bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Green building practitioners’ understanding of the concept of sustainability: South African perspective
Authors: Mpanga Kowet Cathy T. , Ozumba Aghaegbuna O. U.
Published: December 2022

The pursuit of sustainable development has resulted in a narrow focus on environmental sustainability in construction. In recent years, the concept of holistic sustainability in the construction sector has gained traction, with green-certified buildings being a major driver. However, studies have shown that green building certification does not necessarily embrace a holistic sustainability approach. Moreover, the misconceptualisation of sustainability has remained a barrier to the full adoption of sustainability principles in the industry. Under this premise, a study was carried out amongst practitioners on green-certified projects to explore their understanding of sustainability in construction. The study was conducted through semi-structured interviews with construction professionals, who were involved in green building certified projects. Findings reveal that although green building practitioners have a considerable understanding of the concept of sustainability, the certification process limits the operationalisation of the concept. The context of South Africa was used to generate results that are relevant to other contexts with similar settings and green certification tools. The implication of this study includes the need for further research on the operationalisation of social and economic sustainability concepts in green building certification.
Influence of Office Building Design on Occupant Satisfaction
Authors: Artan D , Ergen E , Tekçe I , Yilmaz N
Published: December 2022

The objective of this study is to examine the influence of building design on office occupants by analysing empirical data on their satisfaction levels and prevalent complaints. A methodology involving literature review, expert interviews, and a field survey with 308 office employees was adopted to acquire the empirical data. The findings reveal that office occupants think Amount of Space as the most important parameter, followed by Layout, and Furniture. On the other hand, occupants are least satisfied by Amount of Space, followed by Interior Design and Layout. Insufficient social areas, insufficient work space, and layout of the work environment, distraction caused by human circulation due to office layout, and ergonomics of the furniture are the most common complaints. The results show that average importance level in each building design parameter is higher than or equal to the average satisfaction level. The largest gap between the perceived importance and satisfaction appears in Amount of Space and Layout. The results are expected to provide insight to designers, facility managers, and renovators of office buildings on how office occupants perceive office building design and frequent complaints encountered in the offices.
Exploring the Principles of Design for Disassembly through Design-led Research
Authors: Crowther P
Published: December 2022

The construction industry is responsible for a significant portion of the solid waste that industrialised nations dispose of each year. One reason for this is the low rates of reuse and recycling, largely due to the difficulties in deconstructing buildings and an inability to easily separate materials and components. If buildings were designed to facilitate deconstruction and the easier separation of the parts, then future material and component recovery would be easier. Previous research into historic examples of deconstruction has identified numerous principles for design for disassembly. This paper presents research that expands on this understanding of design for disassembly though the application of these principles in architectural design projects. A methodology of ‘research through designing’ is implemented to explore the principles and assess their suitability for integration into mainstream construction practice. Several domestic scaled architectural projects were used to trial the principles and the overarching philosophy. This experimentation and research through creative practice, has confirmed the value of the principles of design for disassembly as strategies for the potential reduction of future demolition waste. Further to this, it has made explicit some of the otherwise unrealised consequences or constraints of designing for future disassembly.
An investigation of the impact of green methods and technologies on the environmental sustainability of supportive educational buildings, case study of UCT
Authors: Moghayedi A , Le Jeune K , Michell K , Massyn M
Published: December 2022

As water and energy costs rise in South Africa due to the limited water and energy supply, green methods and technologies implemented in buildings will help alleviate the burden of this crisis. Many literatures studied green building technology; however, there is limited research on the barriers and drivers of using green methods and technology in supportive educational buildings at universities. It is essential to note the distinction between the different types of university buildings. Although the focus will be primarily based on supportive educational buildings, the overall study deals with the university as a system in a holistic view. This study makes use of a mixed-method approach, using an over-arching case study of supportive educational buildings at the University of Cape Town. A field survey of a supportive education building at UCT and semi-structured interviews were conducted with executive management at UCT. Findings reveal that across UCT’s various buildings, numerous green methods and technologies have been installed to help monitor and manage water and energy usage. Furthermore, it was indicated that the university had employed various strategies since the early 2000s to increase environmental sustainability to achieve sustainability. Additionally, there has been a shift to positively influence student behaviour through the phasing in of water and energy-saving campaigns around campus. The findings also reveal that UCT has recently prioritised green methods and technologies implementation, which inherently improves the resource efficiency and environmental sustainability of the supportive education buildings and, consequently, the overall university.
Mapping sustainability indicators for circular built environment in the Global South
Authors: Iyer-Raniga U , Huovila P
Published: December 2022

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a framework for a better future by focusing on people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships. SDGs directly relating to the built environment are SDG 11, SDG 9 and SDG 12. The SDGs do not explicitly mention circular thinking or practices. Yet, the principles underpinning sustainability and circularity are the same, especially those focusing on resource efficiency and conservation. The aim of this paper is to map the SDGs against circular built environment indicators in the Global South. In doing so, not only is the alignment between the National Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the built environment established, but the significant position that the built environment plays in the rapidly growing cities of the Global South is also strongly supported. Using secondary research, this paper first investigates the primary and secondary SDG indicators for achieving circular built environments by the One Planet Network’s Sustainable Buildings and Construction programme. This is then validated by undertaking workshops with experts in the Global South to determine an interim set of SDG indicators relate to circular economy such as local jobs, design considering climate mitigation, resilience and adaptation and such other indicators. The paper recommends priority indicators for achieving circular built environments in the Global South and suggests further research needs to be undertaken to finalise these indicators.
A scientometric-content analysis of integration of BIM and IoT
Authors: Jia Y , Hosseini M R , Zhang B , Martek I , Nikmehr B , Wang J
Published: December 2022

As two essential components of Industry 4.0 in the construction industry, building information modelling (BIM) and the Internet of things (IoT) tend to be integrated. Research in the field has increased significantly in recent years, yet previous reviews on this field are limited, and a review study with both quantitative and qualitative analysis of BIM-IoT integration remains wanting. Thus, this review paper investigates 107 peer-reviewed journal articles in the field of BIM-IoT integration using mixed scientometric-content analysis. The findings reveal that the research in this field is promising, and collaboration has achieved well-recognised outcomes, while more collaborations are expected. Besides, the analysis reveals that the research is evolving from traditional construction themes, such as safety, energy efficiency and thermal comfort, to evolutionary concepts, such as digitalisation, Industry 4.0, digital twin, and smart cities. Finally, five research opportunities are outlined, including reliability and robustness, interoperability, integration with other emerging technologies, security and privacy, and reluctance from the construction industry. This review is the first attempt to conduct a scientometric analysis of the research of BIM-IoT integration. The findings provide directions for future research.
A Tailored Artificial Intelligence Model for Predicting Heat Strain of Construction Workers
Authors: Yi Wen , Zhao Yijie , Chan Albert P.C.
Published: December 2022

Traditional multilayer perceptron models have been used to predict the heat strain of construction workers. A major drawback of these models is that their black box nature may generate predictions that contradict domain knowledge and this casts doubt to construction managers on the effectiveness of the models. To overcome this limitation, a tailored multilayer perceptron model is developed to predict the heat strain of construction workers that guarantees the monotonicity of the predicted heat strain with some input features (e.g., temperature). The main finding is the tailored multilayer perceptron model never predicts results that contradict domain knowledge, making it more acceptable to construction managers. The tailored multilayer perceptron model is validated by a Hong Kong based smart solutions company.
An IFC Approach for BIPV Technical Pre-design Consideration
Authors: Zhang Chaoxiang , Yang Rebecca , Boukamp Frank
Published: December 2022

The increasing demand for nearly-Zero Energy Buildings contributes to a broader discussion of implementing building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) on building envelopes. Existing research indicates that BIPV products should be digitally represented in Building Information Modeling (BIM) to facilitate the design process. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema as data exchange standard needs to support the relevant BIPV use cases to enable the exchange of relevant BIM data between stakeholders. However, there is a lack of clear identification of BIPV use cases which are needed as a basis for assessing IFC’s ability to capture and represent BIPV products digitally. The identification of BIPV use cases is also necessary for the proper development of a Model View Definition (MVD) for IFCs in the BIPV domain. This study uses the technical pre-design consideration as sample use case to demonstrate the processes of developing an MVD for BIPV digital products in the Australian context. A three-step research approach is employed, including a collection of use cases through a literature review and interviews, defining exchange requirements and proposing an initial MVD based on IFC4 ADD2 TC1. This paper contributes to the BIPV area by providing a BIPV use case description for the Technical Pre-design Consideration use case in the Australian context and identifying existing challenges in the current IFC schema related to representing BIPV product information.
Unlocking Human Factors for More Resilient and Sustainable Built Environments: Human Centric Solutions
Authors: Goh C S
Published: December 2022

Sustainable buildings are designed to provide a better built environment that reduces environmental impacts, supports communities for social needs, and preserves economic gains. Despite a growing interest in sustainable development over the past few decades, there has been surprisingly little research focusing on the implications of human factors to a sustainable built environment. Sustainable building solutions shall be informed by the needs of building occupants and made in adaptive response to environmental, economic and socio-cultural changes. Interactions between users and buildings are of great importance to determine how successful a sustainable building is. Literature revealed that a failure of putting users at the pinnacle of designing sustainable solutions could be one of the main underlying reasons of underperformance of sustainable buildings. This paper presents a conceptual framework to demonstrate how human centric solutions contribute to improving user-environment interactions in sustainable buildings. By considering human centric solutions, sustainable building performance can be optimised by integrating users’ needs and aspirations into the design and development process. This paper helps increase the understanding of the roles of human factors in sustainable buildings, hence supporting the development of social sustainability which has been greatly overlooked in the pursuit of sustainable development.
Automated assembly of reciprocal frame structures using robotics
Authors: Chea C P , Bai Y
Published: December 2022

In this paper, the robotization of structural construction was studied in preference to the undemanding assembly of the reciprocal frame (RF) structures. Formulas were developed to automate the process of geometric forming and component evaluation. Subsequently, the robotic cooperative system was established to assemble the structure according to the positions and orientations of each component from the geometric forming module. The robotic system consists of two robotic arms, two navigating robots, depth cameras, and customized grippers. The structure was made from pultruded glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) members owing to their lightweight, high strength and corrosion resistance. Concepts of temporary connections were also proposed to eliminate the offset generated during the construction. Finally, the comparative studies of the constructions in different light environments and with different ground obstacles were investigated through experimental investigations. The results showed that the structure can be successfully assembled with the proposed robotic system and the assistance of the temporary connection in most of the light conditions and ground obstacles.
An exploratory configurational analysis of collaborative innovation in megaprojects
Authors: Chen Xiaoyan , He Qinghua , Yu Chao
Published: December 2022

Despite an increasing emphasis on collaborative innovation in megaprojects, it is still empirically not known how the combinations of drivers could lead to collaborative innovation. Using a configurational approach, this study investigates the combinations of drivers contributing to collaborative innovation. First, questionnaire surveys were used to collect data from a sample of Chinese megaprojects. Data were then analysed by fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The findings demonstrate that four equifinal combinations can promote collaborative innovation: (1) learning, responding to project and clients’ requirements, improving efficiency, responding to competition, and responding to external changes; (2) learning, responding to project and clients’ requirements, and improving efficiency; (3) learning, gaining rewards, and responding to competition; (4) responding to project and clients’ requirements, improving efficiency, gaining rewards, and responding to external changes. Overall, this study contributes to collaborative innovation research and provides practical suggestions to better manage and promote collaborative innovation.
Automated 360° Photographic Data Capture for Building Construction Projects: Analysis of a Prototype
Authors: Kim Jeffrey , Khan Maaz
Published: December 2022

Effectively carrying out the digital documentation of a construction project site makes it possible to capture important events, allows for the measurement of progress, and creates an archive of data that can be called upon if issues arise in the future. It is best if the documentation can occur at regularly scheduled intervals to eliminate the possibility of missing important project details. Anecdotally, it has been found that practitioners are not good at keeping up with this important task – it is often viewed as a chore for a junior-level employee to undertake when there are no other important tasks to accomplish. An alternative is necessary. Robotic automation is often viewed as a good replacement for tedious activities that require a degree of accuracy in repetitiveness. Considering the possibilities for this type of automation, the researchers sought to understand the accuracy and reliability of a prototype programmable ground-based drone to automatically capture 360° project photographs. Experimentation was conducted by scoring the drone’s ability to complete a 10-point trial run across three different terrain types. This study focused on how terrain affects the drone’s accuracy and validates the findings by incorporating industry feedback about the prototype being proposed in this paper.
A servitization profile of the Construction 4.0
Authors: Brito J T S , Cardoso F F , Oviedo-Haito R J J
Published: December 2022

The incorporation of technologies associated to Construction 4.0 is an alternative to innovate conventional services in construction. Nonetheless, little is known about the components of services associated to Construction 4.0 that could be incorporated into conventional construction, in a process called servitization. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present a servitization profile of Construction 4.0. To this end, a bibliographic and documental review was performed, gathering data from 262 components of services, or subservices, associated to 15 technologies in websites from 148 companies that offer 38 services associated to Construction 4.0. Results include the characterization of a servitization profile of Construction 4.0 subservices in eight levels: 1) non-digital servitization; 2) data collection; 3) non-autonomous data processing and analysis; 4) modeling and simulation; 5) autonomous data processing, analysis and monitoring; 6) results presentation; 7) autonomous construction; and 8) command. In other words, seven levels of servitization are digital, and one is non-digital. This means that automatic data gathered from a sensor depends on the installation of this device by a fundamental intervention of human expertise. Consequently, a combination of digital and non-digital servitization is needed to enable Construction 4.0 attributes, that could be incorporated into conventional services in construction.
Sensor-based Pavement layer change detection using Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM)
Authors: Patel Tirth , Brian H.W. , Guo Yang Zou , Van Der Walt Jacobus Daniel , Li Yu
Published: December 2022

During construction, pavement projects often suffer from a lack of progress certainty, which leads to cost and time overruns. The pavement construction progress should be monitored in a timely and accurate manner to provide prompt feedback and ensure project success. However, current pavement construction progress monitoring practices (e.g., data collection, processing and analysis) are manual, time-consuming, tedious, inconsistent, subjective and error-prone. The previous research study was limited to only incremental road construction progress measurement. This preliminary study proposes a novel sensor-based method to identify pavement layer changes during construction using a time series algorithm for the approach development of automated as-built measurement of road construction. In this study, data were collected from generating various road construction scenarios in a controlled environment by simulating layer changes using a ground vehicle equipped with a laser ToF (time-of-flight) distance-ranging sensor. Subsequently, Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) was utilized on collected data for feature detection as ‘layer up’, ‘layer down’ and ‘layer not changed’ to classify road layer change. The experimental result demonstrates 84.91% as a promising overall average accuracy of road layer change classification on the control environment data, confirming the potential implementation suitability to detect pavement layers in real pavement construction projects. However, low-performance measures (low precision, recall and F1 score) of layer up and layer down suggest further improvement to enhance the robustness of the proposed model. This method can be extended to automate pavement construction progress monitoring by validating the proposed approach in a real case.
Innovation profile of services offered by Brazilian construction startups
Authors: Betiatto P , Oviedo-Haito R J J
Published: December 2022

Construction startups offer to optimize services in construction through innovation, by raising the levels of productivity and quality through new technologies or their application. In Brazil these companies are known as Construtechs or Proptechs, but publications provide no details on the type of innovations they offer in their services. Thus, this paper provides an innovation profile of services offered by Brazilian construction startups. To this end, a document and bibliographic review was conducted, where data was gathered initially based on a list published by a Brazilian venture capital company in 2020. This was then expanded by extracting information from the websites of 257 firms on the list. From the information available on 222 Construtechs, results shows that most of the companies offer organization and management services (36%), through digital platforms that improve the flow of information (75%) and innovate the way services are performed in the client companies, that is, the process (73%). In addition, it was identified that Brazilian Construtechs mostly offer services at the basic technological level and that only 33 companies (15%) are related to Construction 4.0. This paper provides a profile of Brazilian Construtechs and their service innovation opportunities, mainly associated with Construction 4.0.
Building our future and the future of building: Challenges from an organizational-cultural viewpoint
Authors: Tijhuis Wilco
Published: December 2022

Since the world was shaken because of the globally spread Covid-19 Pandemic, starting in late 2019/early 2020, many societies, including their businesses and sociological/behavioral systems, seem to be -and have been- influenced and -moreover- even been “shaken on their foundations”. All around the world such related daily experiences have lead to reconsidering for example the way we live, how we work and how we relax.

Nevertheless, when focusing more into detail on the construction industry and their outcomes (buildings, infrastructure, etc.) it is challenging to see if the way the construction industry was organized still might be the way how it will be kept organized after the COVID-19 Pandemic; especially because it seems that the influence of the pandemic on daily lives and businesses is now gradually decreasing; at least in the western developed world…

This discussion-paper aims to analyse and reflect on construction processes, derived from experiences and practices within case-studies, related to the project-development of buildings, from an organizational-cultural viewpoint. And this is especially important not only because it has been proven that the “soft factors” are maybe even more important than the “hard” factors in construction industry, but -moreover- because construction is a people’s business....and it will stay so, despite -or even thanks to- increasingly “data-driven” (i.e. behavioral) developments. Conclusions and recommendations are focusing on the future of building, being part of the construction activities that are used and/or needed to keep building our future.
Automated Regulatory Compliance towards Quality Assurance in Healthcare Building Projects
Authors: Soliman-Junior J , Tzortzopoulos P , Kagioglou M
Published: December 2022

Healthcare building projects are severely constrained by their associated regulatory frameworks. In this context, regulatory requirements define a basic outline upon which design is developed, as well as aid designers towards compliance to minimum standards. Automation has been explored by existing research focusing mostly on compliance checking (i.e., quality control). There has been limited developments within this domain related to quality assurance. This paper aims to highlight what are key needed improvements to enable the use of automation to promote quality assurance for regulatory compliance in healthcare building projects. For this purpose, an ongoing revision of a British healthcare design guidance document (HBN 11-01) was analysed according to a requirements’ taxonomy. Key areas of improvement needs were highlighted based on a series of interviews. Our main findings relate to identifying that despite the guidance character of regulatory documents in the UK, they are rarely used for this purpose, revealing the focus on quality control. In this context, the regulatory framework could be repositioned as a catalyst towards automated design quality assurance as long as (i) the regulatory documents are developed and revised to fit automated design processes; and (ii) there are compatible software developments to streamline design processes through automation.
Enhancing productivity in construction with co-existence of different definitions
Authors: Ofori G , Ling F Y Y , Zhang Z
Published: December 2022

Productivity has long been considered highly important in Singapore. In 2015, a national strategy considering skills, innovation and productivity as the basis for sustaining economic growth involving all sectors, was replaced with one seeking to move the economy from a “value-adding” to a “value-creating” one. In Singapore, construction productivity is mainly measured by: value added per person employed; and m2 of floor area completed per manday. By the economic measure, construction usually has the lowest annual growth rate among sectors, but the physical measure shows consistent improvement. This discrepancy has led to debate on the appropriate measure. The construction productivity programme in Singapore has included: promoting mechanisation, standardisation and prefabrication; training; procurement arrangements; regulatory requirements; and application of information and communication technology. Part of the findings of a study commissioned by two trade associations is presented. The aim was to derive findings which would help construction companies to improve productivity, and government to devise better policies and programmes. The study is based on interviews and focus group discussions with senior practitioners in Singapore. The questions included: level of construction productivity; how it is measured; firms’ policies on productivity; obstacles to, and enablers of, productivity measurement and improvement; the productivity development programme; and how productivity could be improved. The study found that construction firms could systematically develop their productivity-enhancing capabilities. It proposed measures for government and industry to improve construction productivity performance.
Digital Twin applications using the SIMULTAN data model and Python
Authors: Bühler M , Steiner B , Bednar T
Published: December 2022

Python is an open, general-purpose programming language that is used in many tools, libraries and APIs for Building Performance Simulations (BPS). Advantages of Python in the context of digital twins are the simple and powerful capabilities to generate input files, automate processes, import libraries in many languages and a large number of useful modules. However, in order to use BPS tools and libraries with real time data, a comprehensive data model is required in which all necessary data such as geometry, system engineering, databases, sensors, or simulation parameters for the different BPS are defined. Python in combination with SIMULTAN as a suitable open Building Information Modelling (BIM) data model allows an effective use of these tools and libraries to perform and automate analyses. This paper presents a Python module that integrates the SIMULTAN model in Python and enables almost seamless integration with minor adaptations to existing tools or modules. The import is achieved using simple text-based templates for the data types and their mapping in the data model. The data model, the definition of the data types and the use of this module is demonstrated by calculating the trend of the CO2 concentration in a zone of a digital twin using real time data.
Deep learning-based text detection on architectural floor plan images
Authors: Schönfelder P , König M
Published: December 2022

Architectural drawings are an important source of information for many construction-related tasks, as they contain geometric and semantic information about building parts. However, the manual extraction of room stamps and the insertion of such gleaned information into facility management systems is quite laborious and, thus, its automation is anticipated. In this paper, a method is proposed to detect and classify obscure or illegible text elements on legacy 2D architectural drawings of possibly poor quality. In contrast to existing approaches, a deep learning model is specifically trained for the task at hand rather than making use of transfer learning approaches. The resulting text snippets can be further processed with natural language processing tools to be fed into a facility management system automatically. Other conceivable applications include the extraction of drawing header information, material type or any additional text given on the drawing, to facilitate the enrichment of digital twins of existing structures with semantic data. To provide training data, two floor plan datasets are annotated in a consistent manner. The influence of different data augmentation techniques is investigated systematically. With regard to performance and efficiency, the presented method is compared to alternative tools for the task at hand.
Data augmentation for deep learning-based detection of pump anomalous conditions
Authors: Hallaji S M , Fang Y , Winfrey B K
Published: December 2022

Adopting effective asset maintenance approaches is critical in enhancing the longevity and cost-effectiveness of assets in civil infrastructure. Pumps are a crucial asset in many civil infrastructures such as wastewater treatment plants. Data-driven predictive maintenance (PdM) is an emerging asset maintenance method that diagnoses asset conditions proactively. However, the current PdM of pumping assets still requires extensive expert knowledge for finding robust feature extraction methods before applying machine learning methods. This is a significant barrier to the automation and robustness of the PdM of pumps. Deep learning-based algorithms offer the potential to address these issues by capturing data features in monitoring data and performing incremental learning of features without human interventions. To train an analytical model for accurate condition assessment, these methods require a great deal of training data, which is not often available due to time and cost limitations. This research aims to address the scarcity of training data by proposing a novel data augmentation method. The proposed approach consists of a signal-to-image data conversion method and multiple image augmentation methods. The LeNet-5 architecture was employed to produce the CNN model. The performance of the model was evaluated using a public data set. It was shown that the proposed augmentation method significantly enhances the validation accuracy and model generalisability.
The Application of the Best Value Approach in Janitorial Services
Authors: Kashiwagi Jacob , Kashiwagi Isaac , Scott Valerie , Mellecker Tyler
Published: December 2022

A problem facing the construction industry is how to reduce cost and increase value on projects. The Performance Based Studies Research Group (PBSRG) identified, through the Industry Structure (IS) model, that the problem is being caused by the “client centric” approach where the client is the expert and uses the price-based approach. The IS model identifies that if a client uses a Request for Proposal and identifies and utilizes vendor expertise, they can increase performance and lower cost on projects. This is the Best Value Approach (BVA). A city in Colorado used the BVA to deliver a requirement for janitorial services. Their budget was lower than their current expenses. The City agreed to utilize the BVA to attempt to cut cost and increase the level of service. This paper covers their purchasing effort to identify and utilize janitorial services. The paper identifies if the BVA was able to increase the janitorial service while lowering the cost.
The Impact of Changing Project Organization Structure on Project Performance
Authors: Sarhan Sarhan , Dulaimi Mohammed
Published: December 2022

Instigating changes to project organization structure during the project execution could disrupt many project processes and influence project performance. The purpose of this study is to investigate a particular problem occurred in completed construction projects in UAE market. The problem appeared due to unnecessary changes and slow or inadequate response to change by senior managers in contractor’s project organization structure. These changes had negative impact on the project management roles and responsibilities, additional cost and time impact. Furthermore, there were negative consequences on the performance of the project’s team and their effort to create new ideas as well as their innovation inside the construction project that they are involved. The qualitative methodology is used in this study through investigating five case studies for construction projects that completed in UAE market along with extensive literature review that focused on the different sides of the problem as well as an interview with ten members of contractor’s project management and senior managers to examine the impact of the problem on project performance and team effectiveness. The main findings indicate that having clear and defined roles and responsibilities have positive impact on project performance and team effectiveness. Moreover, the contractor’s senior managers have a vital role in establishing, managing the project organization structure and ensuring that any changes to the structure are dealt with effectively. This would enable the project to progress according to plan, reduce project activity reworks and address any weaking communication and cohesiveness between project team members.
Regenerative-based green supply chain management model for the construction industry
Authors: Oyefusi O N , Enegbuma W I , Brown A , Zari M P
Published: December 2022

Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) is considered to be the most effective management tool that aims to integrate environmental sustainability thinking into the built environment. This is in relation to its ability to substantially reduce greenhouse emissions, energy consumption, pollution, and other drivers of negative environmental change in the built environment. Despite the implementation of GSCM practices, climate change continues to occur with a steady rise in greenhouse gas emissions per year that are associated with the built environment. Hence, there is a need for a proactive regenerative approach that focuses not only on reducing negative environmental footprints but also aims to create net positive impacts on the environment. This study aims to address this issue by first identifying the dominant forms of construction GSCM practices and their performance limitations through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). The result revealed that regenerative factors were lacking in current GSCM practices. To further explore the nature of expanding current GSCM practices, a regenerative-based GSCM model was developed that demonstrates the relationship between regenerative and GSCM practices. This research addresses the gaps in current GSCM practices which could serve as a strategic response to climate change in terms of both mitigation and adaptation responses.
Research on the plane intelligent design of homestays based on deep learning
Authors: Gao Xiaoni , Guo Xiangmin , Lo Tiantian
Published: December 2022

The design of the homestay exposed the problems of single-function layout and poor living experience. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to efficiently grasp the design requirements of the country house and to construct an algorithm for automatically generating the floor plan of the house to improve the design output efficiency. This paper takes the homestays surrounding the Paifang Street scenic spot in Chaozhou, Guangdong Province as an example, crawls the comment data of tourism websites through Python, classifies and constructs a portrait of the living needs of the country homes, analyzes the current pain points and opportunities of the country homes, and generates the subsequent plane personalized Plan the data research work; then combine the preliminary research and field research to put forward the principles of the graphic design of the homestay. The paper proposes a method of the automatic layout of architectural functions based on a generative confrontation network, which can automatically layout the architectural functions of rooms according to the design requirements of different homestays, forming a more complete floor plan.
Exploring the thermal conditions in construction sites through IoT based methodologies
Authors: Edirisinghe R , Andamon M M , Ghanem A
Published: December 2022

Despite improvements in reducing the rate of injuries to construction workers, the construction industry remains a high-risk industry. Working conditions in construction sites frequently pose heat hazards and presents uncontrolled heat risks. Technological solutions that generate early warnings have the potential to improve health and safety. However, little research has been done in the construction industry. The Smart Safety Vest system is proposed as an ‘internet of things’ (IoT) solution in construction sites. The system development has followed a series of technology readiness levels and construction site testing. This paper reports on the early preliminary data analysis on the validity and usability of the system in actual construction sites. Real-time monitoring of constructions sites via portable weather stations were conducted. Specifically, this paper presents the evaluation of the thermal conditions of four residential construction project sites. The environmental data collected in four residential construction project sites are quantitatively analysed which set the context for the further reporting of analysis of the smart vest data from construction workers. The initial results obtained during extremely hot summer conditions are used to derive recommendations. It presents the viability of an integral part of the real-time monitored future pervasive construction sites.
Teaching of emerging technology in construction education
Authors: Debs L , Hubbard B , Zimpfer M
Published: December 2022

As technology becomes ubiquitous in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, there is a need to evaluate how construction education is incorporating technology in the undergraduate curriculum. Given recent trends, we are especially interested in emerging technologies that facilitate AEC integration. In the first phase of the study, a scoping review of literature was used to identify publications related to eight emerging construction-related technology types. Following, the second phase focused on how these emerging technologies were taught in construction education. Of the 58 papers identified in the second phase, the overwhelming majoring discussed technology as pedagogical aid to improve visualization, while only 10 focused on instruction about the technology itself. Some technology types did not have any education specific publications identified by the researchers. Emerging themes from the data also suggest alignments between drones and surveying, and robotics and programming and computational thinking. A majority of the papers mention several technology types and Building Information Modelling (BIM), suggesting an integrated view of emerging construction technology. We conclude the review by suggesting the need for more publications related to teaching of new technology, so that instructors can share best practices in integrating them into the construction curriculum.
IFC-based linking of the risk management process using a building data model
Authors: Bartels N , Eilers M , Pütz C , Meins-Becker A
Published: December 2022

A vital element in working with BIM are standardised exchange formats that enable the exchange of information from digital building models between different software solutions and project participants. In this context, the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) defined in DIN EN ISO 16739 represent a central standard for implementing the open exchange of information. Although approaches for integrating risk management are already available in IFC, they do not sufficiently reflect the needs of the construction industry. In order to increase project quality through risk management and the universal application of the Building Information Modelling (BIM) method, it is essential to map the generally valid information on the risk management process in IFC. The following article thus presents starting points for the further integration of risk management in IFC. The aim is to link all relevant risk information in a digital building model through an analysis and the development of an approach.
Data augmentation approach in detecting roof pathologies with UASs images
Authors: Staffa L , Nogueira J , Lima M , Ottoni A , Costa D B , Novo M
Published: December 2022

Machine learning and computer vision techniques contribute to the automation roof pathologies identification from images collected with Unmanned Aerial System (UASs). However, one of the challenges for practical machine learning model tuning is the small-data problem. One strategy is to adopt data augmentation for generating more training data from existing images. This paper evaluates data augmentation in detecting pathologies in roof inspections with UASs images. The study adopted data augmentation for training two models in an image processing system. The training and tests using data augmentation images obtained superior results in accuracy, precision, recall, F-score, negative precision, and specificity metrics compared to the study using only original photos. These results indicate that data augmentation improves the adopted system’s performance in identifying roof pathologies in UAS images. This inspection system proposed with such integrated technologies would make it possible to increase transparency, simplify steps and reduce the time to perform roof inspections, streamlining the preparation of reports and application of corrective actions.
Privacy and security in the use of wearable internet of things for construction safety and health monitoring
Authors: Okonkwo C , Awolusi I , Nnaji C
Published: December 2022

Due to the dynamic and complex nature of construction sites, the conventional method of construction safety monitoring which relies mainly on manual observation by inspectors is highly susceptible to human errors, is time-consuming, and is also becoming increasingly difficult to identify all incidents. Wearable Internet of Things (WIoT) in the construction industry creates a lot of opportunities for safety and health management such as identifying real-time locations of workers, body temperature, heart rate, stress level, and breathing rate, which can all be used to ensure that workers are always in safe environments and good health conditions. The use of WIoT for safety and health monitoring however presents research need on the privacy and security of the construction safety and health data collected, transmitted, and processed over the internet. This study examines the concept of privacy and security in WIoT, the security challenges, infrastructure requirements, and legal issues associated with WIoT. A review of privacy and security regulations for safety and health data is also presented in this paper. This study is expected to generate scientific information that can be used to develop an effective privacy and security framework to foster the adoption and implementation of IoT-based wearable sensing devices (WSDs) for safety and health monitoring in construction.
Improving posture recognition among construction workers through data augmentation with generative adversarial network
Authors: Zhao J , Obonyo E , Yin Q
Published: December 2022

Deep Neural Networks (DNN) models have shown high potential in recognizing workers’ risky postures using data from wearable Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs). However, there is a data paucity challenge - DNN models require a large dataset with annotation for desirable performance. The research discussed in this paper proposes to address this problem through a data generation framework that leverages Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to i) synthesize motion data, ii) augment training data, then iii) improve the recognition performance. Its potential was validated using naturalistic posture data of workers. Three GAN models were developed for data generation. A Train on Real and Test on Hybrid approach was used to quantitatively assess synthesized data and select sufficiently-trained GAN models. The performance of three commonly-used DNN models was compared after data augmentation. Results showed that the augmentation with GAN-synthesized data improved recognition accuracy by 1.2%-3% for varying postures. These findings suggest the feasibility of applying motion data augmentation with GAN models to advance automated construction safety monitoring.
Multi-requirements ontology engineering for automated processing of document-based building codes to linked building data properties
Authors: Zentgraf S , Hagedorn P , König M
Published: December 2022

The lifecycle of a building is characterized by precise compliance with regulatory specifications for both traditional planning as well as digital planning methods such as Building Information Modeling (BIM). Currently, this regulatory information is mostly available in the unstructured and non-machine-readable form of guidelines, regulations, and standards. The acquisition and conversion of unstructured data into structured semantic knowledge bases for the use in the BIM processes are increasingly being automated using natural language processing in ongoing research. Since ontologies provide such techniques that allow raw data to be formally transformed into domain knowledge, in this paper an ontology is developed based on the data format for data catalogs, properties, and groups of properties described in the ISO 23386. The contribution of this paper is a systematic requirements analysis based on existing literature, standardization, and existing ontologies and the implementation of an ontology accordingly. Applied to a feature of interest, an exemplary property validation using the SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) and generated Shapes and Constraint Language (SHACL) shapes is performed to show how the collected data can be used for automatic constraint checking.