David Grau

The need for detailed gender-specific occupational safety analysis

INTRODUCTIONnThe female work in population is growing in the United States, therefore the occupational health and safety entities must start to analyze gender-specific data related to every industry, especially to nontraditional occupations. Women working in nontraditional jobs are often exposed to extreme workplace hazards. These women have their safety and health threatened because there are no adequate policies to mitigate gender-specific risks such as discrimination and harassment. Employers tend to aggravate this situation because they often fail to provide proper reporting infrastructure and support. According to past studies, women suffered from workplace injuries and illnesses that were less prominent among men. Statistics also confirmed that men and women faced different levels of risks in distinct work environments. For example, the rates of workplace violence and murders by personal acquaintances were significantly higher among women.nnnMETHODSnIn this paper, the authors analyze prior public data on fatal and nonfatal injuries to understand why we need to differentiate genders when analyzing occupational safety and health issues.nnnRESULTSnThe analyses confirmed that women dealt with unique workplace hazards compared to men.nnnCONCLUSIONSnIt is urgent that public agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Labor, record gender-specific data in details and by occupations and industries.nnnPRACTICAL APPLICATIONnThe reader will become aware of the current lack - and need - of data and knowledge about injuries and illnesses separated by gender and industry. Finally, safety and health researchers are encouraged to investigate the gender-specific data in all industries and occupations, as soon as they become available.

Assessing the Feasibility of Passive and BAP RFID Communications on Construction Site Scenarios

In order to efficiently manage construction operations, assessing the current status of both engineered components and the field processes making use of those components is regarded as critical. To date, active radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies are slowly becoming adopted on construction sites by the owners and contractor organizations in order to track unique engineered components and the processes making use of those components. Although the construction industry has shown a strong interest in adopting active RFID tags due to their potential to innovate and streamline existing processes, such active RFID adoption and usage is regarded as costly and hence advances at a very slow pace. To date, there has not yet been a thorough study on passive and battery-assisted passive (BAP) tags to assess their feasibility to effectively communicate within construction sites. Construction sites are characterized by clustered scenarios under varying, unpredictable, and harsh conditions. In this paper, we report on our analysis and experimental results about the feasible utilization of passive and BAP tags to track the identification of construction components under clustered project site conditions. We modified an EPC RFID monitoring system to leverage and monitor the performance and characteristics of RFID communications in a clustered heating plant. Such communications were then compared with those monitored with the same technologies in an ideal laboratory environment with a clear free-air line-of-sight. The results indicate that, due to multipath effects in metal-crowded scenarios, tags can actually perform better in such scenarios.

A Combined Planning and Controls Approach to Accurately Estimate, Monitor, and Stabilize Work Flow

This study investigates a novel approach both to precisely plan for project execution and to monitor execution status in near real-time. In this approach, two lean construction techniques -such as pull planning and integrated project delivery- are combined with the fine-grained planning and near real-time monitoring of the executed work. In order to plan for and monitor the flow of work, work packages are defined at the smallest discernible amount of work, the task. Work packages are divided by unique location sectors, and hence further discretized. Deviations based on predictions of completed work are proactively reported and assessed in near realtime. In addition, productivity ratios for completed projects are utilized to pre-qualify contractors for future project endeavors and to generate accurate bidding information. Thus, an emphasis to stabilize workflow is at the core of the proposed fine-grained production planning and near real-time monitoring approach. Through an intervention test in a facility project, a comparison of relevant metrics is used to quantify and validate the impact of the novel approach.