Although considerable research exists on important facets of the industry (including education, skills and training; precarious work; migration and labour mobility; gender, working-time and work-life balance), few studies look at how the labour force has changed over time. In this paper we model the factors that predict participation in the Canadian construction industry in 1986 and 2016, and document the changes between these two points in time. We find broad similarities between the sociodemographic characteristics of workers in 1986 and 2016, and large changes in the source regions of these workers. We also find different geographical mobility patterns between 1986 and 2016, and discuss the implications of these changes for both the industry itself, and the workers and families that derive their livelihoods from construction work.

Intelligent vision-based online inspection system of screw-fastening operations in light-gauge steel frame manufacturing

Offsite construction shifts construction work to the factory environment, enabling automation of traditionally manual operations. While this approach has proven to be advantageous for the construction industry in Canada, changes in the process of manufacturing panelized walls have brought new challenges and opportunities. With the aim of providing alternatives to current manual quality control activities, an automated vision-based online inspection system for screw-fastening operations in light-gauge steel frame manufacturing is proposed in this paper. Targeting two common defects in the framing process, squareness and the quality of the screw-fastening operation itself, real-time quality assessment of the frame is achieved. The proposed system uses novel machine vision algorithms to generate the inspection data: a squareness estimation algorithm is developed, based on edge detection and the Hough transform, that can determine the squareness of a steel connection with a margin of error less than two degrees, whereas a R-CNN is designed based on a pre-trained ResNet-50 for detection and classification of screw-fastening operations, achieving an overall accuracy of 91.67%. All the inspection results are made accessible through a Python-based interface in order to direct operators towards either identifying potential quality issues or confirming the quality of the product leaving the station. The inspection system is validated over a real frame in a semi-automated machine environment. In future work, the inspection system will be deployed in continuous production setups in order to further test its accuracy and applicability.

BIM contributions to construction supply chain management trends: an exploratory study in Canada

Because of thin academic literature in exploring BIM (Building Information Modelling) contributions to construction supply chain management (SCM) trends, this paper uses the structured Delphi technique to recognise key trends in construction SCM as well as assess contributions of recent BIM systems to the trends. This study also explores the barriers and enablers that impact the BIM contributions to SC (supply chain) trends associated to the categories of governance, SC issues, expertise and training, benefits and costs and demand. The results show that, due to shortcomings of current status, BIM systems have moderate supports to operational and tactical issues (process standardisation, problem-solving, and information sharing) rather than strategic business trends (integration, flexibility, SC drivers, further outsourcing, risk sharing or long-term trust). In order to get over the barriers, SC actors are recommended to follow the systematic process to achieve a higher BIM capability and the greater SC integration. The study is expected to have a theoretical contribution to the study field with the results related to BIM supports to SCM trends, especially in the context of the Canadian construction industry.

Business cartels and organised crime: exclusive and inclusive systems of collusion

In this article, two case studies of large-scale bid rigging in the construction industry in Canada and the Netherlands are analysed to explore why business cartels sometimes do and sometimes do not involve organised crime. By combining concepts from both organised crime and organisational crime, an integrated understanding of the organisation of serious crimes for gain is applied. Across time and space, businesses in the construction industry are known to fix prices, use collusive tendering and divide market shares in illegal cartel agreements. In order to stabilise cartels, participants need to ward off new competitors and prevent cheating within the cartel. The question why we see a system of collusion involving organised crime and violence in Canada as opposed to the Netherlands is answered through analysing two comparable cases. This article finds two systems of bid rigging emerge under different cultural conditions: inclusive and exclusive collusion. The exclusive system makes use of the violent reputation provided by criminal groups and distinguishes from the inclusive system that uses sophisticated administration of mutual claims in shadow bookkeeping.

Impact of individual resilience and safety climate on safety performance and psychological stress of construction workers: A case study of the Ontario construction industry

IntroductionThe construction industry has hit a plateau in terms of safety performance. Safety climate is regarded as a leading indicator of safety performance; however, relatively little safety climate research has been done in the Canadian construction industry. Safety climate may be geographically sensitive, thus it is necessary to examine how the construct of safety climate is defined and used to improve safety performance in different regions. On the other hand, more and more attention has been paid to job related stress in the construction industry. Previous research proposed that individual resilience may be associated with a better safety performance and may help employees manage stress. Unfortunately, few empirical research studies have examined this hypothesis. This paper aims to examine the role of safety climate and individual resilience in safety performance and job stress in the Canadian construction industry. MethodThe research was based on 837 surveys collected in Ontario between June 2015 and June 2016. Structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques were used to explore the impact of individual resilience and safety climate on physical safety outcomes and on psychological stress among construction workers. ResultsThe results show that safety climate not only affected construction workers' safety performance but also indirectly affected their psychological stress. In addition, it was found that individual resilience had a direct negative impact on psychological stress but had no impact on physical safety outcomes. ConclusionsThese findings highlight the roles of both organizational and individual factors in individual safety performance and in psychological well-being. Practical applicationsConstruction organizations need to not only monitor employees' safety performance, but also to assess their employees' psychological well-being. Promoting a positive safety climate together with developing training programs focusing on improving employees' psychological health — especially post-trauma psychological health — can improve the safety performance of an organization.

Measuring the Sustainable Benefits of Modular and Offsite Construction Delivery Techniques Against Conventional On-Site Construction

It is well known that the use of modular and offsite construction (MOC) techniques for project delivery can yield significant economic, environmental, and social benefits throughout a projectäó»s lifetime. Despite these benefits highlighted by the MOC community, there exists a need to objectively measure the sustainable benefits and to integrate them in a comprehensive framework to compare delivery alternatives. The Sustainable Efficiency (SE) model is presented and used to compare the construction of a 2-storey hotel using two delivery methods: i) a conventional onsite construction (COC); and ii) modular and offsite construction (MOC). Sustainable criteria identified in the model originate from ISOäó»s 21929-2 äóìFramework for sustainability indicator for civil engineering worksäó�. These criteria are used to encompass the entire life-cycle of the project, from production and extraction of materials, through construction, operations and maintenance, to the end-of-life or decommissioning stage. MOC presents a significant amount of benefits throughout the entire life-cycle of the project and the SE model presented highlights and takes these benefits into account. Recognizing these benefits can help build the business case for MOC, going past the prescriptive, lowest initial cost, and onsite construction delivery that is widely used in the Canadian construction industry today. Allowing for both the quantitative and qualitative benefits to be included in an objective and metric-based model can address the challenge of making changes to conventional procurement methods, and will strengthen and promote the use of MOC in the construction industry. It was found that, through the use of MOC, the hotel obtained a positive 16.8% sustainable efficiency score over a conventional stick build method. Significant benefits were a result of reduced greenhouse gas emissions, non-renewable energy use, waste production, and worker health and safety. The single disadvantage determined was the social criteria äóìJob Creationäó� where there was a reduced quantity of worker hours required to complete the project.

Evaluating disability management in the Manitoban construction industry for injured workers returning to the workplace with a disability

The poor safety record of the construction industry raises concerns about the extent to which it is able to integrate workers disabled as a result of a workplace injury back to the workplace. A review of the literature indicates there is little empirical evidence about the status of disability management (DM) in the Canadian construction industry, specifically with respect to injured construction workers returning to the workplace with a disability. To address this limitation, a web-based survey was administered to a sample of Manitoban construction organizations to enquire about workers disabled as a result of a workplace injury in the industry, practices in place to accommodate them, and barriers to their employment. The analysis of the responses of 88 organizations showed that the majority of responding organizations employed few disabled workers. Disabilities due to musculoskeletal injuries were the most common, followed by physical mobility and hearing impairments. Respondents saw retaining valued and experienced employees and maintaining employee morale as the main reasons for implementing a DM program. They also found the lack of suitable modified or alternate work to be the most important barrier to DM; however, they identified the provision of such work as the most common practice implemented by them, raising questions about this work’s suitability to disabled workers.

Assessing the performance of the building information modeling (BIM) implementation process within a small specialty contracting enterprise

The current shift to building information modeling (BIM) enabled project delivery in the construction industry is promising important benefits. For small and micro businesses, which represent 99.0% of the employers in the Canadian construction industry, adopting these trends could significantly impact their bottom line. However, this often represents considerable cost and risk. Assessing the performance of BIM implementation therefore becomes an important part of the process, namely in ensuring that it is on track and progressing as required. This article presents the findings from a case study research project conducted over a 2 year period within a small mechanical contracting firm. The objective of this research project was to develop an evolutionary approach, supported by specific measures, to assess the performance of the BIM implementation process within a specialty contracting small enterprise. The findings suggest that BIM has had a positive impact over time on predictability for indicators such as total project cost and labor cost. On the other hand, project scope and quality were not shown to be influenced by BIM in the projects studied. The variability uncovered in the findings reinforces the central tenant of BIM as an enabler for collaboration. Indeed, most of the projects studied were performed in a lonely manner and thus the measured impact of BIM on project delivery was limited, even if it was perceived as very beneficial. Lastly, the article highlights the need for a parallel reconfiguration of practice: performance assessment and BIM implementation need to be developed conjointly to serve one another.

Sustainable procurement in the Canadian construction industry: current practices, drivers and opportunities

Procurement is a key process in construction project management. The current construction procurement practices have been widely criticized for disregarding sustainability in the project life cycle. At present, there is a gap of knowledge on status-quo of sustainable procurement in Canada. Therefore, the objective of this study is to review sustainable procurement practices in the Canadian construction industry. A multi method research design was used in this study by combining both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Three research tools were used in the study; namely questionnaire surveys, review of documents, and semi-structured interviews. Data triangulation was used to combine the results of all three research tools. The study showed that sustainable procurement initiatives have rarely been used in the Canadian construction industry. Limited sustainability initiatives are used in the project procurement, while environmental sustainability criteria are given the prominence. Furthermore a significant deficiency is observed in bid evaluation involving triple bottom line of sustainability. A majority of construction industry respondents agreed that sustainable procurement is a long due necessity and highlighted government regulations as the main driver for sustainable procurement. This study may be the first step to promote the use of sustainable procurement in the Canadian construction sector.

CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS ANALYSIS FOR CONSTRUCTION WASTE MANAGEMENT IN CANADA

Construction industry creates a massive amount of waste, which typically ends up in landfills. Canadian construction industry represents 30% of the total municipal solid waste deposited in landfills. Construction and demolition (C&D) waste has created negative socioeconomic and environmental impacts including contaminating ground water, emitting greenhouse gases, and adding more waste to scarce landfills. Literature is cited rework/waste generation due to ambiguity/errors in construction contract documents. Exculpatory clauses in contract documents are included in contractual agreements to prevent contractor claims, which often cause rework. After an extensive contract documents review, these clauses were categorized in to eight major areas. This paper (1) analyses expert opinions on pre-identified contractual clauses; and (2) introduces recommendations to minimize rework and waste in construction projects. It was found that the clauses related to quality, workmanship, and field quality control/inspection have the most potential to generate construction waste.

Sustainable procurement in the Canadian construction industry: challenges and benefits

Disregard of triple bottom line (TBL) of sustainability is one of the major drawbacks of current construction procurement practices. Sustainable procurement is an emergent concept that can improve procurement practices and enhance the sustainability performance of the construction industry as a whole. Presently, sustainable procurement is still not fully utilized in the Canadian construction industry. A comprehensive literature review showed that the construction industry is still not fully aware about the benefits of using sustainable procurement or ways of implementing the same. This study evaluates challenges encountered in implementing sustainable procurement in the Canadian construction industry. In addition, this study investigates perceptions of construction professionals on the benefits of using sustainable procurement for construction projects. A country wide questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect required data. A statistical analysis was performed to rank the challenges and benefits of sustainable procurement. Findings from semi-structured interviews were used to validate the results observed in the statistical analysis. This study revealed that lack of funding is the main challenge for implementing sustainable procurement, while reducing harmful emissions and waste generation was identified as the main benefit. It was concluded that the leadership and commitment of the project owners is the key to fully establish sustainable procurement in the Canadian construction industry.

Building application and thermal performance of vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) in Canadian subarctic climate

Vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) have thermal resistance values, at the center of the panel, up to 10 times or more than those of conventional thermal insulation materials. In Canada, known for its predominantly extreme cold climate, the potential to apply VIPs in the building construction industry is estimated to be enormous, particularly with the introduction of the new 2011 National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings (NECB 2011). VIPs can play a major role in Canadian buildings to meet energy requirements of the NECB 2011. However, the lack of long-term performance credentials and various constructability issues are among the major barriers for mass application of VIPs in the Canadian construction industry. This paper presents the design strategy, construction details, instrumentation and thermal performance monitoring observations of a VIP retrofitted wall system in Yukon, located in Northern Canada. Experience gained from the construction process and available thermal performance data over a period of three years provide encouraging indicators for the constructability and long-term thermal performance of VIPs in Canadian subarctic weather.

Overdue Invoice Management: Markov Chain Approach

The gross domestic product (GDP) of the Canadian construction industry in 2012 amounted to $111 billion, all having been exchanged in the form of invoices. In fact, a typical construction company processes tens of thousands of invoices for payment annually. There are two significant challenges associated with this invoice processing: (1) process costs due to remuneration of the construction owner’s highly paid personnel, and (2) the cost of delayed invoice payments, which is typically a cost absorbed by the contractor that is consequently added to the overall project cost. Ensuring on-time payment of invoices, even when funds are available, can be a challenging exercise because of variety, volume, and the unpredictable number of received invoices. These realities make overdue invoices a pressing problem to be addressed, which in the long term leads to loss in profit and damaged reputation for both contractors and owners. The research presented in this paper utilizes a cohort Markov model to evaluate invoice processing. It seeks to identify and rank bottlenecks to highlight and prioritize opportunities for process improvement, thereby leading to a null-overdue invoice-processing approach. Furthermore, given the stochastic nature of invoice processing, various probabilistic sensitivity analyses are proposed, including an empirical approach that can be used at the experimental design stage where data are either limited or unavailable.

321 Occupational exposures to known and suspected carcinogens in the Canadian construction industry

ObjectivesCAREX Canada aims to estimate the number of Canadian workers exposed to various carcinogens in the workplace. The objectives of this work is to determine the number of workers exposed...

Reduction of construction wastes by improving construction contract management: a multinational evaluation

The Canadian construction industry generates 30% of the total municipal solid waste deposited in landfills. Ample evidence can be found in the published literature about rework and waste generation due to ambiguity and errors in contract documents. Also, the literature quotes that disclaimer clauses in contract documents are included in the contractual agreements to prevent contractor claims, which often cause rework. Our professional practice has also noted that there are several disclaimer clauses in standard contract documents which have the potential to cause rework (and associated waste). This article illustrates a comparative study of standard contractual documents and their potential to create rework (and associated waste) in different regions of the world. The objectives of this study are (1) to analyse standard contractual documents in Canada, the USA and Australia in terms of their potential to generate rework and waste, and (2) to propose changes/amendments to the existing standard contract documents to minimise/avoid rework. In terms of construction waste management, all the reviewed standard contract documents have deficiencies. The parties that produce the contract documents include exculpatory clauses to avoid the other party's claims. This approach tends to result in rework and construction waste. The contractual agreements/contract documents should be free from errors, deficiencies, ambiguity and unfair risk transfers to minimise/avoid potential to generate rework and waste.