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Sustainability
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Sustainable Construction Quality and Safety Management
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Sustainable Construction Quality and Safety Management

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2020) | Viewed by 22607

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Sangwon Han

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Architectural Engineering, University of Seoul, Seoul 02504, Korea
Interests: construction simulation; construction economics; construction finance and accounting; feasibility studies; asset management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Jonghyeob Kim

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Architectural Engineering, University of Seoul, South Korea
Interests: building maintenance; life cycle costing; value engineering; safety management; quality control; sustainable construction; sustainable management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Quality and safety are two of the most critical factors that determine the success or failure of a construction project. However, despite recent advancement in construction equipment and management techniques, construction is still notorious for poor quality and high accident rates.

It is known that there is a considerable similarity between the principles and methods of quality and safety management. An in-depth understanding of these similarities and their systematic application is expected to result in synergies that can simultaneously improve quality and safety performance for sustainable construction.

Thus, this Special Issue invites original papers dealing with theoretical and practical aspects of reliability, quality, and safety for sustainable construction.

Topics of the Special Issue can include (but need not be limited to) the following specific issues:

  • Sustainable quality and safety management;
  • Quality assurance (QA) and total quality management (TQM);
  • Safety culture and total safety management;
  • Information technology for quality and safety management;
  • Simulation and optimization;
  • Case studies/best practices;
  • Human and organizational issues;
  • Conceptual or comparative approaches;
  • Mathematical modeling and statistical analysis;
  • Risk assessment and analysis.

Prof. Sangwon Han
Dr. Jonghyeob Kim
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • quality control
  • safety management
  • sustainability
  • sustainable construction management

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 10424 KiB  
Article
Identification of Defect Generation Rules among Defects in Construction Projects Using Association Rule Mining
by Jungeun Park, Yongwoon Cha, Hamad Al Jassmi, Sangwon Han and Chang-taek Hyun
Sustainability 2020, 12(9), 3875; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093875 - 9 May 2020
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2636
Abstract
This study aims to identify the defect generation rules between defects, to support effective defect prevention at construction sites. Numerous studies have been performed to identify the relations between defect causes, to prevent defects in construction projects. However, identifying the inter-causal pattern does [...] Read more.
This study aims to identify the defect generation rules between defects, to support effective defect prevention at construction sites. Numerous studies have been performed to identify the relations between defect causes, to prevent defects in construction projects. However, identifying the inter-causal pattern does not yet guarantee an ultimate grasp of what constitutes proper defect mitigation strategies, unless the underlying defect-to-defect generation rules are thoroughly understood too. Specifically, if a defect generated in a work process is ignored without taking necessary corrective action, then additional defects could be generated in its following works as well. Thus, to minimize defect generation, this study analyzes the defects in the sequence of a construction work. To achieve this, the authors collected 9054 defect data, and association rule mining is used to analyze the rules between the defects. Consequently, 216 rules are identified, and 152 rules are classified into 3 categories along with 4 experts (71 expected rules, 22 unexpected but explainable rules, and 59 unexpected and unexplainable rules). The generation rules between the defects identified in this study are expected to be used to regularize various defect types to determine those that require priority management. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Construction Quality and Safety Management)
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21 pages, 871 KiB  
Article
Potential of Virtual Design Construction Technologies to Improve Job-Site Safety in Gulf Corporation Council
by Muhammad Tariq Shafiq and Muneeb Afzal
Sustainability 2020, 12(9), 3826; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093826 - 8 May 2020
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 4592
Abstract
With the advancement of digital design practices in the global construction industry, different aspects related to the project lifecycle are extracting their benefits, including making improvements in safety. The objective of this paper is to ascertain the awareness of these technologies, their potential, [...] Read more.
With the advancement of digital design practices in the global construction industry, different aspects related to the project lifecycle are extracting their benefits, including making improvements in safety. The objective of this paper is to ascertain the awareness of these technologies, their potential, and any barriers related to the use of different virtual design construction (VDC) tools, such as building information modeling, virtual reality, augmented reality, and geographic information systems, to improve job-site safety in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The paper presents an overview of the GCC construction industry and highlights current safety management practices and problems in the region. The potential of VDC tools for improving job-site safety is discussed and presented. The study has used a questionnaire survey to identify the drivers and barriers of using VDC tools in improving job-site safety management in the GCC region. The results indicated that “designing emergency and evacuation plans” and “fall-hazard prevention strategies” are the two best safety applications of these tools if used proactively. Similarly, “lack of knowledge about return on investment for VDC tools” was considered as the predominant barrier, preventing stakeholders from using these technologies to improve construction safety. These results will help the GCC construction industry to build a strategy for the digitalization of proactive constructability analysis techniques for improving job-site safety. Overall, due to the multilingual dynamics of this region, it is recommended that VDC tools should become more prevalent so that the transfer of safety information and hazard prevention becomes easier, mitigating safety risks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Construction Quality and Safety Management)
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13 pages, 9841 KiB  
Article
Analysis of Fatal Accidents and Their Causes in the Korean Construction Industry
by InSeok Park, Jonghyeob Kim, Sangwon Han and Changtaek Hyun
Sustainability 2020, 12(8), 3120; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083120 - 13 Apr 2020
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 4174
Abstract
The construction industry is one of the most hazardous industries in many countries. Many studies have asserted that industrial accidents could be prevented by eliminating their root causes. However, given that accident occurrence processes are considerably complex and often invisible, it is difficult [...] Read more.
The construction industry is one of the most hazardous industries in many countries. Many studies have asserted that industrial accidents could be prevented by eliminating their root causes. However, given that accident occurrence processes are considerably complex and often invisible, it is difficult to identify and eliminate the root causes. Based on this recognition, this paper aims to analyze the causality of construction accidents on the basis of direct causes that are classified into unsafe actions (UA) and unsafe conditions (UC). A logistic regression is applied to examine associations between UAs and UCs and their significances in triggering construction accidents. Then, a Delphi method is applied to determine the relationships between direct and root causes of construction accidents. This study contributes to an improved understanding of the complex causal process of construction accidents, which is a necessary stepping-stone to prevent construction accidents. Meanwhile, only one-to-one combinations of UCs and UAs are considered in this paper. Thus, follow-up studies to examine the impact of one-to-many or many-to-many combinations are needed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Construction Quality and Safety Management)
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18 pages, 1767 KiB  
Article
Sustainable Construction Safety Knowledge Sharing: A Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling and A Feedforward Neural Network Approach
by Rita Yi Man Li, Beiqi Tang and Kwong Wing Chau
Sustainability 2019, 11(20), 5831; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11205831 - 21 Oct 2019
Cited by 58 | Viewed by 7660
Abstract
Most studies focused on the introduction of new technologies have not investigated the psychological factors affecting the willingness to use them or conducted empirical studies to explore whether willingness and actual construction safety knowledge-sharing behavior are associated with fewer construction incidents. We conducted [...] Read more.
Most studies focused on the introduction of new technologies have not investigated the psychological factors affecting the willingness to use them or conducted empirical studies to explore whether willingness and actual construction safety knowledge-sharing behavior are associated with fewer construction incidents. We conducted face-to-face and LinkedIn open-ended interviews as well as a global survey to study the willingness and actual behavior to share construction knowledge via social software Web 2.0, Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile apps. Then, the Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) for willingness and actual knowledge-sharing behavior, as well as the Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) Neural Network were used to illustrate the effect of various factors on predicting the willingness to share knowledge via Web 2.0, mobile apps and IoT. Results of the interviews found that practitioners use IoT for knowledge sharing, mainly because they do not want to fall behind the curve. PLS-SEM and MLP revealed that practitioners share construction safety knowledge are not driven by safety-related reasons such as safety awareness enhancement but perceived organization support from their companies. Employees who agree that their organization cared about their employees’ well-being was the strongest predictor in influencing people’s decision to use tools for knowledge sharing. Moreover, many respondents claimed that factors such as monetary rewards have little impact on motivating people to use tools for knowledge sharing. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Construction Quality and Safety Management)
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19 pages, 15100 KiB  
Article
Materials Challenges in Reconstruction of Historical Projects: A Case Study of the Old Riwaq Project
by Basem Al Khatib, Yap Soon Poh and Ahmed El-Shafie
Sustainability 2019, 11(17), 4533; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11174533 - 21 Aug 2019
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2848
Abstract
Nowadays, the focus on sustainable materials with high specifications has become a necessity in certain important construction projects. These materials play an essential role and constitute the foundation stone in the sustainability of these projects in addition to their impact on the execution [...] Read more.
Nowadays, the focus on sustainable materials with high specifications has become a necessity in certain important construction projects. These materials play an essential role and constitute the foundation stone in the sustainability of these projects in addition to their impact on the execution time. Many studies have discussed the challenges faced by these materials and their negative impact on the execution period of construction projects. However, these studies are still scarce in the reconstruction projects, especially the historical ones, which are based mainly on the sustainability of the materials used, which are represented by the historical elements that maintain the ancient shape of the building. The aim of this research is to highlight the materials-related challenges of historical reconstruction projects which negatively affect the planned duration of implementation. This study was conducted on the Old Riwaq project, which is the historical part of the Mataf Expansion project in the city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is considered one of the most important reconstruction historical projects that have been recently carried out in the Middle East. In order to achieve this goal, 15 interviews were held with the engineers working in this project and specialists in these types of historical projects. The results show a group of different challenges that follow the reconstruction stages of the historical building. These challenges are: challenges related to the first stage which is the documentation and dismantling stage (two challenges), challenges related to the second stage which is the workshops stage (three challenges), and challenges related to the third stage which is the new designs and mockup stage (three challenges). Finally, the identification of sustainable materials challenges should be considered an urgent necessity, in order to overcome or reduce their negative effects in future projects, especially in relation to project durations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Construction Quality and Safety Management)
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