The rhythms of project life: a longitudinal analysis of work hours and work–life experiences in construction

A diary data collection method was used to collect data from project‐based construction workers in a large civil engineering construction project in Melbourne, Australia. Data capturing the number of hours worked, satisfaction with work–life balance and capacity to complete required tasks at work and at home were collected for 21 consecutive weeks. A strong correlation was found between hours worked each week and participants’ work–life experiences. Data were subjected to time series modelling procedures and weekly work hours were found to significantly predict participants’ capacity to complete tasks at work and at home, but not their satisfaction with work–life balance. The impact of work leading up to a major project milestone was found to increase the predictive capacity of the time series models, indicating that project events have a significant impact upon the work–life experiences of project‐based workers. The period of intense work prior to the milestone (the opening of a new ramp on to an operating freeway) contributed significantly to an immediate reduction in capacity to complete tasks at home. Further time series modelling revealed that recovery opportunities associated with workers taking a short, temporary break from work can also contribute to improved work–life balance. It is proposed that construction organizations use the naturally fluctuating workloads implicit in project work to ‘build’ recovery opportunities into project schedules.     

Are urbanized areas source of life satisfaction? Evidence from EU regions

This paper studies the relationship between urbanization and life satisfaction in European NUTS 2 regions in the period 2004–2011 based on individual level data. Results suggest that life satisfaction is greater in regions characterized by intermediate levels of urbanization. Urbanization benefits also filter down along the regional urban hierarchy and are especially positive for those individuals living in rural areas of urbanized regions. Eastern European countries depart from this average trend, and, generally, experience negative direct and indirect urbanization effects, especially in the most urbanized regions.     

Queer eye on a ‘straight’ life: deconstructing masculinities in construction

The male-ness or masculine nature of the construction industry has often been blamed for the problems of equality and diversity in the sector. Yet, what constitutes masculinity in construction is rarely problematized. Conventionally, masculinity in construction tended to be associated with the subordination and harassment of minority groups (e.g. women, non-heterosexuals), and the ideals of keeping fit in order to meet the tough, physical demands of construction work. Therefore an attempt was made to expand the conceptualization of alternative masculinities in construction. By deploying queer theory, the life stories of nine non-heterosexuals working in trade and professional occupations in the construction industry were analysed to explore how a range of different masculinities played out in the social interactions in their personal and working lives. The findings suggest that conventional hegemonic masculinity, while present, is not the only form of masculinity that subordinates minority groups in construction. Rather, other non-hegemonic forms of masculinity (e.g. found in homo-social contexts) also serve to exclude both men and women. Nevertheless, examples were also identified of minorities countering such exclusionary forms of masculinity through, for instance, ‘friendship’ alliances at work, which could offer possibilities for building a more inclusive workplace in construction.     

西门子发布新品牌宣言:Ingenuity for life(博大精深 同心致远)

正在4月7日于泉州市举行的"西门子能源管理中国百城巡展"2016年开幕仪式上,西门子(中国)有限公司执行副总裁兼西门子大中华区能源管理集团总经理麦明锐先生在致辞中介绍了西门子新的品牌宣言。西门子公司品牌与商业影响力项目(Brand and Business Impact Program)包括新的品牌宣言"Ingenuity for life"在2015     

IOL英语读写结合教学模式设计——以A new dimension of life为例

<正>当前的高中英语写作教学存在着诸多问题。笔者尝试以IOL模式的读写结合教学来提升学生的英语写作能力,即通过对范文的内容(Ideas)、结构(Organizations)和语言(Language)的分析,并提供契合的写作任务,帮助学生将所学习和吸收的知识内容运用到新的写作内容中,创作出内容充实、结构合理、语言优美的文章。1.问题的提出一直以来,写作都是高中英语教学中的一个难点,很多的师生都认为写作教学属于"费时长、耗力     

Work–life fit: identification of demand and resource typologies within a systems framework*

Work–life fit occurs when people have the resources required to meet demands such that role performance (both at work and in non-work life domains) is effective. Interviews were conducted with 59 construction workers based in Melbourne, Australia to explore how demands and resources were experienced. Using a systems framework, data were analysed using thematic analysis. Results identified two demand typologies associated with demand-to-demand interaction. Demands operating as ‘influencers’ have a major impact on the conditions of the interdependent demand, while demands operating as ‘creators’ generate a new demand and shape the conditions of that demand. One resource typology related to resource–demand interaction was identified. ‘Enabling resources’ enable an individual to manage multiple demands across multiple domains, and may also enable an individual to manage multiple demands within a single domain. A new conceptual contribution is made to an area in which theory is under-developed, by adopting a systems approach to understanding the dynamic interactions between demands and resources. A lack of fit is damaging for the individual; therefore, it is useful to know that demands and resources are interdependent and these interdependencies will vary according to individuals. Using a systems approach to understanding demands and resources will be helpful to organizations seeking to support workers to achieve optimal work–life fit.     

The work‐life experiences of office and site‐based employees in the Australian construction industry

A survey was conducted among employees of a large Australian construction firm. Comparisons were made between employees who differed by gender and work location. Male employees in site‐based roles reported significantly higher levels of work to family conflict and emotional exhaustion than male employees who worked in the regional or head office. Site‐based male employees were also less satisfied with their pay than male respondents who worked in the regional of head office. Few significant differences were found between women who worked in different locations. Neither were significant differences between men and women who worked in the same location reported. The results are explained in terms of women's tendency to work in administrative, secretarial or support services roles, which typically demand fewer hours. The paper concludes that the experiences of site‐based construction employees, particularly men, warrant further attention to explore the sources of work‐life imbalance and burnout.     

Built environment and social well-being: How does urban form affect social life and personal relationships?

Personal relationships are among the most influential factors for achieving a happy life. Yet, there is insufficient empirical evidence on the role of the built environment in social life and personal relationships. This paper investigates how the urban form affects social life and personal relationships by applying structural equation models to survey data collected in Oslo metropolitan area. Results indicate that residents of compact neighborhoods are significantly more satisfied with their personal relationships compared with residents of low-density suburban neighborhoods. Shorter distances to the city center, higher densities, and mixed land uses are found to positively contribute to overall social well-being. Path analysis as well as qualitative analysis suggest that compact urban forms enable residents to maintain larger networks of close relationships, socialize more frequently with friends and family, receive stronger social support, and enjoy increased opportunities to make new acquaintances.     

Holistic study of a timber double skin faade: Whole life carbon emissions and structural optimization

The upkeep of existing buildings has a great role to play in reducing the carbon emissions of the built environment. Fac,ade upgrade represents one of the most effective interventions to improve both thermal efficiency and aesthetic appeal of existing buildings. Double Skin Fa c,ades( DSFs) have much to offer due to their use of solar and w ind energy to passively heat and cool indoor spaces,whilst guaranteeing freedom and flexibility in the aesthetic design of the refurbished building. How ever,DSFs also bear an increase in the embodied energy and carbon due to the additional materials required for the extra skin throughout all life cycle stages.In this article,life cycle assessment( LCA) and dynamic energy modelling have been combined through a parametric approach to obtain figures for the w hole-life cycle carbonassessment of 384 different configurations of an innovative,timber-made DSF for UK low-carbon refurbishments. Additionally,the structural design of the fac,ade w as also investigated through a structural optimisation procedure w hich takes into account all relevant loads and ensures minimal use of the structural material.Results show that operational savings outw eigh the embodied impacts and therefore the proposed DSF is a viable and effective solution for net carbon-negative refurbishments. The operational energy modelling also contributes to the characterisation of DSFs thermal behaviour in temperate climates.     

Work–life strategies in the Australian construction industry: Implementation issues in a dynamic project-based work environment

A participatory work–life balance intervention was implemented in a medium-sized construction contracting organization based in Melbourne, Australia. Weekly data capturing the number of hours worked, satisfaction with work–life balance and capacity to complete required tasks at work and at home were collected for 25 consecutive weeks. Data was subjected to time series modeling procedures and weekly work hours were found to significantly predict participants' overall satisfaction with work–life balance, and capacity to complete tasks at work and at home. The occurrence of ‘long weekends’, i.e., a period of three days away from work arising as a result of a public holiday coinciding with a ‘rostered day off’, was also found to predict workers' capacity to complete tasks at home. An evaluation workshop explored workers' experiences of a work–life intervention. Participants' were generally positive about the organization's support of their work–life balance, however areas for improvement were identified, such as the need for better communication of work–life strategies and to address the ‘long hours’ culture within the organization. The research presents a participatory framework for improving the work–life balance of project-based construction workers.     

“Filled with thoughts of flowing leafage and fiery life”: John Ruskin's Venice—Fragility and Flux

Venice continues to hold the western imagination as the supreme embodiment of flow in human settlement. Indeed, in the second volume of The Stones of Venice (1853), John Ruskin (1819-1900) stresses the extremely narrow margins of tidal flux that made the city possible; if the tide been a little stronger, or the water channels deeper, it would have become just another walled city. It is the city's openness to flow and penetration that inform its erotic power. This essay focuses on Ruskin's passionately engaged ‘‘watching'' of Venice's stones, exploring how these themes of flux and flow inform his inimitable vision.     

Gordon Culham: living a ‘useful life’ through the professionalization of Canadian town planning and landscape architecture

Gordon Joseph Culham (1891–1979), a landscape architect and town planner, was instrumental in the professionalization of both his disciplines in Canada. He helped lead the disorganized practitioners of the 1930s into the modern age and enabled them to assume their professional role in the improvement of Canada's urban centres. The discovery of an archive of Culham's papers provides a previously unavailable insight into the conceptualization and creation of the professions of landscape architecture and town planning in Canada. Culham characterized this as leading a ‘useful life’. He prepared, practiced and enjoyed the power associated with the professions he helped found in leading this useful life. He was a Harvard graduate who worked with the greatest landscape architectural firm in America, the Olmsteds and with the premier British town planner, Thomas Adams. Culham returned to his homeland on the eve of the Depression with an unrivalled reputation. He brought with him a strong sense of professionalism and helped elevate a small, dispirited community of Canadian landscape architects and town planners into one united organization for almost two decades. Professional specialization was an inevitable outcome but Culham continued to bridge the divide between his chosen fields throughout his ‘useful life’.     

Spaces for the elevated personal life: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's concept of the dweller, 1926–1930

Within the discourse that sought to develop housing during the inter-war era in Germany, standardisation was regarded as a means with which to create adequate solutions for the working class. Housing needs were subsumed into a set amount of common denominators that led to beliefs that the design of the house would alter and enhance the conduct of the inhabitant.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's declaration, in the Catalogue of the 1927 housing Exhibition in Stuttgart-Weißenhof, that standardisation, whilst suitable as a means, must never be the goal of architecture, enunciates his critical view of such normative solutions and attempts to coerce the dweller towards a prescribed way of living. In consulting the writings of a number of contemporary philosophers and critics, Mies was able to develop an alternative understanding of the dweller. The book Body—Soul—Unity, by the psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn, provided Mies with a way of thinking about the inhabitant not as a human being whose lifestyle had to be remediated, but as one who is confident and in harmony with the world. The concept of man and worldview as outlined in Body—Soul—Unity was one of the fundamental intellectual tools that helped Mies in developing his spatial designs of the late 1920s.     

Do cities or suburbs offer higher quality of life? Intrametropolitan location,activity patterns,access, and subjective well-being

Critics deride American suburbs as dull, aesthetically displeasing, socially isolating, unhealthy, environmentally unsound, and lacking in accessibility. However, the dramatic shift of the American population to the suburbs in the post-WWII period suggests suburban living may have advantages. Using data from the American Time Use Survey, this paper examines whether residence in a principal city versus the suburbs offers a more emotionally satisfying lifestyle. First, the findings show that demographically similar city residents and suburbanites engage in a very similar amount and composition of out-of-home activities. Second, the ratio of travel time to activity time for specific travel/activity couplets is lower for city residents for a few activities, and lower for suburbanites for others, but on the whole the differences in accessibility implied by these travel time prices are minor. Third, the activities in which city residents and suburbanites engage are associated with very similar degrees of subjective well-being (SWB), including both life satisfaction and affect. The most noteworthy difference between the two geographies is that suburbanites have modestly but measurably higher SWB than demographically similar urbanites in terms of feelings of happiness (hedonic affect), a sense of meaning (eudaimonic affect), and life satisfaction. These findings suggest that there may be advantages to suburban living.     

提高高三英语一轮复习的效益——以译林牛津教材高中英语一模块第一单元School life为例

<正>高三英语一轮复习内容繁杂,任务繁重,知识基础性强,因此在备考中十分重要。教学过程中教师要如何有效地提高一轮复习的效益性,引导学生高效、快速地完成复习任务,使学生在原有知识基础上提升综合能力,是需要教师进行深入探索和研究的。1.以高三英语一模块第一单元为例译林牛津教材高中英语一模块一单元School life的中心话题是关于英国学校交流学习的生活。在本课学习中为了避免词汇复习的     

Optimized maintenance and renovation scheduling in multifamily buildings – a systematic approach based on condition state and life cycle cost of building components

Proactive maintenance strategies in principle are devised to control degradation and sustain optimal performance of building components. While realizing the technical necessities, they also serve as an instrument towards multiple and often conflicting objectives during financial constraints. An optimal proactive maintenance strategy therefore should comprise a multiannual maintenance action plan optimized on different criteria corresponding to owners’ objectives under existing constraints. This study offers a systematic approach based on a condition-deterioration model to address the complexity involved in decision making regarding optimized maintenance and renovation planning. Life-cycle cost analysis in form of Equivalent Annual Cost (EAC) is used for the economic assessment of maintenance/renovation scenarios. In this paper, the model is used to compare the economy of different maintenance/renovation plans in a chosen scenario in order to determine the optimal maintenance interval for a single and a combination of building components. Two façade elements, windows and façade rendering, are used to illustrate the application of the proposed method. This method is intended to help decision makers at both design and post-construction phases in the choice of both building components and maintenance/renovation strategies.     

South African ‘know-how’ and Israeli ‘facts of life’: the planning of Afridar,Ashkelon, 1949–1956

In 1949, in the newly founded state of Israel, South African architects Norman Hanson and Roy Kantorowich planned the city of Ashkelon and, within it, the exclusive neighbourhood unit Afridar. Managed by the South African Jewish Appeal, which initiated and funded the project, Afridar presented a radical exception to Israel’s centralized planning approach during that period. An early example of a semi-private settlement initiative for an ethnic and class-based enclave reserved for ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Jewish immigrants, it functioned as a ‘model town’ for the immigrant population from the Middle East and North Africa, which was housed by the government in the rest of the city of Ashkelon. Afridar’s enclave reproduced planning practices from South Africa, which had been coloured by race since the 1920s. Despite its exclusive image, it was modelled after progressive experiments in the design of Native Townships. Their main objective of such experiments was to improve the standards of housing of racially discriminated populations yet, in practice, they served as a tool to implement apartheid policies. This paper interrogates this ambivalence of social aspirations and complicity with state segregation practices through examining the translation of apartheid’s planning practices to the Israeli context, and the negotiations and conflicts this translation entailed.     

New life for American Downtowns? The 1958 international seminar on urban renewal and the travel of planning ideas in the North Atlantic World

This article scrutinizes the travel of planning ideas between Western Europe and America in the post-war decades by employing the 1958 International Seminar on Urban Renewal as a case study. As a joint venture between the International Federation for Housing and Planning and James M. Miller, a planning professor from Columbia University, this meeting was the first transatlantic conference after 1945 principally intended to (re-)introduce American planners to European reconstruction efforts. Therefore, the seminar testifies to an emerging interest of the wider US professional public in West European planning during the 1950s. When American planners struggled with deteriorating downtowns and suburbanization, they turned to Europe, where cities experimented with pedestrianization, mixed-use zoning and comprehensive planning in order to build their razed city centres anew. Although Americans were relatively unsuccessful in implementing these ideas in their cities, the events surrounding the 1958 seminar show that, even during a period of US hegemony, transatlantic connections were more than a mere ‘Americanization’ of European practice. Thus, this article argues for viewing transnational connections in the post-war North Atlantic World as a circular flow of ideas, in which Europeans and Americans alternately acted as borrowers and lenders, according to their variable perceptions of each other.     

Goal directed life cycle costing as a method to evaluate the economic feasibility of office buildings with conventional and TI‐façades

Transparent insulation systems (TI‐systems) of less than 20cm thick have been developed as an alternative to opaque wall insulation and windows, which provide a financial return to building occupants when applied to building façades. Lack of detailed cost analysis of TI‐systems is a major constraint to the application of TI‐wall and TI‐glazing in buildings. A goal directed life cycle costing (LCC) technique and sensitivity analysis used to evaluate the economic feasibility of TI‐applications in office buildings form the basis of this research. It was undertaken as part of research to determine optimum energy and cost performance of TI‐systems for external cladding of high‐rise and low‐rise office buildings in temperate and tropical climates. The LCC of the buildings with conventional façades were compared with those with TI‐façades. The results show that LCC can be used to evaluate the economic feasibility of low carbon technologies such as TI‐systems effectively. A detailed account is provided of how different sources of cost data can be captured, collected and integrated to perform selective goal directed LCC analysis in the absence of detailed historical LCC data. The use of the goal directed LCC method and cost influence diagram presented in this research can be adopted as a standard method for assessing the economic feasibility of applying low carbon technologies to buildings.