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The proliferation of unsafe behavior in underground-construction sites has been widespread, which leads to accidents in underground construction from time to time. Accidents are not only a threat to the personal safety of construction workers but also cause property losses. Intervention on how to prevent the propagation of unsafe behavior among underground-construction workers in a timely manner, further improvement in the safety-management level of construction enterprises, and ensuring smooth implementation of projects are urgent measures to solve this problem. In this study, an SCIMR (Susceptible-Contacted-Infective-Removed) model was developed to study the spread of unsafe behavior among underground-construction workers. Increase in the improvement, control, and awareness rates could provide a preventive effect on the spread of unsafe behavior among underground-construction workers, whereas increase in the adoption and forgetfulness rates could facilitate increase in unsafe behavior. This work combined the SIR (Susceptible-Infective-Removed) theory with the underground-construction context to enrich the theory of underground-construction safety personnel management, which provides a reference solution and suggestions for construction companies to intervene and predict the proliferation of unsafe behavior and a novel method of planning and direction for safety management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on construction project management are not documented and not well understood, which leaves project stakeholders with no guiding information to respond to such threats and no lessons learned to speed up the recovery of the industry in the wake of the pandemic. Although researchers have studied the impacts of pandemics in other industries in various settings, there is little-to-no research specific to the construction industry and especially in the Middle East region. To address this knowledge gap, 202 construction professionals in the Middle East region were surveyed using a questionnaire survey to provide their perceptions of COVID-19 pandemic impact on project finance, construction materials and equipment, labor, contracts, and rental properties. Statistical analysis of the collected data reveals that labor and contracts are the principal classes impacted due to the complex procedures of hiring labor from East Asia, the tightening of health and safety precautionary measures on construction sites, and the expected contract revisions to Force Majeure, Change, and Claim clauses to address pandemic issues. The respondents indicated that many tasks can be safely accomplished by remote work. They also indicated that pandemic-related slowdown can be detrimental to the construction industry; governments need to inject stimulus funding to help keep construction activity momentum; and prolonged COVID-19 pandemic impact would be harsher than oil price collapse. As such, this study contributes to the body of knowledge in construction management by studying the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic and providing construction industry stakeholders with lessons learned and recommendations to response strategies that can alleviate pandemic risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Safety management programs differed in small, medium, and large construction firms. • Specific safety program elements were less likely to be present in small contractors. • Worker-reported safety climate did not differ between different sized contractors. • There was little association between safety management programs and safety climate. Problem: Safety management programs (SMPs) are designed to mitigate risk of workplace injuries and create a safe working climate. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the relationship between contractors' SMPs and workers' perceived safety climate and safety behaviors among small and medium-sized construction subcontractors. Methods: Subcontractor SMP scores on 18 organizational and project-level safety items were coded from subcontractors' written safety programs and interviews. Workers completed surveys to report perceptions of their contractor's safety climate and the safety behaviors of coworkers, crews, and themselves. The associations between SMP scores and safety climate and behavior scales were examined using Spearman correlation and hierarchical linear regression models (HLM). Results: Among 78 subcontractors working on large commercial construction projects, we found striking differences in SMP scores between small, medium, and large subcontractors (p < 0.001), related to a number of specific safety management practices. We observed only weak relationships between SMP scales and safety climate scores reported by 746 workers of these subcontractors (β = 0.09, p = 0.04 by HLM). We saw no differences in worker reported safety climate and safety behaviors by contractor size. Discussion : SMP only weakly predicted safety climate scales of subcontractors, yet there were large differences in the quality and content of SMPs by size of employers. Summary: Future work should determine the best way to measure safety performance of construction companies and determine the factors that can lead to improved safety performance of construction firms. Practical applications: Our simple assessment of common elements of safety management programs used document review and interviews with knowledgeable representatives. These methods identified specific safety management practices that differed between large and small employers. In order to improve construction safety, it is important to understand how best to measure safety performance in construction companies to gain knowledge for creating safer work environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regulatory landscape related to building control in Australia is complex. While there is a single performance based technical requirement in common for building work there are eight state and territory governments and the commonwealth government, each with a different legislative framework for dealing with development activities. Each has adopted some form of private participation model. In the view of AIBS, Australian government structures and policy implementation with respect to building control is not working. In September 2017, AIBS released a Policy: 'Building Regulatory Reform in Australia', a document describing a legislative framework, which has the capacity to deal with emergent issues such as non-conforming building products in a way that supports the benefits of private participation. This paper sets out why and how AIBS has developed its policy, the policy content and how the content interrelates to other elements of the legislative landscape. It describes the importance of elements in supporting the successful implementation of a performance based technical code and how this will support the competitiveness of Australia's economy. It also provides the integral components for a robust building control system that supports a sustainable building industry providing better outcomes for consumers and industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural failures occur worldwide. Various investigations have concluded that the primary causes of failure were design and construction errors within the building process. However, the exact factors that played a significant role were not clear. Therefore, the primary focus of this study is to improve structural safety by determining the influencing factors for structural safety within the design and construction process. First, a theoretical framework was developed, based on safety science and management literature. In particular, the concept of critical success factors, the factors within projects that are essential to reach the stated goals, appeared to be useful for this research. The factors mentioned in the literature played a role within some documented structural failures in the Netherlands. Based on this framework, a questionnaire was established. In this questionnaire, participants from the building industry were asked to indicate the extent to which factors from the theoretical framework were present in successful and less successful projects. In addition, they were asked to select the greatest determining factors for structural safety, in their opinion, from a list of possible factors. The results were statistically analyzed. Factors concerning the interrelations between various project partners had the largest impact on structural safety: communication and collaboration, control mechanisms, allocation of responsibilities, structural risk management, safety culture, and knowledge infrastructure. These factors will be designated the critical factors for structural safety, which are essential to assure structural safety within projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now widely recognized that performance-based design provides great advantages over prescriptive codes in that designers are allowed to use fire engineering methods to assess the fire safety of buildings. However, traditionally, performance-based fire safety design is still widely performed separately in specified individual study domains, such as fire engineering and structural engineering etc. Although the effects of a real fire have been considered in some structural fire resistant designs and in evacuation simulations, as well as in the mechanical analysis of load-bearing structures, the overall integrated assessment of a whole spatial structure performance is seldom performed. Based on middle-layer structure and component structure technology, this paper presents a new multi-dimensional integrated model and methodology for structural fire safety analysis. The effects of a real fire on structures and evacuation can be simulated through a close coupling of fire dynamics, structural analysis, and evacuation simulation. Based on the model, an integrated system FireSAS, was developed. One gymnasium, a competition venue of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, was selected as a study case. The results show that the mechanical responses and behaviours of large space steel structures have complex integrity characteristics as a whole under real fire conditions, and do not suffer merely a local effect. The case demonstrates that the FireSAS system is a useful engineering tool for cost-saving and safe structure design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the efficiency of building models to better understand the importance of cost versus safety in engineering. It provides a set of lessons for students to let them learn the considerations when planning to construct buildings, such as the building costs and safety concerns. The lessons are equipped with activities which encourages students to design a tower, select building materials and determine building cost. It indicates that the activity could last for five days or more.

Security concerns have become an important consideration in library administration. Effective planning in building design can prevent or reduce fire losses and provide a safer environment for patrons and staff. This article reviews appropriate fire detection and suppression systems for library installation. Safety and security systems that protect libraries from theft and other risks are covered. Engaging fire and safety professionals in design decisions and training can be an effective way to enhance library security and address problems when they occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electro-mechanical impedance (EMI) is very effective for detecting the local incipient damages including small cracks in structures and has been validated by many experimental investigations. Meanwhile, some analytical models have been proposed to deal with dynamics of structures for health monitoring. However, there is little analytical work done to relate EMI signatures with crack parameters at ultrasonic frequencies. In this paper, a modified model combining EMI technique and reverberation matrix method (RMM) is proposed to quantitatively correlate crack parameters in continuous beams with high-frequency signatures for structural health monitoring. The model is based on Timoshenko beam theory with the crack treated as a massless rotational spring. The bonded PZT wafers are restricted to one-dimensional axial vibration. A shear lag model is adopted to simulate the interfacial bonding between PZT patches and the host beam. For the first time, an analytical expression of impedance (or admittance) involving information of cracks in this coupled smart structure system is derived. Comparison with existent numerical and experimental results is presented to validate the analysis. Based on this model, EMI signatures extracted from the PZT wafers can be used to identify cracks in a continuous beam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the discussion paper "Practice Periodical and Irrational Design Loads for 'Temporary Structures'," by Howard Hill, published in the 2004 issue of the journal. In the paper, Hill questioned the applications of simple design-life justifications for load-reduction allowances in temporary structures. He used examples to provide a thorough discussion on the inherent safety levels in design.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including safety measures in construction of buildings, risk associated with construction work and obstacles in the construction of adaptable buildings.

This paper presents validated building shielding factors designed for contemporary US housing-stock under an idealized, yet realistic, exposure scenario within a semi-infinite cloud of radioactive material. The building shielding factors are intended for use in emergency planning and level three probabilistic risk assessments for a variety of postulated radiological events in which a realistic assessment is necessary to better understand the potential risks for accident mitigation and emergency response planning. Factors are calculated from detailed computational housing-units models using the general-purpose Monte Carlo N-Particle computational code, MCNP5, and are benchmarked from a series of narrow- and broad-beam measurements analyzing the shielding effectiveness of ten common general-purpose construction materials and ten shielding models representing the primary weather barriers (walls and roofs) of likely US housing-stock. Each model was designed to scale based on common residential construction practices and include, to the extent practical, all structurally significant components important for shielding against ionizing radiation. Calculations were performed for floor-specific locations as well as for computing a weighted-average representative building shielding factor for single- and multi-story detached homes, both with and without basement, as well for single-wide manufactured housing-units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]