• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.357-365
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• 2020

While numbers of apartment housing are continually rising in the domestic housing construction industry, apartment contractors are currently developing plane models, upgrading facilities, and relevant technology, and investing much efforts to meet the higher demands of consumers. However, the construction process of apartment housing involves the intricate properties of the construction industry such as materials, workforce, equipment, weather, and unpredictable situations. If any of these factors becomes discordant and results in interference and interruption of the construction process, then defects, both functional and aesthetic, are likely to occur due to errors in the plan of industry organizers and constructors. Therefore, this research identifies the types of defects in an apartment construction project and analyzes their relative importance. Firstly, this research reviews the previous research trends and will reduce the needs of this research. Afterward, defect repair costs corresponding to the different defect types are calculated by applying results of the research and performing frequency analysis on defect types included in 'Tenant preliminary research' on apartments constructed by Company A. As a result of analyzing the importance of defect type, the top six activities, including tile, floor, paper hanging, PL window, cabinetry, and kitchen cabinet, are found to be of high importance, and the top six activities in question need of repair and management of defects first. The results of this study will help establish a plan to initially respond to such problems as refusal to move in and filing a defect suit against delay in repairing defects.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.347-354
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• 2013

In the recent global construction environment, EPC contracts that integrate planning, design, procurement, and construction have been widely used for industrial facilities. Similarly, as the importance of the engineering capability such as project management consulting(PMC) and front end engineering design(FEED) has been increased, design-build contracts also have been gradually adopted for infrastructure projects. Whereas, the Korean infrastructure industry has fragmentary features which mainly emphasize on the construction sector. Therefore, this study aims at developing strategies for enhancing the engineering capability and for balancing the competitiveness between engineering and construction sectors in the Korean infrastructure industry. To this end, the authors first carried out market analysis for both global and domestic market. Then, a structured survey and expert in-depth interviews were sequentially performed in order to reflect practitioners' perspectives and needs for institutional strategies. As a result, five strategies drawn from this study are as follows: 1) rearranging the government's roles for supporting the engineering sector; 2) establishing institutional bases being compatible with global standards; 3) fostering value-added workforce for undertaking complex tasks; 4) constructing an consortium between an engineering association and general contractors; and 5) building a nationwide collaborative networks for overseas market expansion.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.265-270
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• 2012

The delay in the construction permit for the building, which obtained the approval of business proposal, may lead to a difference in the maintenance cost ranging between 20% and 30% in the neighborhood where the residents moved in, along with the new project under construction in the surrounding area amidst rigorous regulations that aim to promote energy-saving and the heightened interest of the public in energy conservation, and such problem would become the major source of serious public complaints. Thus, the energy-saving plan needs to be prepared when the approval is granted to the business plan. In order to prevent public complaints or ensure effectiveness of government's energy plan, it may be effective to apply the energy-saving plan based on current standards upon the award of construction permit when two years have elapsed since the date of the scheduled commencement of construction or when the start of construction is delayed as stipulated in the Article 18 of the Enforcement Decree of Housing Act. If the energy-saving plan and related technologies are merely the parts of license and permit process without fully serving their purposes and functions, it would be waste of time to deploy a lot of workforce and review and seek consultation. The government or owners of buildings need to fully understand the energy-saving aspects and exert effort to enhance the energy efficiency of buildings.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.41-51
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• 2019

With the aging of the population and the slowdown of the job market, elderly workers make up a large portion of the construction workforce. Also, due to the nature of the construction industry, where outdoor work is frequent, the weather has a more sensitive impact on elderly workers than on younger ones. The study aims to analyze the degree of weather risks exposed to elderly workers in the construction industry using the measure of work loss days. To that end, construction accidents that affected 28,514 elderly workers in seven cities from 2012 to 2016 (a total of 12,789 days) were analyzed to calculate work loss days per different weather factors. The results show that the elderly workers were seriously affected when the temperature was between $-12^{\circ}C$ and $-10^{\circ}C$, humidity between 55% and 60%, precipitation between 128mm and 181mm, and wind speed between 5.5m/s and 6.5m/s, with the highest work loss days. The combined effects between the weather factors were also analyzed to identify the conditiosn that leaded to high work loss days of elderly workers. This study contributes to effective safety management and pleasant working environment between weather factors and shedding light on the relationship between weather factors and work loss days of elderly workers.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.138-147
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• 2020

The construction field is one of the most representative job creation businesses, but it has been pointed out that the overall quality of the jobs is low because of the nature of the order-made production industry, such as unstable employment structure, aging workforce, etc.. Accordingly, the government plans to implement the "prevailing wage system" that guarantees a minimum wage for construction site workers. In reality, however, only a market wage could be used for a construction cost estimation because there was no standard for the prevailing wage. A comparative analysis of the prevailing wage and market wage was performed. This paper proposes a framework for estimating the reasonable prevailing wage in the construction industry. The results showed that the prevailing wage was estimated to be 4.7% lower than the market wage when the proposed framework is applied to the carpenters' case. This suggests that the proposed model could be used as an alternative for market wage considering the original purpose of the prevailing wage. This study will construct the basic data for scientific analysis on the wage, and finally, help estimate the reliable prevailing wage in the future.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.41-46
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• 2016

Welding is an absolutely essential component of industries such as the automotive industry, the construction industry and even the aviation industry. Although it is a widespread technology it is still characterized by lots of uncertainties. This still requires well experienced and highly skilled workforce to design and perform safe welding processes. The early knowledge of distortion and residual stresses is almost an issue which is influenced mainly by the welding parameters and the fixture design. But more and more engineers want to know as well final properties of the assembled components. With the beginning of the computer age in the 1970s and 1980s last century, the numerical prediction of manufacturing processes using FEM was gradually getting better and has established itself in the industry since the 1990s as a standard tool. Unlike in metal casting and forming industry, however, the everyday use of FEM- simulation tools for welding processes eked out a shadowy existence for a long time. This paper will give a short classification of welding simulation types and a structured overview on the technical questions. Selected case studies and the benefits achieved through simulations with the software Simufact welding are discussed. Finally an outlook on future developments will be given.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.607-616
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• 2019

On account of the lack of education of Brazilian worker, this paper analyzed the characteristics of those professionals working in the production sector of timber houses. A sectoral survey was carried out with respective entrepreneurs to investigate the available professionals (career and contract types), evaluate the demands of skilled workers, and indicate solutions to improve the quality of labor qualification. Similarly, over 65% of sampled producers presented both direct-hired and outsourced workforce. For such contract ways, Civil Engineers and Architects were the main careers. Carpenters, Civil Engineers and Architects experienced on timber were the main sectoral demands. Timber Engineers have good potentials of service for this sector. The creation of courses on timber products can emerge as a key alternative to train people.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.17 no.11
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• pp.1-7
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• 2019

This study analyzed the effects of labor aging on labor productivity using panel statistics of 16 local governments from 1995 to 2017. The aging of the labor force, defined as the proportion of workers aged 60 or older in total employment, in the results of the panel regression analysis considering regional fixed effects and various adjustment variables, has a very consistent and significant negative effect on labor productivity. For every 1% increase in aging, labor productivity decreases by about 0.14 ~ 0.20%. In addition, the per capita capital stock and human capital considered as adjustment variables contributed to the increase of labor productivity, and the unemployment rate, which is a proxy variable of the economic fluctuation, has a significant negative effect on labor productivity as expected. The coefficient of the industrial structure, which represents the share of the service industry in the whole industry, was positive, but is not significant. The results of this study suggest that the design and construction of economic and educational policies that can maintain and expand human capital are necessary to curb the reduction in labor productivity expected by the aging workforce.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.423-431
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• 2012

The trends of Green growth and environmentally-friendliness came to be the key development indicator for sustaining global environment for the future. Korean government reflected these trends in the main flows of the national development index. Korean construction industry is concentrating investment on fields related to these trends such as technologies for carbon dioxide deduction, materials or products for environmentally-friendly building and alternative energy development, as well. However, efforts to follow these trends during the construction process as a step for production phrase are not being considered enough. In this study, we analysed current status and points to be improved of on-site environment management by surveying major project owners and representatives of the environmental affairs in the leading companies of those fields. Also, we suggested organizational structure and operation model as a solution for enhancing environmentally-friendliness for systematic approach to manage on-site environment in public construction sites. In addition to these solutions, further approaches such as shifting paradigm of project owners and contractors, securing workforce and practical budget for efficient management activities, developing environmental management manuals, setting standards for evaluation of activities are needed for the stable settlement of on-site environmental management.

• International Journal of Safety
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.29-37
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• 2012

Since most construction workers comprehend information on work through sight, the importance of safety signs are increasing by the day. In Korea, due to the sharp economic progress and the higher standard of the workforce, since the end of 1980, each year the number of foreign workers entering the country who working simple technical jobs have increased this condition. This study researched safety signs, which are the final accident prevention measures at the workplace. Based on the study, comprehension of the standard safety signs of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) was lacking at a level of 2.5. Also, the perception level of the Industry Public Safety Law (38%) was very low. And, it was found that sex and experience or non-experience in safety training was not an issue in the level of understanding. However, when satisfying the standards of the Occupational Safety and Health Act and changing the safety signs, the level of understanding went up to 3.49 and the perception level was increased significantly to 70%. Thus, it is concluded that, since the foreign workers are mainly from non-English speaking countries and because the workers of Korea are not familiar with English, in order to provide proper safety information, there must first of all be simplistic and concise pictograms. This will provide needed information and must be coupled with simple English words that can give additional information to the worker and be effective in helping him understand and perceive the safety sign. Also, it has been determined that the existing forms of safety signs and their effectiveness in industry accident prevention must be reassessed.