Optimization of job allocation in construction organizations to maximize workers' career development opportunities

© 2019 American Society of Civil Engineers. Workforce planning in the construction industry too often ignores the symbiotic relationship between employee and employer objectives by overly concentrating on corporate objectives such as maximizing productivity at the expense of construction workers' career development needs. Overall, the consequence of this approach is suboptimal performance. To address this problem, this paper presents an innovative multiobjective model that enables managers to optimize the relationship between these interdependent corporate priorities. The proposed model was implemented and solved using mixed-integer nonlinear programming on a case study involving the allocation of tasks to employees with different skill levels in a multidisciplinary engineering consulting company. While leading to a small loss of productivity, the results show a significant improvement in the career development of workers compared to conventional productivity-oriented workforce planning models, with on average 8.6% improvement in employees' closeness to their ideal skill set. Furthermore, the model produced Pareto-optimal points and a Pareto curve that enabled client-model users to select optimum job allocation based on their preferences. This research represents a paradigm shift toward a new class of socially responsible workforce planning models in which the objectives of both employees and employers are optimized

Sustainable Lighting Layout in Urban Areas: Maximizing Implicit Coverage and Minimizing Installation Cost

A key decision in the design of urban lighting is the location of the luminaries that are used to illuminate the specified region. The decision needs to account for coverage requirements identified in certain areas, based on safety considerations and nature of work activity, along with ensuring the cost effectiveness of the installation pattern adopted. In this work, a novel approach is presented via a multi-objective mathematical optimization model that results in a sustainable layout of light poles in urban region. A maximal coverage objective, with implicit demand cover, is formulated as a measure of the social requirement in urban lighting, which models security and safety associated with night-time lighting of the urban region. At the same time, the economical aspect of the layout is considered via minimizing the installation cost of the lighting layout. A realistic case example is then solved using the ϵ-constraint method. A Pareto optimal front for the case considered is constructed and analyzed

From BIM towards digital twin: Strategy and future development for smart asset management

With the rising adoption of Building Information Model (BIM) for as-set management within architecture, engineering, construction and owner-operated (AECO) sector, BIM-enabled asset management has been increasingly attracting more attentions in both research and practice. This study provides a comprehensive review and analysis of the state-of-the-art latest research and industry standards development that impact upon BIM and asset management within the operations and maintenance (O&M) phase. However, BIM is not always enough in whole-life cycle asset management, especially in the O&M phase. Therefore, a framework for future development of smart asset management are proposed, integrating the concept of Digital Twin (DT). DT integrates artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics to create dynamic digital models that are able to learn and update the status of the physical counterpart from multiple sources. The findings will contribute to inspiring novel research ideas and promote wide-spread adoption of smart DT-enabled asset management within the O&M phaseCentre for Digital Built Britain, Innovate U

Microwave decontamination of concrete

10.1680/macr.2010.62.12.879Magazine of Concrete Research6212879-885MCOR

Sustainable Procurement and Transport of Construction Materials

Construction industry is the largest global consumer of materials. This huge share comes with the huge responsibility to account for economic, environmental, and social impacts associated with the materials through adoption of sustainable procurement strategies. Sustainable material procurement requires reconciliation among economic, environmental and social impacts of procurement decisions throughout the life cycle of materials. However, this is challenging mainly due to the broad range of economic, environmental and social impacts associated with different stages of material’s life cycle as well as the overlapping impacts that various supply decisions may have on multiple performance areas. Current practices of material procurement are, on the other hand, predominantly influenced by economy of construction stage and little attention is paid to environmental and social considerations over a long-term horizon. Moreover, material supply decisions made currently in practice are commonly traditional and tend to largely overlook the opportunities made available by advances in material science, computing, and decision-making areas. This chapter starts by presenting an overview of sustainability challenges associated with current material procurement practices to highlight the need for adoption of new sustainable approaches and technologies. It then continues by highlighting the challenges associated with adoption of new approaches and the important sustainability criteria to be considered in selection of new sustainable materials, technologies, and procurement strategies. A comprehensive decision-making framework for identifying the most sustainable procurement options in a construction project among various procurement options available is then presented. The framework is founded on the concepts of life cycle thinking and supply chain structure which are incorporated in to a computational module to compare the life cycle impacts of various supply decision based on the selection criteria determined collaboratively by different project stakeholders. The results of such comparative analysis leads to a ranking of various procurement decision alternatives comprised of different combinations of supply decision including material type, material supply structure, location of supplier, and mode of transport

Thermal stress and pore pressure development in microwave heated concrete

Computers and Concrete84425-44

Estimation and minimization of embodied carbon of buildings: A review

© 2017 by the authors. Building and construction is responsible for up to 30% of annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, commonly reported in carbon equivalent unit. Carbon emissions are incurred in all stages of a building's life cycle and are generally categorised into operating carbon and embodied carbon, each making varying contributions to the life cycle carbon depending on the building's characteristics. With recent advances in reducing the operating carbon of buildings, the available literature indicates a clear shift in attention towards investigating strategies to minimize embodied carbon. However, minimizing the embodied carbon of buildings is challenging and requires evaluating the effects of embodied carbon reduction strategies on the emissions incurred in different life cycle phases, as well as the operating carbon of the building. In this paper, the available literature on strategies for reducing the embodied carbon of buildings, as well as methods for estimating the embodied carbon of buildings, is reviewed and the strengths and weaknesses of each method are highlighted

Temperature sensing in microwave heating of concrete using fibre Bragg grating sensors

Magazine of Concrete Research634275-285MCOR

Detecting the presence of chloride in hardened mortar using microwave non-destructive testing

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018. Concrete durability is to a large extent governed by the concrete resistance to the penetration of aggressive substances. One such aggressive substances, present predominantly in marine or coastal environments, is the chloride ion. Chloride in presence of water and oxygen cause corrosion and the measurement of chloride content is an important factor in the detection of early corrosion damage induced by chloride attack. However, there is currently a lack of a reliable nondestructive method to examine the chloride content of the structure in practice. This paper presents the results of an experimental study to investigate the viability of Microwave Non-Destructive Testing (MNDT) to monitor the ingress of the chloride into the concrete. The variations in the electromagnetic properties of mortar specimens with variations in their chloride contents are measured to identify correlations between chloride content and two main electromagnetic properties of mortar; viz. dielectric constant and loss factor. EMPs are measured through two-port measurement performed using a vector network analyzer and S-band rectangular waveguide. The existence of correlations between chloride content of mortar and its electromagnetic properties is confirmed by the preliminary results, highlighting the potential for development of an MNDT technique to monitor the chloride content of concrete in practice