• Title/Summary/Keyword: ENVIRONMENTAL CONSTRUCTION

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INTEGRATED LIFE-CYCLE COST ANALYSIS CONSIDERING ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS: A HIGHWAY PROJECT CASE

  • Woo-Sik Jang;Heedae Park;Sungmin Kim;Seung Heon Han;Jong Seo Jeon
    • International conference on construction engineering and project management
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    • 2011.02a
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    • pp.273-279
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    • 2011
  • Concerns over the environment have spawned a number of research studies in the construction industry, as the construction of built environments and large infrastructures involves diverse environmental impacts and loads of hazardous emissions. Many researchers have attempted to quantify these environmental loads, including greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide, to name a few. However, little research has been conducted regarding integrating the life-cycle assessment (LCA) of environmental loads with the current life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) approach. This study aims to estimate the environmental loads as a monetary value using the European Climate Exchange (ECX) rate and, then, to integrate those impacts with the pure construction cost. Toward this end, this study suggests an integrated approach that takes into account the environmental effect on the evaluation of the life-cycle cost (LCC). The bill of quantity (BOQ) data of a real highway project are collected and analyzed for this purpose. As a result, considering the environmental loads in the pavement process, the total LCC increased 16% from the traditional LCC cost. This study suggests an integrated approach that will account the environmental effect on the LCC. Additionally, this study is expected to contribute to better decision-making, from the perspective of more sustainable development, for government as well as for contractors.

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Health Hazardous Substances in Construction Work in Korea (건설업 근로자의 유해 작업 환경 노출 실태에 관한 연구)

  • Choi, Jae-Wook;Mun, Jung-Soo;Kim, Jeong-Ah;Won, Jeong-Il;Park, Hee-Chan
    • Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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    • v.10 no.1
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    • pp.74-92
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    • 2000
  • This study was performed to evaluate the working conditions In construction workers through measurements of working environments and to improve the working conditions and to design the appropriate environmental and health management system. The results of measurement for working environments in construction work are as following: 1. The excess rate of noise and dust concentration in express highway construction, road construction, building construction and interior painting was 28.6% and 24.5% respectively. 2. The excess rate of mixed organic solvents concentration in interior painting was 39.3%. 3. The chain type bulldozer has the highest level of vibration; the excess rate was 85.7%, and among the vibration instruments, the level of left hand's vibration of all vibrators exceeded the criterion and in the case of drilling all the level of vibration exceeded the criterion in both hands. On the basis of the results in this research the environmental and health management system for construction workers must be considered. Therefore, it is necessary to be introduced the special medical examination and measurement of working environments in construction industry. In defining "the working place" of Article 39 of Enforcement regulations of industrial safety and health act, the word "indoors" should be deleted. Then the eligible industry for measurement of working environment must be extended. And it is also necessary for construction industry to be performed group health management service by agencies such as other manufacturing industry.

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Evaluating the Competitiveness of Asian Construction Companies through Patent Analysis

  • Ji, Woojong;Lee, Dongmin;Lim, Hyunsu;Pyo, Kiyoun;Lee, Dongyoun;Lee, Hak-Ju;Park, Insung;Kang, Kyung-In
    • Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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    • v.20 no.2
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    • pp.199-212
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    • 2020
  • In evaluating the competitiveness of construction companies and their development strategies, patents are a useful and objective source of technical information. In this study, the cutting-edge technologies of construction industries of China, Japan, and South Korea were investigated based on the data of patent applications filed by a total of 15 construction companies (five companies from each country). The related technologies were classified into six core technology groups based on their keywords. After that, we used four patent analysis methods: time series analysis, IP (Intellectual Property) emergence level analysis, spiral module analysis, and OS (Object-Solution) Matrix analysis, to identify the promising technologies/vacant technologies for global construction companies in China, Japan, and South Korea, and to analyze the technical competitiveness of the three countries. The findings of this study showed that each country can claim a relative technological advantage over the others. Overall, 3D printing and offsite construction technology, data acquisition technology, AR and VR technology are expected to be promising in the Asian region. The present study contributes to the body of knowledge by expanding our understanding of technological innovation for the competitiveness of companies and the technology development strategies pursued by the construction industries of China, Japan, and South Korea.

AUTOMATED HAZARD IDENTIFICATION FRAMEWORK FOR THE PROACTIVE CONSIDERATION OF CONSTRUCTION SAFETY

  • JunHyuk Kwon;Byungil Kim;SangHyun Lee;Hyoungkwan Kim
    • International conference on construction engineering and project management
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    • 2013.01a
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    • pp.60-65
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    • 2013
  • Introducing the concept of construction safety in the design/engineering phase can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of safety management on construction sites. In this sense, further improvements for safety can be made in the design/engineering phase through the development of (1) an automated hazard identification process that is little dependent on user knowledge, (2) an automated construction schedule generation to accommodate varying hazard information over time, and (3) a visual representation of the results that is easy to understand. In this paper, we formulate an automated hazard identification framework for construction safety by extracting hazard information from related regulations to eliminate human interventions, and by utilizing a visualization technique in order to enhance users' understanding on hazard information. First, the hazard information is automatically extracted from textual safety and health regulations (i.e., Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA) Standards) by using natural language processing (NLP) techniques without users' interpretations. Next, scheduling and sequencing of the construction activities are automatically generated with regard to the 3D building model. Then, the extracted hazard information is integrated into the geometry data of construction elements in the industry foundation class (IFC) building model using a conformity-checking algorithm within the open source 3D computer graphics software. Preliminary results demonstrate that this approach is advantageous in that it can be used in the design/engineering phases of construction without the manual interpretation of safety experts, facilitating the designers' and engineers' proactive consideration for improving safety management.

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Development of the Assessment Framework for the Environmental Impacts in Construction

  • Tahoon Hong;Changwoon Ji;Kwangbok Jeong;Joowan Park
    • International conference on construction engineering and project management
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    • 2013.01a
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    • pp.196-203
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    • 2013
  • Environmental problems like global warming have now become important issues that should be considered in all industries, including construction. In South Korea, many studies have been conducted to achieve the government's goals of reduction in environmental impacts. However, the research on buildings has only focused on CO2 emission as a research target despite the fact that other environmental impacts resulting from ozone depletion and acidification should also be considered, in addition to global warming. In this regard, this study attempted to propose assessment criteria and methods to evaluate the environmental performance of the structures from various aspects. The environmental impact category can be divided into global impacts, regional impacts, and local impacts. First, global impacts include global warming, ozone layer depletion, and abiotic resource depletion, while regional impacts include acidification, eutrophication, and photochemical oxidation. In addition, noise and vibration occurring in the building construction phase are defined as local impacts. The evaluation methods on the eight environmental impacts will be proposed after analyzing existing studies, and the methods representing each environmental load as monetary value will be presented. The methods presented in this study will present benefits that can be obtained through green buildings with a clear quantitative assessment on structures. Ultimately, it is expected that if the effects of green buildings are clearly presented through the findings of this study, the greening of structures will be actively expanded.

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Proper Estimating Method for Environmental Preservation Cost in Road Projects (도로공사 환경보전비의 적정 산출 방안)

  • Park, Ji-Sun;Lee, Sea-Hyun
    • Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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    • v.13 no.2
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    • pp.3-10
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    • 2012
  • The current enforcement regulation of "Construction Technology Management Act" prescribes calculation standard of environmental preservation cost in construction site. According to this standard, environmental preservation cost is calculated by using the quantity-per-unit costing method or applied fixed rate on direct cost. However, when calculated by using the quantity-per-unit costing method it is few items to put in the budget according to standard of construction estimate and in the case of using the fixed rate on direct cost it is not considering various characteristics of the construction site. Therefore, it is needed a improvement plan of estimating method and management system for environmental preservation cost. In this study, it surveyed the actual state of the environmental preservation cost according to magnitude of project, site location, anti-pollution facilities and etc. over 38 road projects. The research reported in this paper environmental preservation cost was variously distributed over construction sites. Thus it needs to estimating method and management system to consider characteristics of construction site for environmental preservation cost.

Analysis of Environment Emission Characteristics Each Construction Type for Road Field (국도건설공사 도로분야의 공종별 환경부하량 특성분석)

  • Kim, Sang-Ryong;Lee, Dong-Eun;Kim, Byung-Soo
    • KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.37 no.1
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    • pp.143-151
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    • 2017
  • Recently Korea has presented carbon emission reduce goal of 37% compare to BAU until 2030 according to Paris Agreement in order to correspond to climate change. For this, researchers need to study positively on construction industry that emit $CO_2$ of $3^{rd}$ volume of 28 industry classification. This study calculated environmental load by LCA using the road part except tunnel and bridge among national road cases completed already. After selecting representative type of large construction type based on environmental emission, earth works, drainage works and paving works took up 84%. And this study analyzed the environmental emission feature of each detail construction type after selecting representative type each detail construction type. Utilization of each construction type emission attribute to environmental load during national road construction, will be helpful in making decision of eco-friendly national road construction based on environmental emission.

Study on a Applicability of the Low Noise Labeling System for a Construction Machinery (건설기계 저소음표시제도 도입에 관한 연구)

  • Gu, Jinhoi;Lee, Wooseok;Seo, Chungyoul;Lee, Jaewon
    • Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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    • v.23 no.11
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    • pp.982-986
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    • 2013
  • The noise emitted from construction machinery has long been a cause of environmental disputes, especially to the nearby residents. In 2008, the Ministry of Environment adopted the construction machinery noise labeling system to encourage the development of the low noise construction machinery. After the implementation of the noise labeling system of the construction machinery, the noise emitted from the construction machinery has been decreased over the six years. But, as the quality of life improves, a growing number of people desire more comfortable and quite living environment. Under the situation, new systems like the low noise labeling system are considered to encourage the development of the low noise construction machinery. In accordance with the low noise labeling system, the construction machinery satisfying the standard of low noise are qualified to attach the low noise label in front of the products. Thus, the product qualified the low noise certification will be incentivized by the choice of the consumer. In this paper, we have studied the necessity of the low noise labeling system for the construction machinery and the considerations to adopt the low noise labeling system of construction machinery. And we have studied appropriate criterion to judge the low noise construction machinery. The considerations studied in this paper will be helpful to adopt the low noise labeling system of construction machinery in the future.

Quantification of the CO2 Footprint in Residential Construction

  • Don Mah;Juan D. Manrique;Haitao Yu;Mohamed Al-Hussein;Reza Nasseri
    • International conference on construction engineering and project management
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    • 2009.05a
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    • pp.525-536
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    • 2009
  • The current residential process adheres to a traditional method of construction involving wood framing on-site on poured concrete foundations which has been widely applied in North America. A conventional residential construction process can include seventeen distinct stages ranging from stake-out to pre-occupancy inspection. The current practice possesses short comings including high construction material wastes, long scheduling timelines, adverse weather conditions, poor quality, low efficiencies and negative environmental impacts from transportation and equipment use. Over CAN $5 billion dollars was spent in the construction sector during 2007 in Canada. Previous findings in CO2 emissions during the construction process of a conventional dwelling emphasize more than 45 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Hence, in Alberta alone during 2007, almost 50,000 residential units would release more than two million tonnes of CO2. These numbers demonstrate the economical and environmental impact in building construction and its relationship with CO2 emissions. The aim of this paper is to quantify the CO2 emissions from the current residential construction process in order to establish the baseline for CO2 emission reduction opportunities. The quantification collection methodology will be approached by identifying the seventeen various stages of construction and quantifying the contributions of CO2 from specific activities and their impacts of work for each stage. The approach of separating these into separate stages for collection will allow for independent opportunities for analysis from various independent contractors from the entire scope of work. The use of BIM will be implemented to efficiently quantify CO2 emissions. Based on the CO2 quantification baseline, emission reduction opportunities such as an industrialized construction process will be introduced that allows homebuilders to reduce the environmental and economical impact of home construction while enabling them to produce higher quality, more energy efficient homes in a safer and shorter period of time.

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