Types Of Construction Projects Research Articles

Government regulation strategies for inhibiting opportunistic behaviors in construction projects

The construction industry has long been criticized for recurring accidents, wherein opportunistic behaviors are the primary cause of losing faith and increasing risk, infringing upon the interests of the state, society and people. While government regulation can be crucial in curbing opportunistic behaviors, the existing mixed strategy game model fails to accurately capture the strategic interactions between the government, owner, supervisor, and contractor. To bridge this gap, we propose a multi-stage dynamic game model with asymmetric information in the context of a typical construction project, wherein two urgent opportunistic behaviors may arise: moral hazard and covert collusion. According to project characteristics, the regulatory issues are further classified as hidden information for general projects and hidden effort for dominant projects. On this basis, the government's optimal regulation strategies are derived, i.e., the optimal fines for poor quality and the optimal fine coefficient for quality effort reduction. Subsequently, several significant managerial implications are presented to summarize and analyze impacts of government regulation on construction projects. The findings show that government regulation can achieve systemic optimality but may hurt the owner's interests in some cases. This could potentially hinder the healthy development of the construction industry as the owner may forgo purchasing the construction project. Furthermore, general projects are more vulnerable to opportunistic behaviors as opposed to dominant projects. The developed model and derived regulatory strategy can assist the government in more effectively governing and controlling opportunistic behaviors. This research also contributes several valuable managerial insights into the domain of government regulation on construction projects.

Optimization in Construction Management Using Adaptive Opposition Slime Mould Algorithm

The purpose of this research study is to solve a four-objective optimization problem in the construction industry using a hybrid model that combines the slime mould algorithm (SMA) with opposition-based learning. This hybrid model is known as the adaptive opposition slime mould algorithm (AOSMA). Two typical construction projects have introduced time, cost, quality, and safety trade-off (TCQS), which are the factors that have the greatest influence on the completion of a construction project and are represented by optimal results and obtained at Pareto, in order to better illustrate the potential of the proposed model. In order to compare AOSMA with a nondominated sorting genetic algorithm III (NSGA III), multiobjective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO), LHS-based NSGA III, and a hybrid model of MAWA (MAWA-TLBO, MAWA-GA, MAWA-AS, and MAWA-ACS-SGPU) and to assess the model’s potential and viability, performance evaluation indexes are applied. To assist project managers in planning time, cost, quality, and safety for construction investment projects, this study creates a hybrid model.

The influence of the climate of the urbanized territory and the main parameters of building

The article deals with the peculiarities of the organization of the urbanized territory, the influence of the territory on changes in climatic parameters, the protection of buildings from negative weather phenomena and the extension of the service life, the influence of anthropogenic and natural nature.
 The research method is the main problem of construction in urbanized areas – protection and improvement of the environment, increasing the service life of buildings and structures. An urbanized area can have a significant impact on changing climatic parameters, in particular on increasing air temperature and higher humidity. This is influenced by various factors, such as intensive construction, traffic flows, emissions of harmful substances, use of air conditioners and other devices. One of the important aspects of the urbanized area is to ensure its effective protection from negative weather phenomena. Buildings located in urban areas often experience significant damage from natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, winds, and other weather phenomena. One of the possible solutions is the introduction of new construction technologies that provide a high level of protection of buildings against these phenomena. These aspects are the main part of the design and planning work at all stages of the design and operation of the city territory. This is a problem of increasing the effectiveness of forecasting the consequences of climate change for the natural environment and society. The biggest issue in the study and prediction of climate change is the question of the causes that cause these changes.
 Conducted studies have shown that modern construction standards, with the allocation of insufficient attention to the natural and climatic influence on construction and structures. Usually uses typical construction projects throughout the country. Thus, the emergence of a research issue necessitated the structuring of the main climatic indicators that have an impact on the urbanized area. Based on this, a method of balancing the negative impact of climatic parameters is proposed.
 The use of architectural and climatic analysis from architectural climatology makes it possible to balance climatic conditions at the design stage with the help of architectural and urban planning and engineering solutions.

Safety management of Internet of Things engineering construction based on GPU parallel computing

This article introduces the calculation method for continuous safety analysis of GPU speed. Combine the configuration of CPU-GPU software with hardware and software configuration, logically allocate computing resources, and use the DC flow system to diagnose whether there are errors in the entire network. Combining the characteristics of network connectivity after a failure, a true N-1 error analysis based on the same calculation strategy of data collection is proposed, and comparisons are made. Various levels of granularity are designed and calculations are performed. This method can create power lines for each group, and ensure fast, real-time safety analysis, and propose an improved method to analyze Web applications. In the multi-level parallel computing model, the key steps of multi-GPU integration are described. The virtual container technology detects applications that intensively interact between multiple GPU panels in managing security analysis and sensitivity analysis applications, as well as application design for security application analysis and sensitivity analysis. This paper selects several typical construction project cases through the research on the construction safety management of construction companies based on the Internet of Things, which mainly involve five issues of on-site safety inspection, staff safety education, safety conflict management and safety awareness, and the application of BIM technology. Highlights the company’s problems in the safety management of engineering construction; it also consults and integrates relevant construction team types and actual management conditions, and combines viewpoints and actual conditions to provide reasonable and contradictory suggestions from five perspectives, namely: completion Safe construction project system, using advanced technology to improve the efficiency of construction safety management.

Cohesive Methodology in Construction of Enclosure for 3.6m Devasthal Optical Telescope

Building telescope enclosures is vital for setting up any optical observatory. An enclosure was constructed in remote hilly terrain to provide shelter to India’s largest 3.6 m Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT). Primarily, the enclosure was built to protect the telescope from tough weather conditions and provide optimum space for performing various telescope related operational and maintenance activities. Other elements that were considered in the building enclosure were low thermal mass, sustainability, seismic and acoustic considerations. A steel building designed with mostly bolted connections, suitably selected materials, and mechanical systems for facilitating construction activities on site has been built for the telescope at the Devasthal site of ARIES. The enclosure construction was quite a challenging task with various project complexities. Multidisciplinary works of civil, mechanical and electrical systems in enclosure required efforts on various fronts in parallel to achieve the targets. Limitations of resources, manpower, and site conditions were managed to keep flexibility and economics in construction. Numerous challenges faced during the making of enclosures have been discussed in the paper. Insights into the construction of enclosures will provide a basic framework and learning opportunities for managing such typical construction projects in adverse weather conditions at mountainous sites. Doi: 10.28991/HIJ-2022-03-02-05 Full Text: PDF

The use of Game Theory to solve conflicts in the project management and construction industry

A typical construction project involves a wide range of disparate professionals, in many cases geographically distributed, working together for a relatively short period of time on the design and construction of a facility. Since organizations are becoming flatter, culturally rich, geographically diverse and intensely competitive, the possibilities for conflict in such environments are greater. Negotiation is an important aspect of a project and plays an important role in resolving claims, preventing disputes, and keeping a harmonious relationship between project participants. Part of any project manager’s role as a leader is to recognize conflict, understand the sources of conflict and manage it, and to do this a project manager must be able to understand the basics of negotiation theory and have sufficient competencies to lead in such situations. To address the complex technical and human issues in negotiation, different negotiation theories and models are available which mainly include game theory, economic theory, and behavior theory. Since Game Theory provides, by its very nature, the appropriate tools for the analysis and eventual solution of conflicts of any kind, this paper uses a model based on Game Theory in order to identify the activities that are responsible for the delays in a project and divide the costs among them.

Will contractors pursue unsustainable practices following environmental recovery? A highway case in China

PurposeThis study aims to map out contractors' thoughts on construction-related environmental recovery as an excuse for deliberately carrying on unsustainable construction.Design/methodology/approachA typical highway construction project in China was investigated. Textual materials were collected through semistructured interviews. Content analysis was conducted to derive qualitative data from the textual materials.FindingsThe research findings reveal a trend of environmental recovery associated with construction activities. It is found that contractors utilize this trend to maintain unsustainable construction. Furthermore, the effects of environmental recovery equip local governments with a tolerance for environmental degradation, and the environmental tolerance allows contractors to continue unsustainable construction without being discovered.Originality/valueThis paper presents an environmental recovery-based perspective on unsustainable construction and sheds some light on the promotion of sustainable construction.

Recognition of temporary vertical objects in large point clouds of construction sites

Although adherence to the project schedule is the most critical performance metric among project owners, still 53% of typical construction projects exhibit schedule delays. While construction progress monitoring is key to allow effective project management, it is still a largely manual, error-prone and inefficient process. To contribute to more efficient construction progress monitoring, this research proposes a method to detect automatically the most common temporary object classes in large-scale laser scanner point clouds of construction sites. Finding the position of these objects in the point cloud can help determine the current state of construction progress and verify compliance with safety regulations. The proposed workflow includes a combination of several techniques: image processing over vertical projections of point clouds, finding patterns in three-dimensional (3D) detected contours and performing checks over vertical cross-sections with deep learning methods. After applying and testing the method on three real-world point clouds and testing with three object categories (cranes, scaffolds and formwork), the results reveal that the authors’ technique achieves rates above 88% for precision and recall and outstanding computational performance. These metrics demonstrate the capability of the method to support automatic 3D object detection in point clouds of construction sites.

„Socialist postmodernism”: residential architecture in Kyiv Podil district (Ukraine)

Despite the short chronological span of the socialist era architecture heritage, it remains little investigated and underappreciated. Given the political and cultural isolation of the Soviet Union republics and strict architectural design regulations, there was a widespread belief that architects should not use innovative trends. This article exemplifies residential quarters in the historic Podil district, designed and built in the 1970s-1980s in Kyiv. They vividly demonstrate the postmodern ideas embodied in Ukrainian architecture. Methodologically, the article bases on the Ch. Jencks definition of postmodernism and in the comparison of his ideology with the implemented Kyiv project. It states that Kyiv architects proposed not typical Soviet construction projects but international postmodern architectural solutions. It proves that, on the one hand, Ukrainian architects had perfect qualifications to draw construction projects implementing advanced world trends of the time. But on the other hand, it highlights that postmodernism in architecture did not merely confine to Western Europe and the United States but also penetrated the Iron Curtain, exemplifying innovative architectural thinking which ran contrary to the modernist paradigm.

Safety Management in Sustainable Construction Projects: A Conceptual Framework

Safety management can be utilized effectively in sustainable construction projects, to produce safe sustainable construction projects. This highlights the necessity to gain a better understanding about safety management components with a view to pinpointing existing and future research issues to be addressed. Thus, this systematic review aims to demonstrate a knowledge base for safety management research grounded on the safety management components, and the integration of those components into sustainable construction projects, to produce safe sustainable construction projects. To achieve this, thirty-four peer-reviewed articles were classified into two categories. The first category is about safety management in typical construction projects, and the second category is about safety management in sustainable construction projects. Similar research in the last two decades points out the challenges associated with safety management in sustainable construction projects and the need to understand the associated safety management components that can lead to safer suitable construction projects. In addition, the synthesis suggests the need for a conceptual framework that explains the process of utilizing safety management components in sustainable construction projects to attain the desired safety outcomes in sustainable construction projects. Accordingly, this article provides a conceptual framework that integrates safety management components of traditional construction projects into sustainable construction projects, to achieve safe sustainable construction projects.

SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORIAL: Next Generation ICTs - How distant is ubiquitous computing?

Traditional design development processes have come a long way from the use of drawing boards. The accelerated use of ICT-based digital systems means that the industry has steadily moved towards a digitized future. A future where increasingly unstructured information is created, shared, manipulated, stored, and archived in various digital media support the four pillars of visualization, integration, communication, and intelligence on which typical construction projects currently stand. The ICT field's growth, combined with the unprecedented advances in communication and network media usage, has resulted in hyper-interconnectivity globally. This hyper-connectivity through developments such as the Internet of Things (IoT) creates global opportunities for collaboration, which was not previously possible. It links 'human' and 'social' networks with 'technical' systems. With the vast volumes of digitally connected systems and the systems' data, new opportunities for learning have surfaced in the construction domain. The special issue targeted the state-of-the-art developments of next generation ICTs in the global arena. As with any new developments, new opportunities emerge and new challenges surface. The cautious late majority and the laggards, adopt a skeptical approach, that which is reserved and strewn in doubt. The innovators and the early majority on the other hand pave the way to technology adoption and help drive change in the industry. This special issue recognises that the emergence of next-generation ICTs, combined with developments in ubiquitous computing, presentopportunities that challenge the current status quo of the construction sector. This special issue recognizes that for an industry to remain truly competitive, due consideration need to be given to the ongoing and emerging technological developments, and a deep understanding of which would lead to novel responsive approaches for their significant uptake. The collection of papers in this special issue gives a comprehensive overview of research and developments in the field of next-generation ICTs. It bridges the gap between the two domains of construction and computer science. Of the ten papers in this collection, two (by Akamu et al, and Karmarkar and Delhi) were invited papers and include a world view on thewider applicability of next-generation ICTs in the construction domain, the opportunities they present and the challenges that emerge. The remaining papers, amongst other aspects, cover theinnovative application of next-gen ICTs in specific industry sectors(e.g., in the water industry by Alani et al, 2021)or in meeting specific project goals such as to manage energy consumption (Watfa et al), improve information retrieval (Wang et al), integrate AR and BIM for specific building submission processes (Schranz et al), identify challenges to collaborative working within globally dispersed virtual project teams (Anderson and Ramalingam), and ontology for robot navigation and data fusion (Karimi et al).

A hybrid method for matching analysis of construction project characteristics with operation and maintenance requirements

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to extract the real requirements of the owner (or users) for the construction project in the operation and maintenance stage completely and accurately and carry out the construction based on the requirements, to make the project status and operation and maintenance requirements (RO&M) consistent after delivered.Design/methodology/approachThis study creatively proposes the operation and maintenance functions deployment (OMFD) under RO&M. In addition, the OPAR (naming is made up of the initials of owners, project, analysis and result) model is constructed to fully identify the requirements of both owners and projects. In this study, three typical construction projects are taken as examples to calculate the correlation strength between project characteristics (PC) and operation and maintenance requirements through the Apriori algorithm, and order parameters are obtained from the cost chain.FindingsThis study found that there are significant differences in the correlation strength between 11 types of RO&M and PC, in which the “cost of types” (TC) correlation of residential housing and factory buildings is the largest, while the largest correlation demand of commercial buildings is “safety of types” (TS) and “system” (S). Simultaneously, through the calculation of order parameters, the most influential factors on project characteristics are obtained.Practical implicationsThis study could effectively help the owner (or users) to check whether the delivered project fully satisfy their real requirements and also extract the key technical points to realize RO&M, which can guide the accurate construction of the same type of projects.Originality/valueThis research establishes OPAR model to accurately identify the requirements of the project in the operation and maintenance stage and establishes the association rules between the requirements and the construction scheme, which is helpful for the project to construct under the expected requirements.

OPTIMIZING PRODUCTIVITY RATE TO MINIMIZE OVERDRAFT INTEREST PAYMENT IN INFRASTRUCTURE CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

Winning a bid is a good opportunity for contractors that includes risks. After winning a project, contractors typically receive payments after two-three months of work completion that leads to negative cash flow (overdraft) throughout the duration of a project. Hence, contractors borrow from banks and pay monthly interests on the amount of overdraft they owe. To solve this problem, a hybrid model utilizing Discrete Event Simulation using SIMPHONY software, a special purpose simulation tool developed by the University of Alberta, accompanied by Markov Chain prediction technique. The developed hybrid model allows contractors to test different scenarios in search of the optimum productivity rate and payment arrangement to minimize negative cash flow. A case study utilizing a typical road construction project is used to test and validate the developed model and its ability to determine the optimum scenario. Results revealed that markup percentage and initial investment are two crucial factors to deliver the project successfully. In the harsh market, increasing the amount of cash to invest without a reasonable markup (at least 10%) will no longer make a profit. But, if the markup percentage could be increased by more than 15%, it will offer a chance to the contractor to make a profit and successfully deliver the project with initial investment reasonably low; and save a flexible productivity rate to finish the project within the schedule.

Construction Cash Flow Risk Index

As investment increases in capital projects, financial risks increase, and cash flow prediction and control become more paramount. Higher risks could hinder project performance and increase the chances of failure in multiple aspects of a project. While there are models that aim to assess and forecast risks in the construction industry, none present a technique to include the impact of risks on a project’s cash flow. Therefore, cash flow forecasts tend to exceed the actual cash flow of a project due to inaccurate risk assessment. Thus, this paper presents the Cash Flow Risk Index (CFRI) development process quantifying the impact of risks on a project’s cash flow from an owner’s perspective. To that end, the study explored the literature to identify the risk factors that might impact a construction projects’ cash flow and uncovered 44 factors. The study also validated and consolidated these factors to build a CFRI via a Delphi exercise, which reduced the factors from 44 to 36. In further iterations, the 36 factors were also shared with 32 construction industry professionals to rate their relative importance on a five-point Likert scale, from which relative importance index and weights were obtained. As a result, the CFRI was developed to measure the impact of different risk factors on a typical construction project’s cash flow.

TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT OF KYIV HOSPITAL NETWORK

The article examines the actual state of the hospital network in Kyiv, offers proposals for its further territorial development, which are based on the current and future needs and capabilities of residents and managers of the city, nearby settlements. The study is part of a comprehensive study of the problem of urban planning foundations of the territorial and spatial development of the system of healthcare institutions and is aimed at finding the optimization of the existing material fund of medical institutions. The city of Kyiv is the capital of our state and, at the same time, its largest city, which historically has the largest number of hospitals among Ukrainian cities. There are historical architectural monuments among Kyiv’s hospitals, but most of the facilities were built during the Soviet era in Ukraine according to typical industrial construction projects. The current state of the network of hospitals in Kyiv does not correspond to either the world indicators for the provision of beds per 100 thousand of the population (significantly exceeds), or the quality of medical care, or the comfortable conditions for the implementation of treatment. Unfortunately, Ukraine is not able (and it is not necessary) to maintain the functioning of all hospitals that were built before and during Soviet times - the number of the population has significantly decreased, medical standards have changed, and most importantly, it is necessary to develop a network of prehospital institutions. So, the article contains proposals for optimizing the hospital network of the city of Kyiv, which, on the one hand, are aimed at removing individual hospitals from mono-state funding, and on the other, expanding the possibilities of treating children in a larger number of city hospitals.

Effects and optimal proposal analyses of soil and water conservation measures for disturbed accumulations of typical production and construction projects in Shenzhen City

Due to the specific natural conditions and high intensity of human activities in Shenzhen, the characteristics of water and soil erosion of Shenzhen are prone and frequent. There are no large rivers, lakes and reservoirs in Shenzhen, and the rainwater storage capacity is unsubstantial that result in some problems such as ecological environment deterioration, river siltation, drainage pipe network blockage, and aggravation of flood disasters. The work of soil and water conservation in Shenzhen is still grim. In this paper, the sediment under different soil and water conservation measures were measured based on long-term observation of typical road engineering, river engineering and pipeline engineering in Shenzhen. Then, the effect of soil and water conservation measures implemented in these typical engineering were analyzed. At last, the optimal proposals of soil and water conservation measures for these typical engineering were proposed. This research aims to provide data support for the formulation and modification of soil and water conservation technical specifications for production and construction projects in Shenzhen.

Impact of familiar collaboration on construction project quality: perceptions from clients and contractors in Singapore's construction industry

PurposeDue to the fragmented and complex nature of the construction industry, many countries, including Singapore, have progressively encouraged greater collaboration amongst major stakeholders in the industry. It is hoped that doing so will result in an increase in the quality of construction projects. Given the long duration of typical construction projects, it is plausible for collaborating parties to develop close and personal relationships. In recent years, corruption cases arising from familiar collaboration have caught the public's attention. This study seeks to better understand familiar collaboration and its adverse impacts on the quality of construction projects.Design/methodology/approachA mixed research method was adopted, with a questionnaire survey distributed to 32 respondents representing client and contractors. This was followed by interviews to validate the survey findings.FindingsThe findings suggest that, when there is a lack of surveillance, familiar collaboration is likely to lead to favouritism and dishonesty, which can have an adverse impact on the quality of construction projects. The findings additionally suggest that value for money, conformance to specifications and fitness for purpose are the main aspects of quality that are likely to be adversely affected by corrupt practices bought about by familiar collaboration.Originality/valueIn this paper, these relationships are described using the term familiar collaboration. Strong and intimate relationships of this type may lead to a danger of parties committing corrupt practices. This study is one of the very attempts seek to better understand familiar collaboration and its adverse impacts on the quality of construction projects.

Comparison of dispute boards and statutory adjudication in construction

The objective of this study is to present the issues encountered by construction industry practitioners resolving disputes through the adoption of the dispute board (or DB) and statutory adjudication (or SA). This research is significant due to the often adversarial working environment in a typical construction and engineering project, as well as substantial adverse consequences resulting from disputes that have not been adequately resolved between two or more of its stakeholders. This paper presents the historical background and aims of and main principles behind the introduction of DB and SA. Stakeholder practitioners involved in three case study projects were then interviewed to reveal issues encountered with their adoption of DBs and/or SAs. Their perceived effectiveness, as well as suitability, to resolve disputes within construction then underwent comparative analysis. Barriers were found which had contributed towards a general apprehension by practitioners in the major case study projects to adopt either of these dispute-resolution methods. This paper suggests that these barriers significantly relate to the perceived formality of their procedures, potentially expensive legal costs involved and subsequent harm to future working relationships.

Geometry- and Appearance-Based Reasoning of Construction Progress Monitoring

Although adherence to project schedules and budgets is most highly valued by project owners, more than 53% of typical construction projects are behind schedule and more than 66% suffer from cost overruns, partly because of an inability to accurately capture construction progress. To address these challenges, this paper presents new geometry- and appearance-based reasoning methods for detecting construction progress, which has the potential to provide more frequent progress measures using visual data that are already being collected by general contractors. The initial step of geometry-based filtering detects the state of construction of building information modeling (BIM) elements (e.g., in-progress, completed). The next step of appearance-based reasoning captures operation-level activities by recognizing different material types. Two methods have been investigated for the latter step: a texture-based reasoning for image-based 3D point clouds and color-based reasoning for laser-scanned point clouds. This paper presents two case studies for each reasoning approach to validate the proposed methods. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and practical significances of the proposed methods.

Comparative Study of Conventional Material Management with Advanced SAP Technique

Material management is simply the process by which an organization is supplied with the goods and services that it needs to achieve its objectives of buying, storage, and movement of material, Efficient material management is very essential. The construction materials may constitute more than 60% of the total cost for a typical construction project so that effective and proper material management can be proved very cost effective.The materials requirements planning, purchasing, inventory planning, storage, inventory control, materials supply, transportation and materials handling are the activities of material management. Material management is made problematic by material shortage, delays in supply, wastage and lack of storing place. Proper material management can improve the productivity and cost efficiency of a project and help to ensure its timely completion. The material management system attempts to insure that the right quality and quantity of materials are appropriately selected, purchased, delivered and handled on site in a timely manner and at a reasonable cost. This paper contains the different methods used by the construction companies and also describes the main results of survey carried out in Pune in different construction companies for their current material management process.