J. Uma Maheswari

Cloud computing to enhance collaboration, coordination and communication in the construction industry

Construction industry involves a multitude of stakeholders who perform their work from disparate locations. This involvement of numerous stakeholders, which is common in construction industry compared to the other industries, has led to conceptual fragmentation. In spite of this fragmentation, the construction industry delivers complex projects with limitations. The limitations can be mostly attributed to the difficulties in achieving the optimum levels of collaboration, coordination, and communication (referred as three Cs) which are required for efficient project delivery.

A Study on DSM Partitioning Through Case Study Approach

Planning for design process is often ignored and given least importance. Design phase of any project is associated with continuous and abundant information exchanges across the different teams. If these evolving design information exchanges are not perceived and planned during the early stages of a project, it results in adhoc information exchange, mistakes or rework. Over the past decade, researchers had identified DSM (Design Structure Matrix) as a potential tool to manage the information interdependencies and to evaluate the sequence of execution. DSM is a square matrix with the same elements (elements signify teams, components, activities or parameters) in the rows and columns and the off-diagonal cells represent the dependency relationship between those elements. The basic DSM operations such as partitioning and tearing enable the user to evaluate the feasible execution sequence. In reality, generating a basic DSM is tedious and time-consuming. Hence, an attempt was made in the present study to analyze if there exist any correlation among the various types of DSMs (team DSM to parameter DSM or activity DSM to team DSM, etc.) formed. To achieve this objective, data was collected for an offshore project through interactions and discussions with experts of the eight teams for several weeks. For the current study, four teams—mechanical, HVAC, piping and structure which interact frequently was considered. To ease the analysis, deliverables DSM and team DSM was only considered. Through partitioning process, the sequences of deliverables and teams were determined and other elements such as parameters or activities were ignored. It was observed that there exists no relation between the different DSMs formed.

Improvised Scheduling Framework Integrating WS, MS, & DS for Repetitive Construction Projects

There is acute shortage of skilled worker globally against increasing demand of infrastructure, changing work cycle; absenteeism, etc. Mechanisation, automation, and several approaches have been attempted to overcome this shortage that resulted in marginal improvements. The primary reason for this can be attributed to insufficient coordination among key stakeholders. To improve the project performance, a frame work for improvised schedule is proposed combining Work Study (WS), Multi Skilling (MS) and Dynamic scheduling (DS). This approach is expected to show improvement at three stages: 1) At activity level by simplification of basic execution processes through work study, 2) At crew level by optimally utilising multi skilled workers with varying degree of proficiency, and 3) At project level through smooth execution of activities by dynamic workers allocation. This approach was experimented on mass housing project and the initial results were reviewed with experts. Repetitive construction project was primarily chosen for this study owing to simplicity and fast learning due to crew continuity. Expert’s feedback along with the applicability of this framework is also discussed in this paper.

Prevention Through Design: A Concept Note for Preventing Accidents/Injuries to Construction Workers

Planning for health and safety in construction has always been a challenge. Workers at construction sites are exposed to a variety of health hazards every day. Researchers had identified that the different sources of health hazards at construction site include chemical, physical, biological, and ergonomic hazards. Hazardous activities in construction project such as demolition works, excavation works, scaffolding and ladder works, construction machinery, and tools usage cause harm to workers at site which may result in musculoskeletal disorder, respiratory diseases, and dermatitis to workers. Traditionally, construction safety is not considered by designers/architects in project design. Therefore, planning for safety and health of the workers is very critical. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of “Prevention through Design (PtD)” for construction workers, which integrates health and safety into the management of construction projects. The concept of PtD is applicable to diverse disciplines such as construction, health care and social assurance, forestry and fishing, transportation, mining, agriculture, and manufacturing. In this paper, different sources of health hazards and their effects on construction workers were discussed. Further, this paper describes how hazards in construction projects can be prevented or minimized by integrating PtD. This concept is expected to improve the performance of safety and productivity in construction.

Optimizing Flow Process Through Synchronisation of Cycle Time

Construction projects can be modelled, using TFV theory of lean construction, as combination of main activity network that are primarily transformations and feeding flow processes which supply input material to main activities. These feeding processes may include one or more sub-processes/ and operations with varying cycle time (C/T). The lack of synchronization between these sub processes/ operations results into construction bottlenecks which delay the execution of main activities. Mechanization of few processes/ sub-processes or operations in isolation create large variation in cycle time and shifts the location of bottlenecks. Thus, limited benefits accrue from mechanization, automation, etc. The present study proposes a framework to locate the bottlenecks through hierarchical process analysis and discrete event simulation. These bottlenecks can be eliminated through modifying cycle time of selected sub process /operation by changing resources allocation and by eliminating waste with the ultimate aim to enhance overall productivity. The proposed framework is demonstrated utilizing data from an automated railway track construction project. The substantial improvement in construction productivity was observed after synchronization of cycle time.

Integrated Framework for Automating the Structural Design Iteration

Structural designers especially in India use STAAD (Structural Analysis And Design) software to execute the structural analysis and design. This analysis and design follow typical steps in sequence starting from model preparation by defining nodes and elements, material properties, support conditions, loads along their combinations, analyses, design options, etc. During this design process in STAAD, iterations generally occur either due to changes in structural loads and their combinations; or to obtain the optimal design section. In this entire design process, when any of the information exchange occurs along the cycles/loops it is termed as iteration. Automating these structural iterations can speed up the design evolution on STAAD. Till date, negligible steps have been taken towards automating these structural design iterations. DSM (Design Structure Matrix) is identified as a promising tool for representing and modelling iterative loops. It is a matrix-based tool with the same list of entities along the rows and columns encapsulated with relationships along the offdiagonal cells. Re-sequencing the DSM rows/columns can identify the iterations as blocks. OpenSTAAD is the API (Application Programming Interface) functionality in STAAD which is proposed to automate the iterative structural design in STAAD. The objective of the paper is to model and automate the structural design iterations using DSM and OpenSTAAD respectively. This proposed framework was applied to a case illustration of sixstorey building. Preliminary results of the model are