Construction Site Workers’ Awareness on Using Safety Equipment : Case Study

Construction sector is an important sector and contributed significantly to national development. However, this sector poses higher risk to accident. This is due to fact that construction site can be considered as a dangerous zone to workers and to the public. Due to the variety of cases occurs on site, the contractor will usually have to pay the cost related to accidents in the form of higher insurance premium. Despite various measures, accidents still occur at construction sites. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is one of the important means to protect the wearer from hazards in the workplace. Since this equipment is the last frontier of the wearer from worksite hazards, it is important to select it based on the job scope and the intended protection. Therefore, this study was formulated to find out the level of knowledge and awareness of construction workers on PPE usage. It was also important to know what make the workers would want or do not want to use the PPE. It was found in this study that the level of awareness and knowledge among workers on the proper use of PPE is moderate. Construction sites accident can be further be reduced with proper implementation of PPE voluntarily by all workers

Contractors’ Attitude towards Enhancing Safety Performance: Case Study on Construction Firms in Penang

A qualitative study was conducted to investigate the contractors’ attitude towards enhancing the safety performance in construction site. Despite the fact that there are many safety initiatives established by the government, the rates of accidents are still in a critically high condition. Thus the purpose of this research is to study the contractors’ attitude towards enhancing the implementation of safety management system in construction site in order to increase the safety awareness of construction practitioners in construction site and improve the safety condition of construction sites. This study is conducted through oral interviews with the construction practitioners, and visual inspection of construction sites. The attitudes of contractors are evaluated from 3 aspects: Contractors’ efforts in implement and enforce the safety rules, Contractors efforts in overcoming the rate of accidents, and Reasons given by the contractors for not implement safety law

The Impact of Materials and Maintenance Considerations during the Design Stage of Public Buildings in Oman

The purpose of this study is to describe the experiences of architects and civil engineers in the Sultanate of Oman regarding building maintenance during the design of public buildings. This exploratory and descriptive study used a qualitative approach, drawing data from focus groups in particular, to develop a rich and in-depth description of the designers’ building maintenance experiences. Structured interviews were conducted with 15 participants from architecture and civil engineering fields, from which, the interviewees shared the viewpoint that maintenance functions entirely separate from the design and construction process itself, but that it is, in fact, an integral part of the design process and post-occupancy stage. The designer should plan for sufficient maintenance for the whole building life cycle. However, some elements are more difficult to maintain in Oman than in other regions such as roofs, facades and the substructure of buildings. The results showed that salt is the most challenging environmental factor that could cause building defects. This was followed by solar heat, moisture from below ground and, lastly, rain. Most of these defects occurred during the buildings’ post-occupancy phase and were related to inappropriate or poor design. The results also suggested that deficiencies caused by thermal expansion came in the form of cracks, followed by paint decay, dampness, and staining

Optimum generation mix for Malaysia's additional capacity using evolutionary programming

Energy Commission Malaysia is targeting 4100 MW of power generation capacity via competitive bidding to replace capacity from the 1st generation Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) that will be retired from 2015 to 2017 and to cater for future demand growth. Malaysia's generation mix has been long time dependence on a single fuel.This over-dependency is not a good option for long-term energy sustainability and security. This has led Malaysia to find other alternative resources to generate electricity.Some possible options are: 1) coal, 2) nuclear and 3) renewable energy (RE). This paper proposes to determine optimum alternative resources of generation mix for Malaysia's additional capacity in 2015 using Evolutionary Programming (EP) at the least cost. The model takes into account characteristics associated with different technologies, such as the investment cost, the O&M cost, the fuel cost and the heat rate. This paper considers four new expansion candidates i.e. coal, natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy as the major power generation sources. Result shows that, the optimum generation mix for Malaysia's additional capacity in 2015 will be 67.9% is from coal, 22.51% from natural gas, 8.21% from nuclear and 1.25% from RE

Modelling of uncertainty on late delivery for construction industry in environmental issues: A preliminary review

The construction industry has many underlying causes and factors of uncertainty that impact on project completion schedule and time management. Uncertainties in design, procurement, operation and environmental issues are the major sources in construction project that should be managed. Most of researchers proposed a modelling and simulation techniques to solve these uncertainties problem nevertheless not for environmental issues. However, the environmental issues were also leading in significant deviations for project schedule as well in time management. The aims of this paper is to develop an initial model of uncertainty modelling to manage the underlying causes and factors that impact in environmental issue (EI) for construction industry (CI). The uncertainty structure is also presented to show the flows of uncertainty process which will be implemented in this case study as well. The simulation modelling and experimental study will base on a real case study and will verify and validate this suggestion. The validated model might be used as guidance to construction planners and managers to plan their project schedule. Further, the decision support system model-based will be developed for enhancement to integrate all uncertainty's sources to become as a powerful system in the direction of managing the uncertainty

The Impact of Materials and Maintenance Considerations during the Design Stage of Public Buildings in Oman

The purpose of this study is to describe the experiences of architects and civil engineers in the Sultanate of Oman regarding building maintenance during the design of public buildings. This exploratory and descriptive study used a qualitative approach, drawing data from focus groups in particular, to develop a rich and in-depth description of the designers’ building maintenance experiences. Structured interviews were conducted with 15 participants from architecture and civil engineering fields, from which, the interviewees shared the viewpoint that maintenance functions entirely separate from the design and construction process itself, but that it is, in fact, an integral part of the design process and post-occupancy stage. The designer should plan for sufficient maintenance for the whole building life cycle. However, some elements are more difficult to maintain in Oman than in other regions such as roofs, facades and the substructure of buildings. The results showed that salt is the most challenging environmental factor that could cause building defects. This was followed by solar heat, moisture from below ground and, lastly, rain. Most of these defects occurred during the buildings’ post-occupancy phase and were related to inappropriate or poor design. The results also suggested that deficiencies caused by thermal expansion came in the form of cracks, followed by paint decay, dampness, and staining

Contractors’ Attitude towards Enhancing Safety Performance: Case Study on Construction Firms in Penang

A qualitative study was conducted to investigate the contractors’ attitude towards enhancing the safety performance in construction site. Despite the fact that there are many safety initiatives established by the government, the rates of accidents are still in a critically high condition. Thus the purpose of this research is to study the contractors’ attitude towards enhancing the implementation of safety management system in construction site in order to increase the safety awareness of construction practitioners in construction site and improve the safety condition of construction sites. This study is conducted through oral interviews with the construction practitioners, and visual inspection of construction sites. The attitudes of contractors are evaluated from 3 aspects: Contractors’ efforts in implement and enforce the safety rules, Contractors efforts in overcoming the rate of accidents, and Reasons given by the contractors for not implement safety law

Se-lection and Screening of Superior Genotypes for Quality Planting Stock Based on Vegetative Growth Performance of Some Selected 12-Year-Old Acacia Species

Abstract Production of quality wood is a big problem in forestry plantation since trees grown in plantation of some high value temperate and tropical hardwood species tend to produce low value, short butt logs and bolts due to crooked stems, low fork heights and delayed shedding of lower branches. Result from existing Acacia plantation in Malaysia indicated that most existing Acacia plantation trees especially Acacia auriculiformis and Acacia mangium, fork very heavily which leads to the formation of multiple leaders more than one and some are fork so close to the ground that they will produce little to no merchantable wood. In this context, a research study was initiated to select and recommend the best performing tree species or provenance suited for timber production in Malaysia with respect to growth and other characteristics. Species/provenance/progeny test was conducted on four species of Acacia namely, A. mangium, A. auriculiformis, A. crassicarpa and A. aulococarpa, each with 4 provenances originated from Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Queensland (QL). The growth performance of the provenances was monitored in terms of some quantitative and qualitative characteristics to evaluate the genetic variation and growth performance of a base breeding population. 20 progenies for each species were selected and randomly planted with 16 trees representing each progenies in a trial plot laid out in a randomized complete block * Corresponding author. M. S. Kumar et al. 218 design consisting of four blocks as replication. The study showed that there were significant different (p < 0.05) between species, provenance and progenies for their growth performance. Generally with regard to growth, A. mangium performed better compared to other Acacia species in all of the aspect tested and it was followed by A. crassicarpa, A. aulococarpa and A. auriculiformis. There were also significant differences between provenance within regions and progenies within provenances in all quantitative and qualitative traits tested in this study. Generally, provenance and progenies selected from PNG excelled those from QL both in quantitative and qualitative characteristics. The top performing progenies of Acacia species are CG 1854 of (Bensbach WP) and KN000107 (SW of Boset WP) of A. mangium, BVG2609 (Bensbach WP) of A. crassicarpa, BVG 00835 (WP Morehead) and MM1016 (Arufi E Morehead WP) of A. aulococarpa and JSL363 (Wenlock River) and BVG 2657 (Bansbach) of A. auriculiformis