Matthew R. Hallowell

Qualitative Research: Application of the Delphi Method to CEM Research

Construction engineering and management CEM researchers often rely on alternative research techniques when traditional methods fail. For example, surveys, interviews, and group-brainstorming techniques may not be appropriate for research that involves confounding factors and requires access to sensitive data. In such an environment, the Delphi technique allows researchers to obtain highly reliable data from certified experts through the use of strategically designed surveys. At present, the Delphi method has not seen widespread use in CEM research. This is likely due to variation among studies that implement Delphi in CEM research and ambiguity in literature that provides guidance for the specific parameters associated with the method. Using the guidance in this paper, the reader may: 1 understand the merits, appropriate application, and appropriate procedure of the traditional Delphi process; 2 identify and qualify potential expert panelists according to objective guidelines; 3 select the appropriate parameters of the study such as the number of panelists, number of rounds, type of feedback, and measure of consensus; 4 identify potential biases that may negatively impact the quality of the results; and 5 appropriately structure the surveys and conduct the process in such a way that bias is minimized or eliminated.

Construction Safety Risk Mitigation

Construction safety and health management has improved significantly following the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. In response to this legislation, contractors began implementing safety programs to reduce occupational safety and health hazards on construction sites. Researchers recently found that the current process of selecting specific elements for a safety program is informal. This paper describes the results of a recent study designed to determine the relative effectiveness of safety program elements by quantifying their individual ability to mitigate construction safety and health risks. In order to determine the effectiveness of individual safety program elements, the following research activities were performed: (1) an appropriate safety risk classification system was created using an aggregation of relevant literature; (2) highly effective safety program elements were identified in literature; and (3) the ability of each safety program element to mitigate a portion of each of the safety risk classes was quantified using the Delphi method. The results of the research indicate that the most effective safety program elements are upper management support and commitment and strategic subcontractor selection and management and the least effective elements are recordkeeping and accident analyses and emergency response planning. It is expected that the data presented in this paper can be used to strategically select elements for a safety program, target specific safety and health risks, and influence resource allocation when funds are limited.

Enabling and measuring innovation in the construction industry

Innovation is vital to successful, long-term company performance in the construction industry. Understanding the innovation process, how innovation can be enhanced and how it can be measured are key steps to managing and enhancing innovation. The factors that affect innovation on a project were identified, as well as how these factors can be used to measure the level of innovation on a project, and the practices and processes that encourage and facilitate innovative changes. Case studies of construction projects in the United States revealed three necessary components of innovation: idea generation, opportunity and diffusion. A variety of practices are used to optimize each component including support and commitment from the owner/client and firm upper management, workforce and project team integration and diversity. Applying the practices identified in the research leads to enhanced innovation through better communication among project team members, integration of the design and construction disciplines, more efficient designs, development of unique ways of completing work and sharing of the lessons learned. The end result of innovation will be projects that successfully meet and exceed cost, quality, schedule and safety goals.

Activity-Based Safety Risk Quantification for Concrete Formwork Construction

Most of safety risk research focuses on high-severity safety risks for large-scale construction processes. Such studies help firms identify the highest risk processes so they may be targeted for improvement. However, few studies quantify safety risk at the activity level or include low-severity, high-frequency risks that some literatures suggest contribute to a large proportion of total risk. This paper presents research that involved the holistic quantification of risks for the activities associated with the construction of concrete formwork. Three major research efforts are discussed: (1) identification of activities required to construct concrete formwork; (2) selection of an appropriate all-inclusive and mutually exclusive risk classification system; and (3) the quantification of the average frequency and severity levels for each risk classification associated with each activity. To identify formwork construction activities, 256 worker-hours of observation were conducted and the resulting activity descriptions were reviewed and validated by industry professionals. Risk classifications appropriate for this study were created by aggregating relevant literature. Finally, the Delphi method was implemented to individually quantify average frequency and severity using scales that define the entire spectrum of possible values. In total, 130 frequency ratings and 130 severity ratings were obtained over three rounds of Delphi surveys. Results indicate that there are 13 major activities required to construct concrete formwork and the highest risk activities are applying form oil, lifting and lowering form components, and accepting materials from a crane. The data presented in this paper can be used to target specific high-risk formwork construction activities for improvement.

Factors that influence the development and diffusion of technical innovations in the construction industry

Some technical innovations diffuse rapidly throughout the construction industry while others take a long time or are never integrated into everyday practice. Understanding the initiation, development, implementation and outcomes of successful technical innovations within the construction industry provides guidance for the improvement of the innovation process. To further this understanding, innovation generating organizations (IGOs) in the construction industry were surveyed and the data were statistically analysed. Two sources were used to identify newly developed products, technologies and management strategies: the Construction Innovation Forum’s NOVA Award website and the Emerging Construction Technologies (ECT) website. A total of 233 innovative products were identified from the two websites. The results showed that there are many statistically significant motivating factors for investment in the initial development of successful technical innovation, barriers and enablers to efficient diffusion and innovation outcomes on construction projects. Additionally, successful development, implementation and diffusion of an innovative product required an average of 38 months, 4700 worker‐hours and

Construction-Safety Best Practices and Relationships to Safety Performance

836 000.

Measuring and modelling safety communication in small work crews in the US using social network analysis

AbstractThe construction industry has experienced a great deal of safety improvement after the Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970. In the last twenty years, improvements have been made largely due to safety interventions that exceed compliance with government regulations. Researchers have long attempted to identify the most effective safety programs. However, studies in the past focused only on a small subset of potential injury-prevention options. In addition, to date, there has yet to be a study that documents a comprehensive list of safety strategies implemented by industry-leading companies. This research addresses this knowledge gap by creating a comprehensive list of construction-safety strategies from relevant literature and supplementing it with input from an expert panel. Once the strategies were identified (n=104), the research team conducted interviews with representatives from 57 projects in the United States to determine which strategies were implemented on each pr...

Safety risk perception in construction companies in the Pacific Northwest of the USA

Effective safety communication between all parties in a construction project is essential for optimal safety performance. Literature suggests that open safety communication across all levels of the organization enhances safety success. Previous studies have found that open communication and frequent interaction between employees and supervisors differentiate construction companies that have low accident rates from companies that have high rates. Through interviews with construction crew members on active construction projects in the Rocky Mountain region of the US, the patterns of safety communication were identified, modelled, and quantified. Social network analysis (SNA) was utilized to obtain measures of safety communication such as centrality, density, and betweenness within small crews and to generate sociograms that visually depicted communication patterns within effective and ineffective safety networks. A cross-case comparison revealed that the frequency and method of communication are important differentiators between project teams with low and high accident rates. Specifically, top performing crews: (1) have formal safety communication from management on at least a weekly basis; (2) have informal safety communication on a weekly basis; (3) undergo formal safety training; and (4) use all proposed safety communication methods on a monthly basis. In addition, typical SNA metrics, including density, centrality and betweenness, are not significant parameters to distinguish high from low performing crews.

Diffusion of Safety innovations in the construction industry

Unsafe worker actions contribute greatly to the frequency and severity of construction injuries. Recently, contractors have expressed concern with the high rate of injuries that occur when workers violate company safety policies. To enhance knowledge associated with this topic the following four objectives were targeted: (1) quantifying the current level of safety risk as perceived by construction workers; (2) quantifying the risk tolerance of workers and managers; (3) comparing the risk perceptions and tolerance of workers with managers; and (4) identifying factors that may affect one’s risk tolerance. Fifty‐one risk perceptions were gathered through interviews with managers and workers of nine different construction firms in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The results indicate that the level of current perceived risk is approximately five times higher than the tolerable risk value, workers are most dissatisfied with the frequency of high severity injuries, and there is a statistically significant difference in the risk tolerance between workers and managers. The findings presented can be used by project managers to increase awareness of risk tolerances, current areas where workers feel improvement is most needed, and for goal setting.

Safety-Knowledge Management in American Construction Organizations

AbstractSafety performance in the construction industry has improved significantly in the past four decades. This improvement has been attributed in part to the increased implementation of injury prevention strategies. Although the relative effectiveness of these strategies has been studied in previous research, there has been no attempt to evaluate their diffusion. To address this gap in knowledge, 12 highly effective administrative safety innovations were identified in literature, and 58 firms were interviewed to investigate their adoption rate. The diffusion patterns of the identified safety innovations were explored using four common innovation diffusion models: the internal, external, Bass, and Gompetz. The findings indicate that the internal and Bass models have the highest explanatory power and that internal factors are the most influential factors in adoption of safety innovations by construction firms. It was also found that project-specific training and safety meetings (91%), frequent worksite i...