• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.962-969
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• 2009

The market of building construction has been competitive in Hong Kong, perhaps as anywhere else in the world. The barrier to entry is low because there are relatively low requirements on the three factors of production - technology, manpower and finance. The prevailing building technology is traditional and labour-intensive. There is also not much need of capital because clients' periodic payments have been the main source of project finance. Further, capitalizing on trade sub-contracting, contractors have been able to keep their direct labour-force small and to transfer much of their business risk to the sub-contractors. Based on interviews to solicit the perception of a sample of building contractors on the particular issues of construction finance, we present the findings in this paper and discuss the various implications. We believe that the current practice of construction financing is both the cause and effect of the competition within, and the competitiveness of, the building construction sector in Hong Kong. We conclude that the building construction sector is "locked or stuck" in this "equilibrium" of traditional technology, reliance on clients' finance and exploitation of sub-contracting. In this "equilibrium" state, there is hardly any motivation for contractors to engage themselves in product or process innovation. Consequently, any talk of industry reform or innovation could only remain just that. We believe that this problem is not unique in Hong Kong. The building construction sector in many other developed and developing economies is posed with similar if not the same problems and constraints. We conclude that there has to be some "external forces" to bring this "equilibrium" state to a higher level "equilibrium" one where higher value-added building construction services are supplied and demanded. This is a state where building contractors possessing innovative technology, better financial and manpower resources could thrive to build better buildings with innovative building methods and processes.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.1013-1016
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• 2005

Accounts of the development of a successful construction project often stress the importance of team relationship, project environment and senior management commitment. Numbers of studies carried out in the past decades indicate there needs to be a change of culture and attitude in the construction industry. In order for a turn around in the industry, relational contracting approaches have become more popular in recent years. However, not all relational contracting projects were successful. This paper details the fundamental principles of relational contracting. It further reports findings of a research currently taking place in Australia, how effective is relational contracting in practice. The problem addressed in this research is the implementation of relational contracting: • Throughout a range of projects • With a focus on client body staff The context within which the research was undertaken is: • Empowerment, regional development and promotion of a sustainable industry • The participating organisations have experience of partnering and alliancing • Success has been proven on large projects but performance is variable • Need has been identified to examine skill sets needed for successful partnering/alliancing The practical rationale behind this research is that: • Partnering and alliancing require a change of mind set - a culture change • The Client side must change along with contracting side • A fit is required between organisation structure and organisation culture Research Rationale: The rationale behind this project has been to conduct research within participating organisations, analyse, rationalise and generalise results and then move on to produce generic deliverables and "participating organisation specific" deliverables. This paper sets out the work so far, the links between the various elements and a plan for turning the research output into industry deliverables.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.71-92
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• 2023

Globally, under the leadership of advanced ICT countries, the private sector is promoting various policies to promote the digital transformation of public services. Looking at the research trend, design of public service indicators, development of evaluation system, and empirical research are being carried out steadily, but there are insufficient research cases on models in which the private sector participates in the planning, development, and operation of public services. In this study, Private-centric digital public service suitability evaluation indicators were discovered through interviews with experts in various fields, and weights for each indicator were analyzed through AHP evaluation. In addition, by applying the analysis results to 18 digital public services on a trial basis, the importance and priority of evaluation indicators for each service were derived, and at the same time, the evaluation framework was designed and applied to diagnose implications. As a result of the study, 'social utility', 'corporate acceptability', and 'public acceptability' were selected as the top three indicators of suitability evaluation. At this time, it was analyzed that the weight of the 'company acceptability' index, which includes sub-indices such as 'service profitability', 'service scalability', and 'private initiative possibility', was the highest among the three top indicators. As a result of the demonstration for public services, "IoT facility unmanned remote monitoring service", "blockchain real estate transaction service", and "digital twin disaster prediction service" were evaluated as the most suitable public services for the transition to the private sector.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.333-348
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• 2023

Fast infrastructure development boosts the demand for shotcrete. Despite sand and stone being the most common coarse and fine aggregates for shotcrete, excessive exploration of these materials challenges the ecological environment. This study utilized an industrial solid waste, high-titanium heavy slag, blended with steel fibers to form Wet Shotcrete of Steel Fiber-reinforced High-Titanium Heavy Slag (WSSFHTHS). It investigated its workability, shotcrete performance and mechanical properties under different water-to-cement ratios, fly ash content, superplasticizer dosage, and steel fiber content. The tunnel excavation and support were investigated by conducting finite element numerical simulation analysis and was used in 3 tunnel lining pipes in Zhonggouwan tailing pond. The major findings are as follows: (1) The water-to-cement ratio (w/c ratio) significantly impacted the compressive strength of WSSFHTHS. The highest 28-day compressive strength of 60 MPa was achieved when the w/c ratio was 0.38; (2) Adding fly ash improved the workability and shotcrete performance and strength development of WSSFHTHS. The best anti-permeability performance was achieved when the fly ash constituted 15%, with the lowest permeability coefficient of 4.596 × 10-11 cm/s; (3) The optimum superplasticizer dosage for WSSFHTHS is 0.8%. It provided the best workability and shotcrete performance. Excessive dosage resulted in water bleeding and poor aggregate encapsulation, while insufficient dosage decreased flowability and adversely affected shotcrete performance; (4) The dosage of steel fibers significantly impacted the flexural and tensile strength of WSSFHTHS. When the steel fiber dosage was 45 kg/m³, the 28-day flexural and tensile strengths were 8.95 MPa and 6.15 MPa, respectively; (5) By integrating existing shotcrete techniques, the optimal lining thickness was 80 mm for WSSFHTHS per simulation. The results revealed that after using WSSFHTHS, the displacement of the tunnel surrounding the rock significantly improved, with no cracks or hollows, similar to the simulation results.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.86 no.5
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• pp.589-605
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• 2023

This paper investigates the ductility demands of steel frames equipped with self-centring fuses under near-fault earthquake motions considering multiple yielding stages. The study is commenced by verifying a trilinear self-centring hysteretic model accounting for multiple yielding stages of steel frames equipped with self-centring fuses. Then, the seismic response of single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) systems following the validated trilinear self-centring hysteretic law is examined by a parametric study using a near-fault earthquake ground motion database composed of 200 earthquake records as input excitations. Based on a statistical investigation of more than fifty-two (52) million inelastic spectral analyses, the effect of the post-yield stiffness ratios, energy dissipation coefficient and yielding displacement ratio on the mean ductility demand of the system is examined in detail. The analysis results indicate that the increase of post-yield stiffness ratios, energy dissipation coefficient and yielding displacement ratio reduces the ductility demands of the self-centring oscillators responding in multiple yielding stages. A set of empirical expressions for quantifying the ductility demands of trilinear self-centring hysteretic oscillators are developed using nonlinear regression analysis of the analysis result database. The proposed regression model may offer a practical tool for designers to estimate the ductility demand of a low-to-medium rise self-centring steel frame equipped with self-centring fuses progressing in the ultimate stage under near-fault earthquake motions in design and evaluation.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.773-791
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• 2023

Connections with damage concentrated to pre-selected components can enhance seismic resilience for moment resisting frames. These pre-selected components always yield early to dissipate energy, and their energy dissipation mechanisms vary from one to another, depending on their position in the connection, geometry configuration details, and mechanical characteristics. This paper presents behaviour insights on two types of beam-to-beam connections that the angles were designed as energy dissipation components, through the results of experimental study and finite element analysis. Firstly, an experimental programme was reviewed, and key responses concerning the working mechanism of the connections were presented, including strain distribution at the critical section, section force responses of essential components, and initial stiffness of test specimens. Subsequently, finite element models of three specimens were established to further interpret their behaviour and response that were not observable in the tests. The moment and shear force transfer paths of the composite connections were clarified through the test results and finite element analysis. It was observed that the bending moment is mainly resisted by axial forces from the components, and the dominant axial force is from the bottom angles; the shear force at the critical section is primarily taken by the slab and the components near the top flange. Lastly, based on the insights on the load transfer path of the composite connections, preliminary design recommendations are proposed. In particular, a resistance requirement, quantified by a moment capacity ratio, was placed on the connections. Design models and equations were also developed for predicting the yield moment resistance and the shear resistance of the connections. A flexible beam model was proposed to quantify the shear resistance of essential components.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.213-227
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• 2023

A passive prismatic-shaped isolation platform (PIP) is proposed to realize enhanced quasi-zero stiffness (QZS) effect. The design concept uses a horizontal spring to produce a tunable negative stiffness and installs oblique springs inside the cells of the prismatic structure to provide a tunable positive stiffness. Therefore, the QZS effect can be achieved by combining the negative stiffness and the positive stiffness. To this aim, firstly, the mathematical modeling and the static analysis are conducted to demonstrate this idea and provide the design basis. Further, with the parametric study and the optimal design of the PIP, the enhanced QZS effect is achieved with widened QZS range and stable property. Moreover, the dynamic analysis is conducted to investigate the vibration isolation performance of the proposed PIP. The analysis results show that the widened QZS property can be achieved with the optimal designed structural parameters, and the proposed PIP has an excellent vibration isolation performance in the ultra-low frequency due to the enlarged QZS range. Compared with the traditional QZS isolator, the PIP shows better performance with a broader isolation frequency range and stable property under the large excitation amplitude.

• Journal of Korean Society of Archives and Records Management
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.117-133
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• 2022

The archival content listed arbitrarily makes it difficult for users to efficiently access the records of major economic policies, especially given that they use it without understanding the required period and context. Using the text mining techniques in the 30-year economic policy direction from 1991 to 2021, this paper derives economic-related keywords and changes that the government mainly dealt with. It collects and preprocesses major economic policies' background, main content, and body text and conducts text frequency, term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF), network, and time series analyses. Based on these analyses, the following words are recorded in order of frequency: "job(일자리)," "competitive(경쟁력)," and "restructuring(구조조정)." In addition, the relative ratio of "job (일자리)," "real estate(부동산)," and "corporation(기업)," by year was analyzed in terms of chronological order while presenting major keywords mentioned by each government. Based on the results, this study presents implications for developing and broadening the area of archival information services related to economic policies.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2017.10a
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• pp.24-31
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• 2017

As the concept of sustainability becomes more and more popular, a large amount of literature have been recorded recently on intelligent green building and smart city (IGB&SC). It is therefore needed to systematically analyse the existing knowledge structure as well as the future new development of this domain through the identification of the thematic trends, landmark articles, typical keywords together with co-operative researchers. In this paper, Citespace software package is applied to analyse the citation networks and other relevant data of the past eleven years (from 2006 to 2016) collected from Web of Science (WOS). Through this, a series of professional document analysis are conducted, including the production of core authors, the influence made by the most cited authors, keywords extraction and timezone analysis, hot topics of research, highly cited papers and trends with regard to co-citation analysis, etc. As a result, the development track of the IGB&SC domains is revealed and visualized and the following results reached: (i) in the research area of IGB&SC, the most productive researcher is Winters JV and Caragliu A is most influential on the other hand; (ii) different focuses of IGB&SC research have been emerged continually from 2006 to 2016 e.g. smart growth, sustainability, smart city, big data, etc.; (iii) Hollands's work is identified with the most citations and the emerging trends, as revealed from the bursts analysis in document co-citations, can be concluded as smart growth, the assessment of intelligent green building and smart city.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2020.12a
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• pp.75-84
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• 2020

Modular construction is a construction method whereby prefabricated volumetric units are produced in a factory and are installed on site to form a building block. The construction productivity can be substantially improved by the manufacturing and assembly of standardized modular units. 3D printing is a computer-controlled fabrication method first adopted in the manufacturing industry and was utilized for the automated construction of small-scale houses in recent years. Implementing 3D printing in the fabrication of modular units brings huge benefits to modular construction, including increased customization, lower material waste, and reduced labor work. Such implementation also benefits the large-scale and wider adoption of 3D printing in engineering practice. However, a critical issue for 3D printed modules is the loading capacity, particularly in response to horizontal forces like wind load, which requires a deeper understanding of the building structure behavior and the design of load-bearing modules. Therefore, this paper presents the state-of-the-art literature concerning recent achievement in 3D printing for buildings, followed by discussion on the opportunities and challenges for examining 3D printing in modular construction. Promising 3D printing techniques are critically reviewed and discussed with regard to their advantages and limitations in construction. The appropriate structural form needs to be determined at the design stage, taking into consideration the overall building structural behavior, site environmental conditions (e.g., wind), and load-carrying capacity of the 3D printed modules. Detailed finite element modelling of the entire modular buildings needs to be conducted to verify the structural performance, considering the code-stipulated lateral drift, strength criteria, and other design requirements. Moreover, integration of building information modelling (BIM) method is beneficial for generating the material and geometric details of the 3D printed modules, which can then be utilized for the fabrication.