Construction safety and digital design: a review

As digital technologies become widely used in designing buildings and infrastructure, questions arise about their impacts on construction safety. This review explores relationships between construction safety and digital design practices with the aim of fostering and directing further research. It surveys state-of-the-art research on databases, virtual reality, geographic information systems, 4D CAD, building information modeling and sensing technologies, finding various digital tools for addressing safety issues in the construction phase, but few tools to support design for construction safety. It also considers a literature on safety critical, digital and design practices that raises a general concern about ‘mindlessness’ in the use of technologies, and has implications for the emerging research agenda around construction safety and digital design. Bringing these strands of literature together suggests new kinds of interventions, such as the development of tools and processes for using digital models to promote mindfulness through multi-party collaboration on safet

Balancing operating revenues and occupied refurbishment costs 1: problems of defining project success factors and selecting site planning methods

In planning the refurbishment of railway stations the spatial needs of the contractor and of the ongoing business stakeholders have to be balanced. A particular concern is the disruptive effect of construction works upon pedestrian movement. RaCMIT (Refurbishment and Customer Movement Integration Tool) was a research project aimed at addressing this problem. The objective of the research was to develop a decision protocol facilitating optimisation of overall project value to the client's business. This paper (the first of two) presents a framework for considering public disruption in occupied refurbishment using two case studies in large railway stations as examples. It briefly describes new tools which (combined with existing techniques) assist decision making in the management of disruption. It links strategic with sitebased decision making and suggests how public disruption may be treated as a variable to be jointly optimised along with traditional criteria such as time, cost and quality. Research observations as well as current literature suggest that for overall decision-making, opportunities may be lost (under current practice) for minimising joint project cost/revenue disruption, and, for spatio-temporal site decision-making, effective and efficient tools now exist to model both sides of the construction site boundary

The right place at the right time: assisting spatio-temporal planning in construction

21st - 24th October 2003 This paper describes research carried out for requirements capture in the development of a computer-based decision support tool (VIRCON) for space-time scheduling and visualisation of construction tasks. The focus was on pre-tender work and involved interviews with construction planners. Both space-time scheduling and visualisation of tasks are largely informal/intuitive processes for planners. They form an important part of the planner\'s risk identification function. Planners tend to opt for a robust spatio-temporal schedule rather than an optimal one. They require decision support tools that are quick and easy to use rather than highly sophisticated. The research highlights the extent to which construction planning is a communicative and co-operative activity in addition to a complex problem-solving one. Questions arise about the cost to the client of non-involvement by the construction planner at the design stage, the costs of short pre-tender periods, inadequate design data and sub-optimal construction periods specified in tender documents

Towards a lean model for production management of refurbishment projects, VTT Technology: 94

This is the Stage 3 Report for the ApRemodel project, which aims at improving processes for multi-occupancy retrofit by generating a lean model for project delivery. In this respect, a process-driven approach has been adopted to investigate what can be done to improve the way that retrofits projects are delivered. An initial literature review, focused on the management of refurbishment works, revealed that the research on this matter is scarce. There are plenty of studies related to the broad refurbishment area, however only a small number refer to the way that those construction projects are delivered. According to the literature, construction organisations have predominantly used traditional methods for managing the production of refurbishment projects. The problem is that those tools and techniques are not often appropriate to cope with the complex characteristics inherent to construction projects, especially in the case of refurbishments. Moreover, they have often not been based on a clear theoretical foundation. As a result, numerous types of waste have been identified in refurbishment projects such as waiting time, disruptions in performing tasks on site, rework, among others. This has led to unsatisfactory project performance in terms of low productivity, project delays, and cost overrun. The first step towards better production management in refurbishment projects is recognising the complexity of the sector in order to adopt the correct approach to cope with this specific scenario. In this respect, lean construction is identified as an appropriate way to deal with the complexity and uncertainty inherent in refurbishment projects, given that this management philosophy fully integrates the conversion, flow, and value views. This document builds on the findings from the literature review as well as evidence from case studies. Managerial practices based on lean construction principles have presented successful results in the management of complex projects. Case studies available in the literature report the feasibility and usefulness of this theoretical foundation. Moreover, the evidence from these studies show considerable potential for improving the management of refurbishment works. A list of methods, tools, and techniques are identified. This report may be used by construction refurbishment organisations and housing associations as a starting point for improving the efficiency in managing production of refurbishment projects. To this end, partnerships between industry and academia are strongly recommended. 4 Although the usefulness of lean principles in complex projects is already proved, further work is needed to check what practices are best for the respective refurbishment context, as well as identifying enablers and barriers for practical adoption. Furthermore, additional studies would be also necessary to better understand the extent to which the implementation of lean philosophy might influence performance of refurbishment projects. This report should be seen as work in progress with much more to learn, as detailed research work around the sustainable retrofit process in a lean way is further developed

Safer clinical systems : interim report, August 2010

Safer Clinical Systems is the Health Foundation’s new five year programme of work to test and demonstrate ways to improve healthcare systems and processes, to develop safer systems that improve patient safety. It builds on learning from the Safer Patients Initiative (SPI) and models of system improvement from both healthcare and other industries. Learning from the SPI highlighted the need to take a clinical systems approach to improving safety. SPI highlighted that many hospitals struggle to implement improvement in clinical areas due to inherent problems with support mechanisms. Clinical processes and systems, rather than individuals, are often the contributors to breakdown in patient safety. The Safer Clinical Systems programme aimed to measure the reliability of clinical processes, identify defects within those processes, and identify the systems that result in those defects. Methods to improve system reliability were then to be tested and re-developed in order to reduce the risk of harm being caused to patients. Such system-level awareness should lead to improvements in other patient care pathways. The relationship between system reliability and actual harm is challenging to identify and measure. Specific, well-defined, small-scale processes have been used in other programmes, and system reliability has been shown to have a direct causal relationship with harm (e.g. care bundle compliance in an intensive care unit can reduce the incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia). However, it has become evident that harm can be caused by a variety of factors over time; when working in broader, more complex and dynamic systems, change in outcome can be difficult to attribute to specific improvements and difficulties are also associated with relating evidence to resulting harm. The overall aim of Phase 1 of the Safer Clinical Systems programme was to demonstrate proof-of-concept that using a systems-based approach could contribute to improved patient safety. In Phase 1, experienced NHS teams from four locations worked together with expert advisers to co-design the Safer Clinical Systems programme

Industry-driven innovative system development for the construction industry: The DIVERCITY project

Collaborative working has become possible using the innovative integrated systems in construction as many activities are performed globally with stakeholders situated in various locations. The Integrated VR based information systems can bind the fragmentation and provide communication and collaboration between the distributed stakeholders n various locations. The development of these technologies is vital for the uptake of these systems by the construction industry. This paper starts by emphasising the importance of construction IT research and reviews some future research directions in this area. In particular, the paper explores how virtual prototyping can improve the productivity and effectiveness of construction projects, and presents DIVERCITY, which is th as a case study of the research in virtual prototyping. Besides, the paper explores the requirements engineering of the DIVERCITY project. DIVERCITY has large and evolving requirements, which considered the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, such as clients, architects and contractors. However, practitioners are often unsure of the detail of how virtual environments would support the construction process, and how to overcome some barriers to the introduction of new technologies. This complicates the requirements engineering process

Risk analysis in manufacturing footprint decisions

A key aspect in the manufacturing footprint analysis is the risk and sensitivity analysis of critical parameters. In order to contribute to efficient industrial methods and tools for making well-founded strategic decisions regarding manufacturing footprint this paper aims to describe the main risks that need to be considered while locating manufacturing activities, and what risk mitigation techniques and strategies that are proper in order to deal with these risks. It is also proposed how the risk analysis should be included in the manufacturing location decision process