Sicurezza nei cantieri post-sisma e prevenzione cadute dall'alto

Si considerano i rischi presenti nei cantieri della ricostruzione delle aree colpite dal sisma dell’Emilia del 2012. Il rischio dovuto a crolli improvvisi e a cadute dall’alto a causa di eventuali scosse sismiche, anche di assestamento, è considerato dal punto di vista della sicurezza degli operatori di cantiere. La strategia proposta per la mitigazione dei rischi per la sicurezza dei lavoratori è basata sulla pianificazione dell’emergenza e sulla programmazione delle fasi di cantiere. Il metodo di programmazione proposto è quello dei diagrammi tempo/spazio, integrato con la contestuale definizione dei rischi con il metodo del Risk Mapping. Il programma operativo delle opere che ne deriva, quale ad esempio il programma delle demolizioni, consente di definire per le aree di lavoro i fondamentali rischi presenti in ogni fase costruttiva, come ad esempio quello dei collasso intempestivo e quello di caduta dall’alto, e permette quindi la tempestiva azione preventiva e protettiva

Quality Driven Scheduling in Construction

Despite the enormous research effort that has been made in the last fifty years, the goal of construction scheduling quality seems still a long way far. This dissertation has the aim of contributing to the understanding of the quality of construction scheduling, and three issues have been chosen: schedule quality; quality and project control; scheduling approaches for construction. The goal of the whole research work is to study quality in scheduling and project controlling, and to propose some possible research lines to better understand the needed quality for the planning, scheduling, and controlling approaches in construction projects, i.e. quality driven scheduling.Starting from the development of the Critical Path Method (CPM), PERT and Precedence Diagramming, until the recent Location-Based Planning, project scheduling has been developing and improving continuously. However, construction project scheduling systems are still considered to miss the goal of increasing project control efficiency. Project Scheduling is, indeed, one of the basic tools of construction project management, and the success of a project partially depends on having a high quality schedule that defines when each activity will occur and with which duration, and its logic links with other activities and their sequences. Moreover, construction productivity is considered to be improved through scheduling as it can manage different problems such as process productivity, coordination and safety, and connections between systems and processes. Quality of construction scheduling has been object of research in a rather limited manner, and the need of recommended schedule development practices for quality assurance of scheduling processes and deliverables still exists. Therefore, the research work is based upon three main research questions: a) what is schedule quality? b) what does scheduling produce in terms of quality? c) can the activity network schedule model be process-oriented and quality driven? The gained results propose the following regarding to the research questions.a) What is schedule quality? Schedule quality is the fulfilment of many schedule requirements, with the aim of satisfying the needs of work structuring of construction process and of scheduling mechanics. A method of understanding and measuring schedule quality in construction, termed “Schedule Health Assessment” is proposed. The Schedule Health Assessment method also has the aim of guiding the project scheduler in the schedule development process.b) What does scheduling produce in terms of quality? Project schedule is the basis for project control, mostly addressing time and progress of activities, and costs, while quality control is usually separated. Although, these three project objectives are interdependent, and process and product quality management should be fully included in project control. Quality control should be integrated in the project schedule through a “Quality Breakdown Structure”.c) Can the activity network schedule model be process-oriented and quality driven? Activity network creates logic of work structuring. A process-oriented scheduling method for construction has to deal with resources, workflow and spaces. The proposed method, termed Repetitive Networking Technique (REPNET), creates a quality driven construction-oriented schedule model by plotting network logic on resource-space charts and on flowlines.The research results suggest the implementation of these three approaches in the project scheduling of a construction project can improve the quality driven scheduling of the project, meaning the implementation of a good quality schedule, the integration in project control processes of the delivered quality and the process-oriented scheduling

Assessing Environmental Impact of Green Buildings through LCA Methods: Acomparison between Reinforced Concrete and Wood Structures in the European Context

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be used successfully to make decisions in sustainable building design and construction. Nevertheless, the method is rarely utilized for many reasons. First of all,in the common practice the energy consumption during the period of use is considered the main indicator of the environmental impactof buildings. Secondarily, databases relative to products, components and their installation cannot be found soeasily. The goal of this paper is tomake a comparison between two different construction technologies through Life Cycle Assessment methods, trying to understand the potentialities and the limitations of the available LCA tools. Although results may be limited to the specific context of Europe, we try to put in evidence the usefulness of the method in a design perspective, if carefully selected and adapted. The comparison regards two different structural solutions for a mid-sizedgreen building:an innovative wood structureand a reinforced concrete structure, built with a consolidated technology.According to the LCA approach,overall wood structures are environmentally less impactful thanconcrete ones, but different kinds of impact emerge in a wider perspective

A Smart Contract-based BPMN Choreography Execution for Management of Construction Processes

Construction management can be grouped into two different levels: strategic early planning, that provides the baseline for project monitoring, and short time initiatives, based on objectives and self-organization from actors who are involved in on-site processes. The latter can be considered as a complex system management issue since it presents emergent behaviors thus it can not be handled in a traditional way. The passage from project scheduling to on site operations management requires a change of perspective. On site short time planning is a process of forecasting future outcomes therefore it deals with uncertainty and indeterminacy. At present this is managed through the representation of many separate orchestrations and this does not allow to eliminate the inefficiencies that arise at the level of synchronization of the individual tasks performed by organizations with contractually separate management. Efficiency in construction management implies to take into consideration choreographies because they better reflect synchronization of different organizations management processes. On the other hand, information processed as a trigger for distributed activities on different management does not guarantee process traceability while smart contracts linked to single task execution assure both promptness and irreversible tracking at single task level. The actual execution of the processes depends both on what happens and on the information that flows between the subjects who actually carry out processes asynchronous to each other, so the only possibility to synchronize them is information. This research aims to describe a framework for applying BPMN choreographies to construction site processes in order to better modeling processes for smart contracts application. The choice of applying BPMN instead of CPM lays in the fact that it allows to model the information flows as well as the preparatory aspects and in addition it allows to represent decision-making moments. Every single activity in the baseline can be modelled as a choreography at a lower level. On the other hand, process performance monitoring can be performed thanks to blockchain tasks notarization. Concrete casting quality assessment process has been chosen as use case. BPMN choreography of this process has been modelled and blockchain application for tasks and information notarization has been development and tested on a construction site

Teaching BIM: a comparison between actual and future perspectives

Building Information Modeling BIM in AEC education is a promising teaching strategy. The aim of the European project BENEDICT is to analyze teaching approaches to Building Information Modeling (BIM) for the construction industry. The goal of this research is therefore to perform an exhaustive analysis on the methods of transmission of BIM awareness and education in some American universities with the aim of comparing them with the BENEDICT approach developed in Italian, Estonian and Finnish Universities. Therefore, a teaching plan that aims to standardize and unify relevant teaching programs, tools and methods is developed, tackling existing skill gaps and mismatches between academia and industry

Programmazione delle attivita’ connesse alla procedura di valutazione di impatto ambientale relativa alla realizzazione di grandi opere infrastrutturali

Si analizza l’uso di strumenti di Project Management per la progettazione di grandi opere infrastrutturali. Si approfondisce in particolare la problematica della procedura di Valutazione di Impatto Ambientale (VIA), che rappresenta una fase decisiva per il buon esito dell’intero processo costruttivo. La VIA è caratterizzata da una elevata complessità gestionale a causa delle molteplici variabili in gioco per la definizione delle attività del team di progetto. La VIA comporta l’effettuazione di un insieme di attività di carattere progettuale che rappresentano un sistema decisionale. Il sistema di pianificazione, programmazione e controllo delle attività può quindi essere fondato su modelli realizzati con l’impiego di Reticoli per Attività Elementari. Si evidenziano i fondamentali vantaggi e aspetti critici della modellizzazione della procedura di VIA per la programmazione delle attività