The construction industry is characterized by the existence of multiple trades and crafts. With the existence of multiple-tiers of labour-only-subcontracting in Hong Kong, tradesmen are normally assigned to tasks of a narrowly defined skill. Lately, there has been a call for the adoption of a...

A good formwork system enables speedy completion of the concrete structure, following which other subsequent trades can be started. However, the current intuitive judgment approach in the selection of formwork systems cannot assure an optimal and consistent result. Artificial neural networks may...

A significant proportion of building investment expenditure goes to replacement expenditure for organizations owning a large building stock or portfolio. Over the years, researchers have attempted to develop asset replacement models to aid decision-making in building portfolio management, based...

There are numerous construction safety measures adopted by the local construction industry in Hong Kong. The purpose of this study is to distil the more significant measures from all these practices. To achieve this, the rough set theory, a data mining technique by applying the rule induction...

In earthmoving operations, there are a number of activities that need to be considered; for example, path identification, plant selection, assessing the compatibility of the paths and the plants so selected, cost and productivity comparison of alternatives, safety and environmental considerations,...

An alternative heuristic method for scheduling repetitive projects in which resources are limited and activities may be executed with multiple modes of resource demands associated with different durations is proposed. Unlike general heuristic methods that separately analyze each competing...

The quantity of some resources is limited because of project cost constraints. These resources may be required by multiple activities simultaneously during a construction process. In a discrete simulation that models the construction process, tracing and controlling such entities, e.g....

This study investigates the relationship between the characteristics of construction personnel and their degree of recognition of safety signs and symbols. The safety signs and symbols are split into categories of mandatory action signs, prohibition signs and warning symbols. Thirty safety signs...

A number of procurement selection systems have been developed over the last decade. The use of multi-attribute decision analysis has been considered the foremost technique for examining client needs and the weightings of preferences from experts for each procurement system in the most objective...

The construction industry of Hong Kong has a very poor site safety record. The overall accident rate has gone down a little during the last few years, but the number of fatalities has risen dramatically. In the past, the Hong Kong Government adopted a laissez-faire approach in managing...