• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2007.03a
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• pp.229-238
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• 2007

This paper presents a study on construction safety in the People Democratic Republic of Laos (PDRL). Fifty workers experienced certain injuries in their construction sites and 15 top managers were interviewed in twenty-six construction projects in Vientiane, the capital of PDRL. Research results show that stepping on and/or striking against objects (48%), struck by falling objects (24%), falling of persons (12%) are major types of construction injuries. The paper stresses that the ignorance of top managers about their crucial role in safety improvement, using safety incentive to raise safety performance, lack of thorough understanding about benefit from labor safety performance, and the willingness to cut off safety performance expenditures is considered as obstructions of safety improvement programs. The survey indicates that physical working conditions, relationship among workers, foremen behaviors and the monthly wage were influencing factors to worker's job satisfaction. The study also highlights afternoon as dominant time that led to a large number of injuries.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.1216-1222
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• 2009

Ecological Engineering (EE) refers to all sustainable engineering that can reduce damage to ecosystems and that adopts ecology as a base and safety as an orientation in order to implement conservation of biodiversity and sustainable development. In short, EE attempts to safeguard the ecological environment while any essential construction projects proceed. EE encompasses many fields, including construction skills, ecosystem preservation, landscape, and even related cultures and so on. Such variety results in greater complexity of construction, and, consequently, indirectly increases the difficulty of construction quality control. The objective of our research is to explore a promising model for EE via an extensive literature survey. This model includes three principal stages: plan-design, construction, and maintenance, along with individual accompanying phases concerned with quality control and vital management. In this article, a river restoration example is adopted to describe in detail the critical points of quality control in the three stages (plan-design, construction, and maintenance) of the construction life cycle. This study proposes an integrated structure for quality management of EE to guarantee its quality and to enhance its core applications in order to achieve long-lasting preservation of the environment.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2020.12a
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• pp.455-462
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• 2020

Noise which is unwanted sound is a serious pollutant that can affect human health, as well as the working and living environment if exposed to humans. However, current noise management on the construction project is generally conducted after the noise exceeds the regulation standard, which increases the conflicts with inhabitants near the construction site and threats to the safety and productivity of construction workers. To overcome the limitations of the current noise management methods, the activities of construction equipment which is the main source of construction noise need to be managed throughout the construction period in real-time. Therefore, this paper proposed a framework for automatically detecting noise sources in construction sites in real-time based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) according to the following four steps: (i) Step 1: Definition of the noise sources; (ii) Step 2: Data preparation; (iii) Step 3: Noise source classification using the audio CNN; and (iv) Step 4: Noise source detection using the visual CNN. The short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and temporal image processing are used to contain temporal features of the audio and visual data. In addition, the AlexNet and You Only Look Once v3 (YOLOv3) algorithms have been adopted to classify and detect the noise sources in real-time. As a result, the proposed framework is expected to immediately find construction activities as current noise sources on the video of the construction site. The proposed framework could be helpful for environmental construction managers to efficiently identify and control the noise by automatically detecting the noise sources among many activities carried out by various types of construction equipment. Thereby, not only conflicts between inhabitants and construction companies caused by construction noise can be prevented, but also the noise-related health risks and productivity degradation for construction workers and inhabitants near the construction site can be minimized.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.1024-1031
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• 2022

In addressing the goal for sustainability in the construction industry, the very materials used for construction and the methods utilized to implement said materials must be analyzed. Specifically, some traditional residential construction materials consist of wood, steel, and concrete. Because these materials vary in their levels of sustainability, there is a need to develop and explore new or other materials that can be used for residential construction. The primary purpose of this paper is to provide a review of interlocking earthen masonry units (IEMU) as an alternative option for residential building construction. This is in an effort to explore the variables impacting their existing and potential applications as sustainable materials and a method for residential building construction. IEMU's are then examined under the triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability framework which includes analyzing the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of IEMU's. The findings of this review may lead to further progression in the development of a framework for evaluating U.S. stakeholder adoption of IEMU's and potential implementation in U.S. residential construction.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.527-532
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• 2005

The construction industries are facing problems of productivity, quality of work, safety, and the completion of projects in time. In construction industry a worker is exposed to hazardous environment, and has to do more physical work, effecting his health and also productivity. The automation and robotics can offer solution to many problems of the industry. In the past the major barrier to construction automation is the lack of electronic components and systems. This is solved now with the development of information technology, and the current obstacle is the high cost of automated systems, shortage of public money for R&D, and problems of acceptance. The robots employed in construction have followed the same concept as those employed in manufacturing. However, construction industry requires a different kind of robot compared to manufacturing Industry. The robots are stationery and product moves along the assembly line in manufacturing sector, but construction robots have to move about the site because buildings are stationary and of large size. The construction robots must function in adverse weather conditions, including variation in humidity, and temperature and increase the overall construction productivity rate. The major objective of the paper is to review the existing applications of building robots and to assess their implementation in building industry. A case study is considered for the implementation of robots for the painting work of the University Building at Saifabad PG College of Science, Hyderabad, India.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.1-7
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• 2014

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been applied to the construction industry for improving the efficiency of material and process management. Most RFID-related studies have focused on building or plant construction. The application of RFID has been limited in pipeline construction projects where materials are stored and stacked across a large construction site. This paper investigates practical issues in pipeline construction, improves the read rates of RFID tags, and tests their utility by putting them into practice. This paper demonstrates the benefits that may be expected with the use of improved RFID tags and the development of an automated pipeline construction management system. As a result, pipeline construction management time decreased by 28 hours per month compared to the conventional method. Cost decreased by about 26%.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.70-71
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• 2015

Cost management always being the matters for project manager as well as other entities involved the construction projects. Vietnam is emerging country, many construction works were carried out and lot of construction projects will be developed in the near future with a huge investment capital come from outside and inside Vietnam. In recent years, international project management firms enter the Vietnam construction market, some issues emerged need to be solved. In which cost and schedule of the construction project was put in a thoroughly consider of not only project management team but also stakeholders. The research attempts to identify and assess the relationship of factors affecting the construction cost in construction phase in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Five main factor groups Owners/clients; Consultants; Contractors; Resource and Other were identified to propose the solution for cost management.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.09a
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• pp.1289-1293
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• 2009

For the purpose of automatic management and enhancing quality of construction, information technology has been employed in construction field recently. As a consequence, informative construction, which utilizes information technology to reduce construction time and optimize construction sequence, becomes a state-of-art field of construction. Considering this case, construction field should more actively adopt other engineering technologies of rapidly advancing fields, such as electronic, control, and informative engineering, in order to reduce construction cost and to solve environmental problems as well as to enhance construction quality. In this aspect, this paper introduces a novel research field 'Geo-mechatronics', which stands for the convergence of geotechnical engineering and mechatronics (i.e. automation of mechanics using electronic technologies). Since the ground is ubiquitous in every infrastructure construction, the Geo-mechatronics research is crucial for the development of construction technology in the future. Moreover, it is believed to that the Geo-mechatronics research will make our construction industry to be more future-oriented and internationally comparative industry.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2007.03a
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• pp.459-468
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• 2007

The u-City construction project has become a hot topic in the construction market because it seems economic value-added field for construction firms. However, construction firms don't willingly participate in the u-City construction market because environments of the future business for the u-City are very uncertain. Scenario planning is a very powerful method in managing this uncertain planning situation and is based on scenarios that help each enterprise appropriately adapt itself to its own business environments. Therefore it is based on the main principles of systems thinking and multiple futures. For the purpose of dealing with such uncertainties, this paper attempts to develop the possible market scenarios of the u-City construction market in S.Korea through a scenario planning approach. From this perspective, we considered various aspects of the u-City construction such as market demands, technology development, policy level and management environment. After considering the relevant issues, we identified the main trends and key uncertainties. Finally, we developed three coherent u-City construction market scenarios. Construction firms can use these scenarios as a basic reference for market analysis and business strategy. Therefore, this paper is able to enhance the participation of construction firms in the u-City construction market.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.103-114
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• 2022

Tower crane is of great importance in the construction of high rise buildings. A self-lifting & slewing multi-cranes platform (referred to as crane slewing platform) was developed to optimize the configuration of tower cranes, as well as solve the problems of cooperative operation conflict between multiple cranes and other construction equipment and their respective climbing and occupying of construction period. The design and test of the slewing platform was introduced. By applying the slewing platform in the construction of Chengdu Greenland Center super high rise building project, some key technologies such as the configuration of cranes, the installation, construction and lifting of the slewing platform are implemented and validated. Up to now, the slewing platform has been safely lifted up 98 times in Chengdu Greenland Center project construction, and achieved good social and economic benefits.