The how and why of plant-related fatalities in the Australian construction industry

Drawing on the findings of coronial investigations, this research aimed to investigate the circumstances and causes of fatal incidents involving plant in the Australian construction industry. The analysis sought to provide greater insight into how and why fatal incidents occur and to inform recommendations for the prevention of fatal incidents involving plant

The impact of construction commencement intervals on residential production building

One model of operation that production builders can use is continuous construction. They build typical house models and generally work with the same subcontractors. In this continuous operation, an order from the sales department triggers the process, which only commences construction when the first required crew becomes available. In this system the decision to commence construction relies on the readiness of the first activity. However the effects of this decision on the whole construction process are often ignored. This research aims to shed light on the importance of construction commencement decisions by highlighting the consequences of this decision on the whole production system

House completion time in Australia: workflow planning approach

The Australian house building industry has seen an increase in the average house completion time in the past decade. This increase in some Australian states was quite dramatic. For instance, Western Australia faced a seventy percent increase in the average house completion time during this period. Since houses make up more than seventy-five percent of dwellings in Australia, this increase affected a large proportion of housing supply in the country. This research addresses this issue at industry and company level by investigating house completion time using a workflow-based planning approach. For this purpose, a national and five State case studies (Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia) are used at industry level. At company level, production house building is adopted for the study. The research starts with possible explanations for changes in house completion time suggested by activity-based and workflow-based planning approaches. Investigation of the relationship between average house completion time, number of house completions and number of houses under construction is undertaken by comparison between predicted number of houses under construction using Little’s law and actual data. Research at company level includes modelling of an actual house building process, simulation of different operational strategies and exploration of their effects on house completion time. The strategies investigated in the research are the control of workflow, control on construction commencement and having different house options in the process. The result of research at industry level shows that there is a strong correlation between average house completion time and number of houses under construction. Little’s law predicts the number of houses under construction by a small error and it holds true for the national and State house building industries. The existence of a two-phase relationship between house completion time and number of houses under construction is demonstrated and house building industry capacity is estimated for the whole country and different States. This is the maximum number of houses that the industry can work on without increasing the completion time. At company level, the simulation of different levels of workflow shows that constant workflow returns constant completion time. Reducing the construction commencement intervals in order to achieve higher resource utilization may increase house completion time dramatically. Further, when the new house option is smaller than the current options, its completion time fluctuates between its minimum completion time and the completion time of the largest house option. The modelling also shows that, in the case of the launch of a house option larger than the current options, queues in the production operation are inevitable and the completion time of all house options grows infinitely. To summarise, the research investigates house completion time in Australia and highlights the effect of workflow on this parameter at industry and company level. It demonstrates the applicability of a workflow-based planning approach in the house building industry and recommends it for use by housing policy makers, house builders and housing researchers for analysis of industry’s dynamics and understanding of house building process

Australian suburban house building: industry organisation, practices and constraints - AHURI Final Report No. 213

This report presents the outcomes of a research project conducted by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) RMIT Research Centre on the way a significant proportion of new suburban detached housing is built in Australia. The report examines the ‘volume building’ housing industry that supplies detached housing, the dominant form of contemporary new housing

Manufacture Techniques of Chitosan-Based Microcapsules to Enhance Functional Properties of Textiles

In recent years, the textile industry has been moving to novel concepts of products, which could deliver to the user, improved performances. Such smart textiles have been proven to have the potential to integrate within a commodity garment advanced feature and functional properties of different kinds. Among those functionalities, considerable interest has been played in functionalizing commodity garments in order to make them positively interact with the human body and therefore being beneficial to the user health. This kind of functionalization generally exploits biopolymers, a class of materials that possess peculiar properties such as biocompatibility and biodegradability that make them suitable for bio-functional textile production. In the context of biopolymer chitosan has been proved to be an excellent potential candidate for this kind of application given its abundant availability and its chemical properties that it positively interacts with biological tissue. Notwithstanding the high potential of chitosan-based technologies in the textile sectors, several issues limit the large-scale production of such innovative garments. In facts the morphologies of chitosan structures should be optimized in order to make them better exploit the biological activity; moreover a suitable process for the application of chitosan structures to the textile must be designed. The application process should indeed not only allow an effective and durable fixation of chitosan to textile but also comply with environmental rules concerning pollution emission and utilization of harmful substances. This chapter reviews the use of microencapsulation technique as an approach to effectively apply chitosan to the textile material while overcoming the significant limitations of finishing processes. The assembly of chitosan macromolecules into microcapsules was proved to boost the biological properties of the polymer thanks to a considerable increase in the surface area available for interactions with the living tissues. Moreover, the incorporation of different active substances into chitosan shells allows the design of multifunctional materials that effectively combine core and shell properties. Based on the kind of substances to be incorporated, several encapsulation processes have been developed. The literature evidences how the proper choices concerning encapsulation technology, chemical formulations, and process parameter allow tuning the properties and the performances of the obtained microcapsules. Furthermore, the microcapsules based finishing process have been reviewed evidencing how the microcapsules morphology can positively interact with textile substrate allowing an improvement in the durability of the treatment. The application of the chitosan shelled microcapsules was proved to be capable of imparting different functionalities to textile substrates opening possibilities for a new generation of garments with improved performances and with the potential of protecting the user from multiple harms. Lastly, a continuous interest was observed in improving the process and formulation design in order to avoid the usage of toxic substances, therefore, complying with an environmentally friendly approach

Strategies for Effective Teaching in Project Management

Preparing project management students for their future life and work requires actively developing and evidencing a suite of transferable skills and attributes. This chapter reports on how a student-centered pedagogy, which included the use of guided sequential exercises, and the collection of instantaneous student responses through a personal response system (PRS), was implemented in a large first year undergraduate Project Management course. The students perceptions of this pedagogy demonstrate that they found the pedagogical approach supported their learning and fostered deeper engagement in the course, with the most useful aspect of the course perceived to be its interactive nature. The chapter affirms the importance of giving life to a learning orientation conception of learning. The chapter has implications for ensuring learner engagement in the particular discipline of project management and for good practice in large class context in higher education

Examining the drivers and states of organizational change for greater use of prefabrication in construction projects

Many studies have focused on the technologies and reasoning behind off-site construction and failed to address the implications to organizational change. This papaer aims to investigate the readiness of construction project organizations (CPOs) to accommodate new project environments that demand a more extensive use of prefabrication. Semistructured interviews of project managers were conducted in Melbourne, Australia. The results indicate that CPOs were well aware of the need to change operational practices in order to capitalize on the positive effects of off-site construction. A variety of practice changes were also undertaken. However, CPOs appear to be failing to fully commit to the realization of organizational change because they focused primarily on planned approaches like revising policies and performance management systems. Emergent organizational change strategies like rewarding innovation and fostering bottom-up communication are still underdeveloped

A case study analysis of fatal incidents involving excavators in the Australian construction industry

The paper analyses the nature and causes of fatal incidents involving excavators occurring in the Australian construction industry. A three-level incident causation model developed by researchers at Loughborough University forms the theoretical framework for this analysis, which seeks to identify immediate circumstances, shaping factors and originating influences in selected incidents

Little's law for the US house building industry

Although the housebuilding industry is a significant player in the housing supply pipeline, housing experts have paid little attention to this player and have focused more on the other players such as policy makers, financiers, and land developers. Research has tended to focus on house builders and individual housebuilding operations as the constructs of the whole house building industry. However, analysis of the dynamics of the whole industry as a single system has remained unexplored. This research investigates these dynamics in the US housebuilding industry and explores the applicability of Little's law at the national level. The focus of the study is on single unit dwellings and the time span of the study is forty years between 1971 and 2010. Single unit dwellings made up seventy six percent of all dwellings completed in 2010. The analysis commences with the adaptation of the law for the house building industry. The industry's parameters such as number of house starts, completion time, and number of houses under construction are used as the proxies for arrival rate, cycle time, and work in process. A time factor is added, and the average house completion time is predicted using the law. The predictions are compared with the actual data using error metrics and visual comparisons. The result shows that Little's law can predict the dynamics of the industry with 5 percent error. Thus, it is applicable in the house building industry and can be used for the analysis of the industry's dynamics. This research demonstrates that the US house building industry operates similar to a production line, and therefore offers industry practitioners and industry analysts powerful techniques for better understanding housing suppl

Causes of fatal accidents involving cranes in the Australian construction industry

In ten years from 2004 to 2013, 359 workers died in the Australian construction industry because of work related causes. This paper investigates crane-related fatalities in order to find the upstream causation of such accidents. The National Coroners' Information System (NCIS) database was searched to identify fatal accidents in the construction industry involving the use of a crane. The narrative description of the cases provided in the coroners' findings and associated documents were content analysed to identify the contributing causal factors within the context of each case. The findings show that the most frequent crane-related accident types were those that were struck by load, and electrocution. The most prevalent immediate circumstance causes were layout of the site and restricted space. The two most commonly identified shaping factors were physical site constraints and design of construction process. Inadequate risk management system was identified as the main originating influence on the accidents. This paper demonstrates that a systemic causation model can provide considerable insight into how originating influences, shaping factors, and immediate circumstances combine to produce accidents. This information is extremely useful in informing the development of prevention strategies, particularly in the case of commonly occurring accident types