The Improvement of Service Quality of Service Quality in Prefabricated Steel Structure Construction Process

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate customers' perceptions of service quality and present guidelines for improving services in prefabricated steel structure management. Research design, data and methodology: The researchers use qualitative research through in-depth interviews as a data collection method. Twenty customers in Bangkok who had used the service in the construction of prefabricated steel structures were the key informants. Results: The results showed that in developing the service quality of the steel building structure business, the management had to improve the entire process in three stages, which are as follows: The pre-service stage consists of providing a tender document and contract and design ability for prefabricated steel structures; The in-service stage consists of contract and design modifications, time management, resource management, ability to monitor the construction process, team management, and safety management; The post-service stage consists of success in service activities and success in financial and monitoring management. Construction companies must offer a guarantee for their work if an error occurs after delivery and provide manual production processes for their customers. Conclusions: This three-step process improvement increased customer satisfaction in the present and would persuade potential customers to choose to use the services

Assessment of time management practices of small medium sized contractors in project delivery in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

The purpose of this article is to assess the effective time-management practices adopted by construction SMEs to enhance successful construction project delivery. A mixed methods approach, consisting of both quantitative and qualitative research methods was adopted. A questionnaire was distributed to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) management team purposively selected from CIDB Grades 1 to 4 registered contractors under the general building category. The quantitative data were analysed, using descriptive statistics. To validate quantitative findings, semi structured interviews were conducted with randomly selected respondents who were part of the survey study where content analysis was adopted. The findings revealed that the most adopted effective time-management practices to enhance the sustainable success rate of construction SMEs in South Africa included progress meeting with consultants to ensure regular monitoring of the work progress, strategic planning to recover time lost, effective management of subcontractors, and allocation of tasks to workers according to their skills and expertise. It should be noted that the quantitative findings were consistent with the qualitative findings, and revealed that effective project planning, periodic progress meetings and labour production contribute to the sustainable success rate of SMEs.  The results obtained from this article could be adopted as SMEs’ effective time-management practices to enhance sustainable construction project delivery

Towards a semantic Construction Digital Twin: directions for future research

As the Architecture, Engineering and Construction sector is embracing the digital age, the processes involved in the design, construction and operation of built assets are more and more influenced by technologies dealing with value-added monitoring of data from sensor networks, management of this data in secure and resilient storage systems underpinned by semantic models, as well as the simulation and optimisation of engineering systems. Aside from enhancing the efficiency of the value chain, such information-intensive models and associated technologies play a decisive role in minimising the lifecycle impacts of our buildings. While Building Information Modelling provides procedures, technologies and data schemas enabling a standardised semantic representation of building components and systems, the concept of a Digital Twin conveys a more holistic socio-technical and process-oriented characterisation of the complex artefacts involved by leveraging the synchronicity of the cyber-physical bi-directional data flows. Moreover, BIM lacks semantic completeness in areas such as control systems, including sensor networks, social systems, and urban artefacts beyond the scope of buildings, thus requiring a holistic, scalable semantic approach that factors in dynamic data at different levels. The paper reviews the multi-faceted applications of BIM during the construction stage and highlights limits and requirements, paving the way to the concept of a Construction Digital Twin. A definition of such a concept is then given, described in terms of underpinning research themes, while elaborating on areas for future research

Effective Construction Process Monitoring and Control through a Collaborative Cyber-Physical Approach

Part 6: Performance ManagementInternational audienceThe objectives of this research are: monitoring of project progress during execution, assessment project health on demand, to identify and make timely recommendations for corrective action in response to anticipated schedule delays. Implementation of this information in flexible process modeling approaches, like process configuration method enhances an alternative process planning. The paper proposes a solution in collaboration with cyber-physical system CPS based on RFID technology to minimize manual inputs and enhance data acquisition. Furthermore, it enables planers anticipating and identifying schedule delays and exceptions early or even before they happen. Analysis of the real-time data collected on site and actual vs. scheduled deviation will be transformed into a meaningful classification. This paper presents a comprehensive solution to integrate the outcomes of analysis real-time data into a knowledge base for updating the entire progress, handling exceptions and supporting efficient process alternative modeling