Evaluating Social Performance of Construction Projects: An Empirical Study

The concept of sustainable development is gaining increasing popularity in construction industry. Previous studies have prioritized on the sustainable performance of construction projects from perspectives of economy and environment, social performance of construction projects has not drawn much attention. Social performance of construction projects refers to the extent which the projects meet the needs of current and future generations. Therefore, social performance of construction projects is critical for project success as well as social sustainability. However, a systematic framework for evaluating social performance of construction projects is absent. At the same time, existing methods are time-consuming and subject to certain degree of subjectivity. To overcome these limitations, the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) method is introduced in this paper to evaluate social performance of construction projects. A real-world hospital redevelopment project was employed as an empirical study to develop the systematic framework for social performance evaluation using FAHP method. By analyzing previous studies and the hospital redevelopment project, a systematic framework with 18 indicators of five dimensions (i.e., socio-economy development, socio-environment development, social flexibility, public service development, and environment and resource conservation) was developed. Social performance of two proposed schemes for hospital redevelopment project were evaluated using the FAHP approach. Results show Scheme 2 has a relative higher social performance sore than that of Scheme 1 and the hospital redevelopment project would improve socio-economy development, socio-environment development, social flexibility, and public service development, while it brings challenges to environment and resource conservation. More seriously, results indicate the hospital project may threaten healthcare and disease prevention of the local communities. Therefore, more measures should be taken to improve social performance of the hospital redevelopment project. The empirical study shows the proposed framework using FAHP method is viable for conducting social performance evaluation of construction projects, which could be helpful to improve social performance, reduce negative social impacts, and contribute to the social sustainability of construction projects

Critical Factors of Promoting Design for Safety in China’s Subway Engineering Industry

DfS (design for safety) can significantly reduce the engineering safety risk, decreasing the economic and social losses caused by safety accidents. To introduce DfS in China’s subway engineering, and with the help of a literature review and semi-structured expert interview, this study sorted out 28 promoting factors (including policy environment, practice, guidelines and tools, and education four categories) and seven impediment factors to DfS implementation. Through 80 questionnaire surveys of staff from universities, research institutes, and subway development, design, construction, and operation companies, this study screened out 26 promoting factors and seven impediment factors to assess the relationship between the two types of factors. The research provides a reference for DfS implementation in countries that have not implemented DfS before, such as China

Using Interpretative Structural Modeling to Identify Critical Success Factors for Safety Management in Subway Construction: A China Study

With the rapid development of urbanization in China, a vast number of subway projects are under construction and planned in many cities. However, the complexities of the environment in subway construction inherently bring about many uncertainties and risk factors. Understanding the inherent properties of the critical success factors (CSFs) will contribute significantly to the subway construction. From this perspective, this paper aims to identify the CSFs for safety management in subway construction. This study screened preliminary CSFs through a literature review and in-depth interviews with experts in China. Based on the data gathered and subsequently analyzed from the questionnaire surveys, a final total of 24 CSFs were identified. Then, interpretative structural modeling was employed to ascertain the interrelations among them. The result showed that the factors concerning the engineering survey and design not only occupy relatively higher scores in the questionnaire survey but also contribute significantly latent impacts on other factors. In addition, the creation of a reasonable schedule and the investment of the safety measures were also found to have a fundamental impact on the safety management of subway construction. This research guided the safety managers in determining the most important safety factors they must face and provided them valuable information that could promote safety performance and decrease the number of accidents over the course of subway construction

Validating DFS concept in lifecycle subway projects in China based on incident case analysis and network analysis

Regardless of potential benefits of design for safety (DFS) concept for lifecycle safety management in construction industry, DFS adoption as an early intervention has been slower than expected. While existing research mainly con­centrates on construction and operation phases, the role of design phase in construction safety management is always ignored. To validate the influence of DFS concept on lifecycle safety performance, this research conducted an incident case analysis (ICA) based on 442 cases collected from lifecycle subway projects, and a subway design-incident classification model (SDICM) was developed to help identify their relationship to DFS concept. Network theory was applied to study the interdependence of 22 subsystems obtained from China’s code for metro design in lifecycle safety performance. Research findings show 236 out of 442 accidents are linked to DFS. Compared with construction phase, operation phase is more susceptible to design work. Station Building (SB), Section Construction (SC), Platform Screen Doors (PSD), Vehicle Systems (VES) and Power Supply Systems (PSS) are identified as having the highest number of accidents. The results of network analysis are consistent with ICA and demonstrate the safety interdependence of subsystems. This research can help improve the cognizance of DFS, and the identified subsystems should be given priority in the design phase

Evaluating Social Performance of Construction Projects: An Empirical Study

The concept of sustainable development is gaining increasing popularity in construction industry. Previous studies have prioritized on the sustainable performance of construction projects from perspectives of economy and environment, social performance of construction projects has not drawn much attention. Social performance of construction projects refers to the extent which the projects meet the needs of current and future generations. Therefore, social performance of construction projects is critical for project success as well as social sustainability. However, a systematic framework for evaluating social performance of construction projects is absent. At the same time, existing methods are time-consuming and subject to certain degree of subjectivity. To overcome these limitations, the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) method is introduced in this paper to evaluate social performance of construction projects. A real-world hospital redevelopment project was employed as an empirical study to develop the systematic framework for social performance evaluation using FAHP method. By analyzing previous studies and the hospital redevelopment project, a systematic framework with 18 indicators of five dimensions (i.e., socio-economy development, socio-environment development, social flexibility, public service development, and environment and resource conservation) was developed. Social performance of two proposed schemes for hospital redevelopment project were evaluated using the FAHP approach. Results show Scheme 2 has a relative higher social performance sore than that of Scheme 1 and the hospital redevelopment project would improve socio-economy development, socio-environment development, social flexibility, and public service development, while it brings challenges to environment and resource conservation. More seriously, results indicate the hospital project may threaten healthcare and disease prevention of the local communities. Therefore, more measures should be taken to improve social performance of the hospital redevelopment project. The empirical study shows the proposed framework using FAHP method is viable for conducting social performance evaluation of construction projects, which could be helpful to improve social performance, reduce negative social impacts, and contribute to the social sustainability of construction projects

Research on performance measurement and simulation of civil air defense PPP projects using system dynamics

Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode is increasingly applied in civil air defense (CAD) projects to improve project quality and reduce the government’s financial pressure. Because CAD project has different attributes during wartime and peacetime states, it’s necessary to comprehensively consider the project performance under different states to conduct scientific performance measurement. This paper focuses on the process of construction, operation, and handover of CAD PPP project to construct a unified project performance measurement indicator system, then a system dynamics (SD) model is established to carry out dynamic performance measurement and simulation of CAD PPP project under different social states respectively. A case study is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed SD model, model validation, sensitivity analysis and result analysis were included as well. The study result can make the project performance management of CAD PPP more scientific and reasonable, and help decision-makers to formulate effective performance improvement strategies. It’s found out that government plays an important role in CAD PPP projects, when resources are limited, the government should give priority to measures such as reducing tax rates and increasing subsidies to ensure project benefits. The research methods can also provide reference for performance measurement of other PPP projects

Automatic identification and quantification of safety risks embedded in design stage: a BIM-enhanced approach

Design stage plays a decisive role in safety risk management of the whole life cycle for construction projects. However, existing research mostly pay attention to post-accident management and lack pre-management consciousness. Based on the concept of design for safety (DFS), this paper explains how design optimization can enhance the safety performance for construction projects. Firstly, use accident causality theory and trajectory crossing theory to clarify the logical relationship between safety accidents and design process. Then, identify risk sources of safety accidents in deep foundation pit of subway projects and form a safety management knowledge base. Thirdly, based on design and review rules in the knowledge base and improved FEC risk quantification method, quantify the design oriented subway construction safety risks. Finally, use BIM secondary development technology to realize automatic examination and visualization of safety risks. A case study was conducted to verify this research framework. This paper can be a supplement to the existing risk management theoretical research

Influencing Factor Identification and Simulation for Urban Metro System Operation Processes—A Resilience Enhancement Perspective

When confronted with rainstorms and flood disturbances, the operational processes of urban metro systems demonstrate vulnerabilities to attacks, inadequate resistance, and sluggish recovery characteristics. The flood resilience of UMS operational processes requires urgent enhancements. This paper aims to enhance the flood resilience of urban metro operation processes by proposing a three-stage PEL resilience enhancement framework: prevention resilience, response resilience, and learning resilience. Additionally, it summarizes the influencing factors on UMS flood resilience from five dimensions: natural-physical-social-management-economic (NPSME). By employing system dynamics as a simulation tool, this study elucidates the logical interconnections among these influential factors. Furthermore, by utilizing economic change conditions as an illustrative example, it effectively simulates the response characteristics of both standardized benchmark scenarios and economic change scenarios. Based on these simulation results, corresponding strategies for flood resilience enhancement are proposed to offer valuable insights for metro operation management. The Nanjing metro system was taken as a case study, where relevant historical data were collected and strategies were simulated for different development scenarios to validate the effectiveness and rationality of the proposed method for enhancing resilience. The simulation results demonstrate that changes in economic conditions and population structure are the primary factors influencing the enhancement of flood resilience in UMS operations

Strategy formulation for the sustainable development of smart cities: A case study of Nanjing, China

Smart cities possess huge potential in future urban development. However, the critical problems in developing sustainable smart cities in China are the lack of clear strategies and effective strategy planning tools. Therefore, reasonable plans and strategies play important roles in helping the government develop sustainable smart cities. In this study, 16 SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat) factors were identified. According to a structured questionnaire survey about SWOT factors, an integrated method, composed of SWOT and AHP (analytic hierarchy process) was conducted. A case study was conducted in Nanjing, China. The most powerful facilitators (strengths and opportunities) and the most powerful obstacles (weaknesses and threats) for developing Smart Nanjing City (SNC) were identified. The strategic intensity and value of the elements were confirmed. Moreover, proactive strategies were proposed including strengthening intelligent clusters, establishing governance ecosystem, and providing integrated services for SNC, which can be considered as policy suggestions for SNC, providing hybrid strategies for a planning approach integrating bottom-up and top-down design to develop smart cities, as a reference for other global cities. Moreover, the proposed AHP-SWOT hybrid method can be used as an effective quantitative strategy planning tool to help other authorities determine appropriate strategies for developing smart cities

Research on Safety Resilience Evaluation Model of Data Center Physical Infrastructure: An ANP-Based Approach

With the development of the digital economy, the number and scale of data centers are expanding rapidly. Data centers are playing an increasingly important role in social and economic development. However, a short downtime of a data center may result in huge losses. The safety management of data centers’ physical infrastructure is of great significance to address this concern. We applied resilience theory to the safety management of data center physical infrastructures. We analyzed the resilience connotation and evaluated the system resilience using the resilience indexes. The data center infrastructure was regarded as a system of systems. Through theoretical analysis, the resilience framework of data center infrastructures was established, which formed the main dimensions of resilience assessment. The Delphi method determined the resilience indices, and the ANP method was adopted to set up the evaluation model. The results revealed the important indexes affecting data center infrastructure system safety resilience. Based on the findings, this paper argues for improving redundancy and adaptability, paying attention to the resilience management of energy flow and thermal flow, and establishing an automatic systematic data management system. These suggested measures would not only effectively make contributions to the data center infrastructure safety management theory but also provide an important reference for construction industry practices