• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.25
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• pp.3-40
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• 2005

Many Korean construction companies have been performing a variety of overseas construction projects since the 1970s. It is unfortunate that in many cases they have had to suffer big losses caused by errors and defects in the design and construction of the projects. In the author's opinion, however, there were losses that could have been avoided if they had understood better the feature and content of the particular construction contract. Few lawyers and scholars in Korea have been interested in the research and study of international construction contracts. This is mainly because they do not have access to practical sources outside of Korea for them to research and study since the contracts undertaken have been dealt with by law firms in other jurisdictions to which the disputes apply. This article is aiming primarily at the introduction of the issues which the practitioners are likely to confront in the process of reviewing and performing the international construction contract. In some cases solutions are sought about these issues based upon the FIDIC standard terms and conditions, the actual experience of practice, and UNIDROIT Principles, etc. It is reasonable to say that all the issues related to the international construction contract cannot be covered in a short article like this. The author wishes this article could induce subsequent studies on international construction contracts for further research. It has to be noted that from time to time Korean construction practices have been compared to the international ones for better understanding. This article mostly includes cases where the Korean construction companies go overseas for their projects, while there are some cases where foreign developers and financial investors participated in domestic projects in which international construction contracts forms were adopted. A few precedent domestic writings about international construction contracts seems to lack emphasis on the points that there are several standard construction contract forms and that they are different. The differences are mainly in accordance with who bears the design responsibility, how the owner has to make progress payments to the contractor and who the funding source for the project is. This article tries to make it clear that there are significant differences between the standard contract forms, e.g. a simple construction form, a design-build form and an EPC/turnkey form of contract. Again, the author hopes that this article can arouse the interest in the international construction contracts from both academic and practical fields, so that many subsequent advanced articles can help our construction industry become much more competitive in the world through awareness of the methods of procurement and administration of the contracts.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.42-53
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• 2012

Lawsuits related to defects in apartment buildings involve a range of legal issues, based on which the current subjective judgment system has been established. This study aims to organize the judgment system by stage of lawsuit from a legal perspective by reviewing the factors dealt with in precedent research. The main issues at hand include assignment of obligation, the day on which the computation of exclusion period begins and the day on which the defect repair is completed. The rationality of the current subjective judgment system could be determined by reviewing the recent cases. Based on the findings of the review, the following are suggestions for improvements and complements of the system. First, the process of assignment of obligation should be systemized, and the guarantee insurance system that provides a warranty deed should be improved as well. In addition, improvements and systemization should be made to clarify the responsibilities for any defect arising from the agreements that are not stipulated on the contract, computation of abatement rate of compensation and the system by which the responsibility for the defects is completed when residents acquire ownership from rental status.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.154-161
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• 2011

In increasingly competitive market conditions, domestic construction companies are struggling to secure a competitive edge by increasing consumer satisfaction. In these circumstances, a greater emphasis needs to be put on providing an upgraded level of quality in the area of addressing defects to the satisfaction of customers, which is considered to have a great impact on customer satisfaction. This empirical study of the relationships among service quality, customer satisfaction, and repurchase intention aims to provide basis data for increasing service quality, particularly in dealing with the defect issues facing construction companies. To this end, a literature review was carried out on the concept of service quality along with defect issues, and customer satisfaction and influential factors were identified. Building on these foundations and findings, a survey was administered to residents in housing dwellings such as apartments. The results of this study are expected to heighten awareness of the need for increased service quality, which may have a critical influence on customer satisfaction and repurchase intention, and will thereby contribute to enhancing competitiveness and other aspects of the current construction industry.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute Of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.233-239
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• 2006

As the number of aged-housing has been rapidly increased, many kinds of defects and problems such as degeneration of housing environment, structural performance, and equipment performance have been appeared. The reconstruction as the way to improve the aged-housing has been used mostly because the legal process of the reconstruction is relatively easy. On the other hand, it has caused problems such as the lack of natural aggregate, the environmental damages owing to construction wastes, the loss of national resources, and the lack of the housing for rent nearby the reconstruction area. This problems limit active tying into the reconstruction business at present in the industrial and political perspective. In this context, it is required to revitalize the remodeling rather than the reconstruction. In order to reach this objective, this research aims at identifying the user-oriented performance for the housing industry and developing the new technologies. It is expected that the result of this research can contribute to more revitalize the remodeling as tying researches in terms of design, structure, equipment, and construction.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.26-33
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• 2013

BMI nozzles in bottom head of the nuclear vessel are one of major components in nuclear power plants. The BMI nozzles have high possibility to generate PWSCC(primary water stress corrosion crack) according to recent foreign case although operation temperature is lower then the upper head of the nuclear vessel. Thus, nondestructive inspection of the BMI nozzles is required. But, inspection of BMI nozzles is not easy since the BMI nozzles placed in high radiated area and inside the nozzles filled with boric acid. Thus, in this study, a TOFD transducer for inspection of BMI and automated scanner system with water were developed. Also, validation of performance of the developed transducer and system are performed using specimens with artificial defects.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2017.10a
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• pp.89-98
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• 2017

The floor heating method generally uses a wet construction method including the installation of resilient material, lightweight foam concrete, heating piping, and finishing mortar. Such a wet construction method not only delays other internal finishing processes during curing period for two mortar pouring process, but also has a disadvantage that it is difficult to replace the floor heating layer when it deteriorated because it is integrated with the frame. Dry floor heating construction method can be a good alternative in that it can solve these defects. Conversely, when it applied to the wall structure that is vulnerable to the interlayer noise compared with the column-beam structure, the question about the heavy-impact sound(HIS) insulation performance is raised. Therefore, conventional dry floor heating method is hard to apply to the wall structure apartments. Therefore, for the purpose to improve the applicability of dry floor heating method in wall structure apartments, this study investigated the change of floor impact sound, especially HIS insulation performance which is one of the required performance for the floor structure. This study tried to examine whether the change of heavy-impact sound pressure level(SPL) shows a tendency at the significant level according to the shape and mass of the floor structure. Through filed experiments on wall structure apartment, this study confirmed that the form of the raised floor shows better HIS insulation performance than the fully-supported form. In addition, it was also confirmed that the HIS insulation performance increases with the mass on the upper part. Moreover, this study found the fact that a mass of about 30 kg/m² or more should be placed on the upper structure to reduce the heavy-impact SPL according to the bang machine measuring method. Although this study has a limit due to insufficient experiment samples, if the accuracy of this study is increased, it will contribute to the diffusion of dry floor heating by setting the HIS insulation performance target and designing the dry floor heating structure that meets the target.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.110-118
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• 2016

Construction projects are getting more complex and larger-sized with a high economic growth rate and development of new construction technologies. In addition, interests and demands on standards of construction quality are further increasing. This trend requires more systematic and a higher level of construction quality management. While the government has strengthened the regulations for quality assurance, many quality problems have repeatedly occurred mainly due to lack of recognition for quality management and quality control systems. To address this issue, this paper aims to suggest quality management improvement scheme through analyzing 3,443 nonconforming items identified during inspection of 393 construction sites from March 2012 to October 2014. The quality management improvement scheme suggested in this research is expected to prevent quality problems and defects and thus improve construction performances.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.74-82
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• 2014

The proportion of apartment housing has been increased to solve the housing problems resulted from rapid growth in urban population and urban economy. With the increase in apartment's proportions and the concern about quality of housing, the contractors have made efforts to satisfy the customers in improving the quality of housing. Despite these efforts, the conflicts between the contractor and the customers are getting serious. Also the disputes and the litigation of defect are increasing because of the contractor's negative treatment and inadequate countermeasure. In this study the defect lawsuits which bring actions against the contractors are collected and analyzed. And then the strategic countermeasures are proposed according to the classifying the type of defect and size. The suggested countermeasure model before the defects are resulted is expected to contribute in developing the contractors strategies to reduce the conflicts against customers.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.25-34
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• 2010

The building construction projects include a variety of risk factors due to uncertainties. To succeed in the projects, it is important how risks are managed. Risk management is composed of identification, analysis and response. Especially, the risk analysis is important to objectively calculate significance of risk factors. This paper evaluates a method to find priorities of risks using the AHP(Analytic Hierarchy Process). The method has some defects; (1) the consistency becomes weak as the number of pair-wise compared risks is large, and (2) the input and output procedures are complex when risks are added to or removed from a risk database. Thus the paper adopts the PROMETHEE(Preference Ranking Organization METHod Enrichment Evaluations) analysis process which is able to overcome the limitation of the AHP restricted to 9 risk factors. The PROMETHEE makes the procedure of risk analysis simple, when the risk factors pull out and put in the risk database. The purpose of this study is to provide process of risk analysis to use the PROMETHEE.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.147-150
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• 2006

Of the total defects that have occurred recently in the Korean construction market, over 30% are caused by the construction of defective waterproofing, and the phenomenon of air pockets in the waterproofing layer, which is caused by the concrete vapor pressure, is known to be the primary cause of defective waterproofing. Accordingly, in this study the theory about the relationship between water pressure and temperature as well as the damp-proofing volume of concrete and, then, the change of vapor pressure volume was measured and analyzed by making a test sample after spraying a dampness remover and a waterproofing material to a prepared test body. As a result of measuring the water vapor pressure for the surface temperature of the waterproofing layer with the fluid-applied membrane temperature based on about $10^{\circ}C$, which is the average temperature of Seoul, it was found that first, the fluid-applied membrane elevated up to about $40^{\circ}C$, and the water vapor pressure generated from the fluid-applied membrane was about $0.3kgf/cm^2$ when the surface temperature of the waterproofing layer was raised up to about $80^{\circ}C$. Second, when the fluid-applied membrane temperature of the waterproofing layer was raised from $30^{\circ}C\;to\;35^{\circ}C,\;about\;0.1kgf/cm^2$ of water vapor pressure was generated, and when supplying a thermal source to raise the fluid-applied membrane temperature of the waterproofing layer from $35^{\circ}C\;to\;40^{\circ}C$, approximately $0.05kgf/cm^2$ of water vapor pressure was generated.