Safety Management: Problems Encountered and Recommended Solutions

The philosophy of safety management is a relatively new method of controlling safety policies, procedures, and practices within a company. This philosophy is currently being implemented by many construction companies to limit their liabilities and costs, thereby making them more competitive in the construction marketplace. While the principles behind safety management are fairly simple in concept, it is during the implementation of such a program that construction companies may encounter their most difficult obstacles. In fact, it is often the workers who present the greatest opposition—the same individuals who benefit the most by improved safety conditions on the site. Safety management is a dynamic process operating in a constant state of change. Therefore, the process must be constantly monitored and adjusted to achieve the desired goals. This paper presents a discussion of the methods of safety management employed on a small-to medium-sized project in the northwestern United States. The discussion will highlight several of the problems encountered and the solutions utilized to overcome these problems.     

工程总承包企业业务流程再造研究

工程总承包业务,国际上通常是由专业的工程公司承担。本文引入流程再造理论和思想,以优化经营结构和管理模式为突破口,重新构建从投标报价-项目策划-设计-采购-施工-试车的工程总承包业务流程,以及以该业务流程为基础建立的从项目启动-项目策划-项目实施-项目控制-项目收尾的工程总承包管理流程,为设计院向工程公司转型提供了理论支持和政策建议。     

Approach for Assessment and Review in a Large Construction Company: Case of Skanska Sweden

Although the need to improve performance and work processes in a company may seem obvious, concrete approaches for this are rare in the construction industry. Admittedly, efforts for embedding improvement processes have been made, but most construction companies are still struggling with concepts, avoiding available tools and techniques for assessment and review. In doing so, they ignore possibilities to identify how they can improve their performance and work processes. In the few cases where tools and techniques have been used, they often fail to address the specific characteristics of the organization. This paper presents how a systematic approach for assessment and review of operations and work processes can be tailored for a large construction company. An in-depth case study carried out at the large construction company Skanska Sweden is the basis for this study. Interaction between research and development work at the company has enabled a deep understanding of the company’s operations, its culture, and its way of working. The approach presented is based on the existing management system at Skanska Sweden and its focus is on creating a structured way to discuss how operations are carried out. The aims are to assess how operations at the local units within the company can be improved and to improve the management system and thereby benefit the organization as a whole.     

Action Research as a Proactive Research Method for Construction Engineering and Management

Academic research in applied disciplines such as construction engineering and management (CEM) has the dual mission of simultaneously contributing to the solution of practical problems and creating theoretical and conceptual knowledge. To do so, appropriate research approaches are needed. However, extant literature in the field has paid little attention to this issue and research methods used have been almost entirely either quantitative surveys or case studies. In this paper, action research (AR) is proposed as an answer to this knowledge gap. AR aims at building and testing theory within the context of solving an immediate practical problem in a real setting. The paper describes the underlying philosophy and application procedure of AR and highlights its strengths and weaknesses. Then, the applicability of the method to CEM is illustrated through a case study of improving access to information to support planning and decision making in a construction owner organization through designing and implementing a data warehouse. The findings indicate that AR is a reliable, structured, and rigorous research approach that is very useful for conducting applied research in construction and enabling academia to influence and improve construction industry practices. It can also effectively help to improve collaboration between academic researchers and industry practitioners in research and development projects.     

Construction Process Reengineering by Integrating Lean Principles and Computer Simulation Techniques

A construction process reengineering framework and its corresponding methodologies have been developed by integrating lean principles and computer simulation techniques. Instead of classifying activities into value-adding and non-value-adding activities, or into conversion and flow activities as is common in lean production practices, this framework classifies activities into main and supportive activities and/or into normal and interactive activities. This classification makes it more effective in modeling the construction workflow and reengineering the construction process. It also avoids the confusion of the classification of activities into value-adding and non-value-adding activities encountered in the construction industry. In addition, computer simulation techniques are incorporated into the framework to virtually simulate and assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the reengineered construction process that is achieved based on lean principles. Simulation makes it easier to quantify and assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the reengineered construction process.     

Production System Loading–Cycle Time Relationship in Residential Construction

Production home building possesses characteristics similar to manufacturing processes, such as the construction of more or less similar houses repeatedly and a growing demand for mass customization of homes. As a result of these similarities, larger homebuilders often attempt to view their production system as an assembly line process. However, the management tools generally utilized by these home builders are those used in other sectors of the construction industry, such as critical path method scheduling, cost estimating, and earned value analysis. These management tools do not provide an explanation or control/prediction tools for many undesirable situations that arise during home building, such as increasing cycle time which slows delivery of product to consumers and increases project capital costs, and increasing amounts of work in process that increases capital investment and thereby decreases company financial performance. In order to bring better management tools to the residential construction industry, this study examines relationships between cycle time, work in process, system throughput, new construction starts, and the capacity of the production system using building permit data for new single family homes in Chandler, Ariz. The applicability of Little’s law, a basic equation used in factory production management models, to a residential production system is examined. This study shows a definite, predictable relationship between cycle time, work in process, and production system throughput. It provides a pathway for further study of production system characteristics that have historically not been included in construction management models, with the expectation of developing new construction management tools that will account for more of the characteristics of construction production systems that affect project performance and company financial performance.     

Influences Impacting Leadership Development

The construction industry is placing increased emphasis on developing leadership skills for project managers. This paper describes a research project that was executed to analyze the causal influences on the development of project managers, whom the authors believe also must be leaders. The research compared two groups of project managers within a large construction company. One group was top performing construction managers as selected by corporate executives, while the second group was a randomly selected control group. The research examined influences on career development including job experience, project management experience, formal project management training, formal leadership training, and job assignments. The research also solicited opinions from both groups as to what they perceived as factors impacting leadership career development. Statistical differences between the groups were found in the areas of project management experience and number of positions held prior to the first project management assignment. Both groups believed there was more of a need within their company for leadership training than for project management training.     

Empiricist Framework for TQM Implementation in Construction Companies

As a management philosophy, total quality management (TQM) is implemented differently in firms. This study investigates the implementation level and the types of TQM practices adopted in construction companies. Eight elements had been identified from both organizational-/management- and construction-related studies to represent the TQM spirit. These elements are top management leadership, customer management, people management, supplier management, quality information management, process management, organizational learning, and continual improvement. A questionnaire survey was conducted to solicit the implementation level of the identified TQM elements. The survey findings indicate that customer, process management, and top management leadership were implemented at a higher level than the remaining elements with quality information management implemented at the lowest level. Important practices that constitute each element were also identified. Based on the findings, we propose a TQM implementation framework for construction companies.     

Implementing Observational Research Methods to Study Team Performance in Construction Management

The evolution of research in the area of construction engineering and management has moved toward the use of quantitative metrics and research methods for identifying and evaluating the impact of events or procedures on the construction process. While quantitative research methods can be very important for answering certain research questions, there are important reasons for adopting qualitative or mixed methodology studies to gain a better understanding of complex phenomena. This paper explores the use of observational studies and their potential use within the field of construction research. Observational studies can provide answers to “what” phenomena occurred, particularly when people are involved in a process, along with gaining insights into “why” the phenomena occurred. This paper discusses two types of observational studies, structured and unstructured, and provides a procedure for their implementation within construction research. To clearly demonstrate the methodology, a case study focused on the investigation of two different versions of an educational simulation application, the virtual construction simulator (VCS), is used to illustrate the benefits and challenges of implementing mixed methodology observational studies. The case study involved the video recording and analysis of interactions between student team members when using the VCS application for a construction sequencing task. The video recordings were analyzed, and important insights were identified, both qualitative and quantitative. Through content analysis, it was determined that the improvements made in a new version of the VCS application were beneficial, and the detailed observational studies identified insights into why the revisions in the application yielded improved results. This case study details the steps and considerations involved in planning an observational study, as well as the benefits and challenges that researchers may encounter when using observational research methodologies.     

Using Agent-Based Modeling to Study Construction Labor Productivity as an Emergent Property of Individual and Crew Interactions

Lean construction research has shown that managing work flow effectively and maintaining labor flow on site can improve construction labor performance. Related research also shows that congestion on construction sites often leads to lowered efficiency. Using these findings as a point of departure, we use the agent-based modeling method to represent the construction site as a system of complex interactions and explore whether labor efficiency can be treated as an emergent property resulting from individual and crew interactions in space. This allows us to use a “bottom-up” approach to analyzing labor efficiency, which supplements existing “top-down” approaches to modeling the impacts of space congestion on labor efficiency. A pilot implementation of the agent-based model, and preliminary results illustrating the relationships between congestion and labor efficiency are presented. The empirical studies exhibit system behavior that support published principles of work-force management. The primary contribution of this paper is that it provides a method that can be used to efficiently utilize construction space, and develop plans and schedules that account for congestion arising from crew interactions in space.     

Using Gaussian and Hyperbolic Distributions for Quality Improvement in Construction: Case Study Approach

The Gaussian distribution and the 6σ principle have been widely used in the field of construction quality management with great success. This paper proposes a theoretical study on a new hyperbolic distribution using the 6σ principle to improve quality in construction management. The hyperbolic and Gaussian distributions are then numerically compared by estimating their important statistical properties, such as population in range, number of defects, yield percentage, and defects per million opportunities. The impacts of these factors are briefly discussed to give guidance to organizations in the construction industry on how to lower cost and improve project quality by prevention. A case study showing the cost data of a construction consultant company is presented. The data’s population in range and defects per million opportunities are estimated using Gaussian and hyperbolic distributions. In this particular case study, the hyperbolic distribution is shown to be more effective in quality improvement by prevention than the Gaussian distribution. This also validates the hyperbolic distribution as a suitable distribution for construction quality management.     

Management of Construction Firm Performance Using Benchmarking

In today’s highly competitive construction industry, there is a critical need for managers to continuously improve their firm’s efficiency and effectiveness. More specifically, managers need to know which performance measures are most critical in determining their firm’s overall success. Benchmarking, when done properly, can accurately identify both successful companies and the underlying reasons for their success. However, rigorous benchmarking within the construction industry still remains an embryonic field. This paper analyzes and critiques both the performance measures and metrics used traditionally in the construction industry and the benchmarking models developed to date for the industry. Based on the results of this analysis, benchmarking models using data envelope analysis are proposed that offer significant improvements over current models. The proposed models measure construction firm performance on a company-wide basis, foster trade-off analyses among various performance metrics, and tie the resources expended by construction firms to how well those firms perform overall. The models also provide managers guidance in determining how specific company resources can be reallocated to improve overall company performance.     

Integrating Document Management with Project and Company Data

Electronic document management (EDM) systems have revolutionized the construction document storage and retrieval process. An electronically managed document consists of a computer representation of the main document body, usually in the form of a bitmap, and a reference or indexing structure used to retrieve the document. In construction, the reference data includes information that relates the document to certain aspects of the constructed facility and the construction company. It is argued that this relationship needs to be represented explicitly and in an integrated manner as opposed to the approach used by traditional EDM systems. This paper presents an integrated approach based on the concept of specialized construction data models. A detailed account of how this approach was followed to integrate a quality assurance document management system within a steel fabrication company is also presented.     

六西格玛管理方法在临钢公司新产品开发中的应用

临钢公司是一家国营老钢铁企业,在实施新产品开发战略的过程中,通过对质量管理流程进行再造。对产品质量进行六西格玛改进,取得了良好的经济效益和管理效果。     

Reengineering health care materials management

Health care executives across the country, faced with intense competition, are being forced to consider drastic cost cutting measures as a matter of survival. The entire health care industry is under siege from boards of directors, management and others who encourage health care systems to take actions ranging from strategic acquisitions and mergers to simple "downsizing" or "rightsizing," to improve their perceived competitive positions in terms of costs, revenues and market share. In some cases, management is poorly prepared to work within this new competitive paradigm and turns to consultants who promise that following their methodologies can result in competitive advantage. One favored methodology is reengineering. Frequently, cost cutting attention is focused on the materials management budget because it is relatively large and is viewed as being comprised mostly of controllable expenses. Also, materials management is seldom considered a core competency for the health care system and the organization performing these activities does not occupy a strongly defensible position. This paper focuses on the application of a reengineering methodology to healthcare materials management.     

Partnering Mechanism in Construction: An Empirical Study on the Chinese Construction Industry

Partnering and its principles have increasingly been introduced to the construction industry to improve the efficiency of project delivery. However, little research outlines the mechanism behind its application. This paper presents the findings of a study that was conducted to develop and test a partnering model that reveals the relationships between the critical success factors (CSFs) of partnering and demonstrates their importance to construction. With support of data collected from the Chinese construction industry, this study has revealed strong correlations among partnering CSFs, risk management, total quality management (TQM), use of incentives, and project performance. It is concluded that project success is the outcome of the interaction between a variety of techniques, and that partnering, associated with incentives, is a basic management method through which risk management and TQM can be strongly improved.     

Total Quality Management Implementation in the Egyptian Construction Industry

Total quality management (TQM) has been recognized as a successful management philosophy that can be successfully implemented in the construction industry. By examining the Japanese contractors working in Egypt and comparing their managing systems to the local ones, a comparative analysis of the two contractors working in the Egyptian field is presented in this paper to illustrate how TQM can be implemented effectively in the Egyptian construction industry. Bearing in mind the location bound nature of the production process, the competitive bidding, which emphasizes cost and the absence of the quality culture of the clients, subcontractors and site operatives are some of the constraining factors for implementing the quality policy. Based on the research findings, the paper presents some features of the Japanese construction industry that could be implemented in the Egyptian field in addition to a new model for TQM implementation that appropriates the Egyptian construction industry.     

Comparison of Cultures in Construction and Manufacturing Industries

This paper investigates and compares the culture found in a construction company with that found in two manufacturing companies because large differences in culture might reduce the potential for the construction sector to adopt management tools developed in the manufacturing sector. For the comparisons to be valid, the culture within the physical production process was observed. The results were obtained by use of questionnaires and intensive interviews with individual members of staff using a U.K. government sponsored questionnaire. A vertical section of each company was sampled such that equivalent organizational levels could be directly compared. The main findings are that the culture existing in construction has significant differences to that found within the manufacturing industries. It will not be possible to transfer management tools from one industrial sector to the other without substantial redesign. The culture within construction was found to be a “project culture” in comparison to manufacturing, which was found to be a “company culture.”     

Safety Climate Improvement: Case Study in a Chinese Construction Company

A positive safety climate can improve employees’ safety awareness and reduce workers’ unsafe behaviors. Having consistent key factors that comprise safety climate is paramount in facilitating the measurement and comparison of safety climate over time which helps identify effective approaches to improve safety performance. This paper examines the consistency of safety climate factor structure and safety climate improvements over time in a Chinese construction company. It adopts a case study approach and reports on using the same safety climate instrument to carry out two surveys, three years apart. The exploratory factor analysis showed that the obtained four-factor structure of safety climate remained consistent across the two surveys. Moreover, the confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that the second-order factor of safety climate was unchanged. Statistically significant improvements were also found on all four identified factors. The governmental or organizational strategies and/or tactics that could stimulate positive improvements on safety climate factors (referred to as stimulators hereinafter) were then identified via interviews with safety management officers in the company. The most effective stimulators were found to include constituting the safety regulations and safety rules, as well as increasing the intensity of safety training and safety promotion. Implications on the consistent factor structure of safety climate and the stimulators are also discussed.     

安钢物流低成本运行模式探讨

利用网络资源优势,建立虚拟的物流网络管控中心,通过现有的计质量信息系统,实时跟踪物流作业过程,加强物流作业集中管控能力,提高物流作业效率。运用成本管理原则对物流作业进行管理,利用价值工程理论使企业物流体系效益最大。运用成本的统一尺度衡量物流作业,反映物流活动的价值,优化物流系统的资源配置,实现业务流程再造,从作业链管理逐步向价值链管理方向发展。