Future opportunities for offsite in the UK

Practitioners' views and opinions on the benefits and drawbacks of offsite technologies in the UK construction industry can vary widely, often depending upon their role or position. This research provides an indication of the opinions of the different sectors within the industry, including clients, designers, contractors and offsite suppliers, together with some predictions for the future growth of the offsite sector in the UK. A questionnaire survey of UK construction was conducted in order to target the three main construction industry sectors—suppliers/manufacturers, contractors and designers/clients. More than 80 questionnaires were completed and returned. The vast majority of practitioners within the industry are aware of the possibilities and potential of offsite, and most also understand the advantages and disadvantages of its use. The value of the UK offsite market was valued at £2.2bn in 2004 and the demand for offsite is clearly increasing, but it is not always clear in a project who is the main driver for its use. For the offsite market to develop further however, two main problems need to be addressed; the lack of transparent information for the decision makers in the construction process, particularly that relating to comparative costs, and the lack of available multi‐skilled labour to work in the offsite factories.     

Health and safety management in developing countries: a study of construction SMEs in Ghana

The construction industry plays a significant role in the economy of developing countries. The sector is, however, also one of the most hazardous with frequent accidents and health‐related problems. The health and safety practices of construction small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana are examined with a view to improving the health and safety performance of the sector. A survey questionnaire was administered to owner/managers of SMEs, with a response rate of 32% of the sampling frame. Few of the SMEs adopted proactive health and safety practices. However, health and safety practices identified as being particularly associated with firm characteristics were: accident investigation procedures; accident reporting procedures; use of health and safety posters; documentation of method statements; and health and safety inductions. The diversity of health and safety practices associated with different size categories of SMEs and constraints to improving health and safety are highlighted. A positive change is needed in the attitudes of owner/managers which takes into account size‐related constraints in order to improve the health and safety performance of Ghanaian SMEs.     

Ethnographic methodologies for construction research: knowing,practice and interventions

Ethnographic methodologies developed in social anthropology and sociology hold considerable promise for addressing practical, problem-based research concerned with the construction site. The extended researcher-engagement characteristic of ethnography reveals rich insights, yet is infrequently used to understand how workplace realities are lived out on construction sites. Moreover, studies that do employ these methods are rarely reported within construction research journals. This paper argues that recent innovations in ethnographic methodologies offer new routes to: posing questions; understanding workplace socialities (i.e. the qualities of the social relationships that develop on construction sites); learning about forms, uses and communication of knowledge on construction sites; and turning these into meaningful recommendations. This argument is supported by examples from an interdisciplinary ethnography concerning migrant workers and communications on UK construction sites. The presented research seeks to understand how construction workers communicate with managers and each other and how they stay safe on site, with the objective of informing site health-and-safety strategies and the production and evaluation of training and other materials.

Les méthodologies ethnographiques développées en anthropologie sociale et en sociologie sont extrêmement prometteuses pour aborder des recherches pratiques, basées sur la résolution de problèmes et portant sur le chantier de construction. La caractéristique étendue chercheur-engagement de l'ethnographie est révélatrice de riches enseignements, mais est néanmoins peu souvent utilisée pour comprendre comment les réalités du lieu de travail sont vécues sur les chantiers de construction. De plus, les études faisant effectivement appel à ces méthodes sont rarement présentées dans les revues consacrées à la recherche dans le bâtiment. Cet article défend l'idée selon laquelle les innovations récentes dans les méthodologies ethnographiques offrent de nouvelles voies, qu'il s'agisse de poser des questions; de comprendre les socialités sur le lieu de travail (c'est-à-dire les qualités des relations sociales qui se développent sur les chantiers de construction); d'en apprendre plus sur les formes, les usages et la communication des savoirs sur les chantiers de construction; et de transformer cela en des recommandations utiles. Cette argumentation est appuyée par des exemples issus d'une ethnographie interdisciplinaire qui concerne les travailleurs migrants et la communication sur les chantiers de construction britanniques. Le travail de recherche présenté vise à comprendre comment les ouvriers du bâtiment communiquent avec leur encadrement et entre eux et comment ils maintiennent leur sécurité sur les chantiers, l'objectif étant d'influer sur les stratégies relatives à la sécurité et à la protection de la santé sur les chantiers, ainsi que sur la production et l'évaluation des matériels de formation et autres.

Mots clés: chantier de construction, ouvriers du bâtiment, recherches ethnographiques, connaissances indigènes, pratiques informelles, connaissances pratiques, savoir local     

The ‘granite encapsulation’ route to the safe disposal of Pu and other actinides

Waste actinides, including plutonium, present a long-term management problem and a serious security issue. Immobilisation in mineral or ceramic waste forms for interim storage is a widely proposed first step. The safest, most secure geological disposal for Pu is in very deep boreholes and we propose that the key step to combination of these immobilisation and disposal concepts is encapsulation of the waste form in cylinders of recrystallized granite. We discuss the underpinning science, focusing on experimental work, and consider implementation. Finally, we present and discuss analyses of zircon, UO₂ and Ce-doped cubic zirconia from high pressure and temperature experiments in granitic melts that demonstrate the viability of this solution and that actinides can be isolated from the environment for millions, maybe hundreds of millions, of years.     

Towards the More Effective Use of Housing Finance and Subsidy

The UK provides an important case study of both the potential for restructuring traditional housing finance systems and the outcome of such restructuring. During the period 1975–2000 the UK government undertook a piece-by-piece restructuring of housing finance. The major objectives of this restructuring included bringing public expenditure under control, ensuring that a high proportion of housing costs were paid by the direct beneficiaries and targeting available subsidy more directly on those in housing need. This agenda was supported by more general policies of liberalisation and privatisation, and particularly by the growth in asset values during the 1970s and 1980s and by macro-economic stabilisation during the 1990s. Based on the desktop analysis undertaken for the Evaluation of English Housing Policy Review this paper takes four specific policies and clarifies how political priorities and the economic environment came together to make policy change possible. It then evaluates the outcomes of these policies both in terms of their immediate goals and the more general objectives of housing policy. The incremental approach favoured by the government appears to have been successful in its own terms, but the result is far from a coherent and sustainable housing finance policy. The conclusions stress more general lessons some of which have implications for effective restructuring in other countries.     

Neonatal handling alters brain organization but does not influence recovery from perinatal cortical injury.

Handling rat pups by removing them from the nest during the preweaning period has been shown to influence brain and behavioral development. The authors hypothesized that handling rats with perinatal (Day 4) medial frontal cortex removals might attenuate behavioral deficits and reverse dendritic atrophy associated with such an injury. On the day after surgery, pups were removed from the nest for 15 min, 3 times per day until weaning. Animals were tested as adults in the Morris water task and on skilled reaching. Handled animals showed no improvement in behavioral performance. The handling procedure led to a decrease in dendritic length in parietal cortex, but spine density was unchanged. No therapeutic advantage was observed following the preweaning handling of brain-injured rats. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Probing of the Interior Layers of the Earth with Self-Sinking Capsules

It is shown that self-sinking of a spherical probe in the form of a capsule filled with radionuclides, whose decay heats and melts the rock in its path, deep into the Earth is possible. Information on the formation, structure, and shifts deep in the Earth can be obtained by recording and analyzing acoustic signals from the recrystallization of the rock by the probe. It is shown that such capsules can be placed at a prescribed depth. Self-sinking probes can be used to study the formation of deep layers in the Earth, prospect for minerals, and study underground motions in seismically active regions. __________ Translated from Atomnaya Energiya, Vol. 99, No. 2, pp. 120–127, August 2005.     

Serotonin transporter genetic variation and biased attention for emotional word stimuli among psychiatric inpatients.

The short allele in a variable repeat sequence of the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) has been associated with stronger activation in brain regions critical for processing emotional stimuli. The authors examined whether variants of the 5-HTTLPR promoter polymorphism were also associated with individual differences in attentional biases for emotional stimuli. Words related to anxious and dysphoric emotional states were presented to psychiatric inpatients in a standard dot-probe reaction time task. Compared with participants with two long alleles, carriers of the short 5-HTTLPR allele exhibited a stronger attentional bias for anxious word stimuli. No genetic group difference was observed for dysphoric word stimuli. Findings from this preliminary study highlight the potential for integrating genetic and cognitive models of psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Towards an autonomous real-time tracking system of near-miss accidents on construction sites

It has been widely accepted that reported accidents on construction sites are just the tip of the iceberg representing the safety challenge because a very large number of near-miss accidents exist and constitute the portion of under-water surface. Undoubtedly, near-miss accidents provide insights into possible accidents and provide a great opportunity to further improve safety margins. It is possible to significantly improve the safety performance by learning from previous near-miss accidents and tracking near-miss accidents in real time leading to taking appropriate action before a potential up-coming accident. However, little research has been done in both autonomous data requirement analysis of near-miss accidents and technological solutions to track near-miss accidents based on real-time information on construction sites. The objective of this paper is to analyze and verify the autonomous information requirement of near-miss accidents and investigate the feasibility and performance of using a Zigbee RFID sensor network to fulfil these requirements. First, the autonomous data requirement of near-miss accidents is systematically analyzed based on typical historical accident cases. Then, considering the features of construction sites and characteristics of near-miss accidents, an autonomous real-time tracking system of near-miss accidents (ARTTS-NMA) on construction sites is proposed, which employs ultrasonic for outdoor and indoor real-time location tracking, adopts sensors for environment surveillance, RFID for access control as well as storage of safety information about workers, equipment and materials, and wireless sensor networks for data transmission. All system components are integrated into a Zigbee RFID sensor network architecture that features a relatively low cost and fast implementation with a pure wireless network backbone. The demonstration system based on the hybrid RFID sensor network architecture is fully working in a laboratory environment and for safety reasons we have chosen to evaluate it in a warehouse, which is considered as the main scenario of a construction site containing both multi-storey structure and open area, to evaluate the complexity of implementation.     

Managing the unknown – Addressing the potential health risks of nanomaterials in the built environment

Nanomaterials offer significant potential for high performing new products in the built environment and elsewhere. However, there are uncertainties regarding their potential adverse health effects and the extent to which they are currently used. A desk study and interviews with those working across the construction, demolition and product manufacture sectors (n = 59) identified the current state of knowledge regarding nanomaterial use within the built environment. Some nanomaterials are potentially toxic, particularly those based on fibres; others are much less problematic but the evidence base is incomplete. Very little is known regarding the potential for exposure for those working with nano-enabled construction materials. Identifying which construction products contain nanomaterials, and which nanomaterials these might be, is very difficult due to inadequate labelling by product manufacturers. Consequently, those working with nano-enabled products typically have very limited knowledge or awareness of this. Further research is required regarding the toxicology of nanomaterials and the potential for exposure during construction and demolition. Better sharing of the information which is already available is also required through the construction, demolition and manufacture/supply chains. This is likely to be important for other innovative products and processes in construction, not just those which use nanomaterials.