Kalle Kähkönen

Developing and implementing environmental management systems for small and medium-sized construction enterprises

Environmental aspects are gradually becoming factors of importance for construction businesses, their operations and their management. These factors can be seen as new change makers for construction management itself. New criteria need to be taken into account when structuring construction activities, in decision making, and throughout the production control. Instances of construction management solutions that also encapsulate environmental aspects are likely to appear. A contractor’s environmental management system (EMS) is an example of such an instance. As a management solution an EMS is targeted at minimizing a contractor’s environmental impacts. An experiment has been carried out where an EMS solution was formed and tested for small and medium-sized contractors. Fifteen small and medium-sized construction companies were involved. Along with the action research approach, a set of workshops with company people were arranged for EMS structuring and for its testing. Within these experiments the researcher acted as a developer and inside observer. The proposed EMS solution presents the structuring of environmental aspects for management attention. Moreover, this structuring can be used as a basis for a formal environmentally conscious management system. All companies involved in the research have started to use the EMS solution or its parts.

Role and nature of systemic innovations in construction and real estate sector

Purpose – The paper aims to clarify the role of systemic innovations and the subsequent profound change these can have on the construction and real estate sectors. Systemic innovation as a concept has an inherent capability for viewing factors, actors and conditions as a system or several systems. This has a direct relevance in construction and real estate sector where operations are composed of temporary and continual networks of stakeholders and where the end products can be understood as systems. Design/methodology/approach – The paper builds additional viewpoints and interpretations on some recently completed research where sector wide innovation aspects and challenges have been studied. Two doctoral dissertations supervised by the author and an action research effort where innovative cellular building products were developed and implemented are presented. Findings – The paper provides insights about systemic innovations in the construction and real estate sectors. It presents research topics that exp...

Safety, Space and Structure Quality Requirements in Construction Scheduling

Abstract Quality assessment of a construction project schedule can be a challenging task for project stakeholders. A little research work has addressed quality of schedules though a good project schedule can be considered as of the key factors of project success. The development of a reliable and easy to perform construction schedule quality assessment procedure seems to be a challenging task. Since Schedule Health Assessment of a construction project has to be strictly related to process requirements, it is used the3 “S” rule as a starting point and framework for obtaining improved understanding of quality of construction schedules. The 3 “S” are Safety, Space and Structure, meaning that the planned process should provide a safe working environment to construction workers, sufficient space to perform construction activities and the required sequence of construction operations and project phases.The aim of the study is to implement a schedule quality assessment method that takes into account the 3“S” rule of construction process.The 3“S” requirements can be successfully integrated in a Schedule Health Assessment method, but to facilitate their implementation and control a flow-line chart is needed,thus the schedule tool becomes a new requirement for construction schedule quality control.

Management and planning under complexities of metro construction

Abstract Nowadays, the majority of construction projects can be considered as complex and ambiguous endeavours. Each kind ofconstruction project has its own characteristics and complexities whereas then specific management approaches and solutions are needed. Regarding the rapid development of cities, underground constructions at urban regions, such as metro construction, have been largely used for extending daily human life into underground spaces. Therefore, the recognition of the complex elements of a metro construction can play a significant role in its management and planning. The aim of this study is to investigate these complexities in subway construction. This may develop the possibility of high predictability for these challenges. As metro projects are also urban underground projects, both internal and external issues are studiedand their impacts on project management are discussed. It is concluded that exceptional differences in the managing and planning of these constructions isthatcombinedinternal and external complexities are carried out simultaneously.

Environmental index for Finnish construction sites

Purpose – The primary aim of this study was to better understand the grounds to develop a monitoring and performance measurement method to support the environmental management of construction operations. The practical purpose was to improve environmental activities in construction sites. This study helps to fill the gap between environmental needs and practices on construction sites. Design/methodology/approach – Action research was the principal research method. The research procedure was executed in collaboration with construction companies. The EICS meter was originally developed to create rules for environmental competition between construction sites. Since the time of this competition, the meter has been further improved in other studies. Findings – Based on the literature and feedback gained in the testing round of the EICS, five relevant categories were formulated to evaluate environmental operations: environmental information management, waste management, material handling and shielding, energy us...

Schedule health assessment of construction projects

Several factors can contribute to the success of construction projects. A sound and good quality construction schedule is considered to be one of them. The quality of schedules has been a research topic only for a few efforts and amongst them construction-oriented research is even more rare. Methodical grounds for assessing schedule quality have been studied via literature study for the development of appropriate solutions to assess the quality of construction schedules. These findings combined with the experiences from practical implementations have resulted in the definition of a metric to measure schedule quality for construction projects. It includes 75 schedule requirements classified into 5 groups: general requirements, construction process, schedule mechanics, cost and resources and control process. This structure forms a core for the developed method to assess construction schedule quality termed as Schedule Health Assessment. The developed method has also the purpose of assisting project planners to produce and maintain good quality schedules starting from the project initiation until its completion, as via using the method to detect deficiencies of project schedules and other critical issues having importance with respect to schedule maintenance.

Stirring the Construction Project Management with Co-creation and Continuous Improvement☆

Abstract Gathering information that is capable to explain customers’ needs is usually seen as a quite straightforward part of the traditional construction process: a customer should be able to tell all relevant needs in the first stage so that a building could be designed and built according to the gained information. But the process is lacking of service abilities if a customer wants to modify the given information due to a change in circumstances, albeit such a change is easily caused due turbulent economic situations and long spans in real-estate development projects. Hence the customer perspective regarding the construction management (CM) process should be accommodated better. In this paper, the case studies of the four premises improvement projects are reported upon, where the CM process was altered to include and apply the concepts of continuous improvement and co-creation. The process documentation covered the impacts of the case project on the usability of the premises, the indoor climate conditions (carbon dioxide and temperature) metering, the time lapse cameras and the on-line user feedback system. The documentation consists of the minutes of the meetings, the financial reporting and the time tables.Both the processes and the results of the projects are analysed. Based on the key findings, some suggestions are put forth upon how to improve the CM process to better serve customer interests and quality improvement in the future.

Understanding fundamental and practical ingredients of construction project data management

Purpose – This paper and research behind it aim to explain key elements behind construction project data management by looking at actual operations. The construction project management is heavily built around document control and relating events such as change orders, submittals, transmittals and requests for information. These functionalities are usually forming the core of electronic data/document management systems (EDMS), and more recently solutions based on Building Information Modelling (BIM) technologies. A growing share of buildings construction projects are designed and documented by using BIM applications. BIM applications can form spatially organised access to project data and documents which, if widely applied, can change the world of EDMS solutions. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents results of a research effort where the use of EDMS was studied in 15 building construction case projects. The research focus was on EDMS structure, usage of EDMS in each case project and EDMS use m...

Programming and Scheduling Techniques

would open doors for men, are often unacknowledged, indeed ‘invisible’ and unnoticed (or taken for granted and devalued) when utilized by women. Chapter 8 is a very short conclusion. At last he states the objectives of the book, first to describe and explain a slice of otherwise invisible labour (that is construction work) and second to describe how builders lives are patterned against the broader social and economic context, and in the final section he discusses the future of class reproduction, basically concluding that the problems of low social mobility and inequality will continue. I found the last chapter rather over-laden with complex sociological terminology, with some very busy sentences, as if he was reopening the debates he had introduced (but not adequately covered) earlier in the book. For example, he questions (again) the validity of concepts of postcapitalism and post-Fordism when applied to builders. But there is nothing on all the sorts of topics one usually finds at the end of books on the problems of the construction industry, such as the lack of future skilled ‘man’power, the use of reserve labour forces such as women, and the question of how to change the culture of construction to make it more attractive, equitable, efficient and profitable. Finally, the last section, Appendix A is a very poor explanation of costing, comprising a sample QS ‘bill of quantities’, the calculations involved being traditionally known as ‘taking off’. In conclusion, I would say the book is worth reading because it gives a close-up view of the work-a-day dynamics of men in the manual trades within construction, balancing the vast amount of material on the construction professions and managerial levels. But the title is very misleading, and gender is not treated as a key component but rather ‘women’ (as wives and girlfriends) are only used as a reference point to illustrate the sexualized masculinity of the workforce. The book provides a good ethnographic account, which would be of interest to those investigating the construction industry. But it is over-ambitious in trying to deal with high-level structural concepts regarding the theory of social class, which might be better dealt with in academic journals, which the author appears to have already been doing (Thiel, 2007).