We would like to congratulate the new graduates who received their diploma during the 113th AIT Graduating Ceremony on 26 May 2010. The names of graduands and their Thesis/Project title are listed below:
Doctor of Philosophy Degree (CEIM)
1. Dr. Oulawan Kulchartchai, Development of a Worker Engagement Measurement Tool (WEMT) for a Construction Safety Program
Master of Science Degree (CEIM)
1. Mr. Mohammad Sharif, Implementation Problems Causing Cost Overrun Of The World Bank-Suppoerted Project, A Case Study In Afghanistan
2. Mr. Tanatat Wisetsurakarn, The Construction Litigation Analysis: A Case Study Of The Thai Supreme Court Cases
3. Mr. Amnarch Pirmsinthavee, Relationship Marketing In Thai Sme Contractors: A Case Study Of Bangkok And Khonkaen Sme Contractors
4. Mr. Raj Kumar Lakhe, Asset Management In Public And Public Private Partnership (PPP) Hydropower Stations In Nepal
5. Mr. Adithep Roobleak, Cultural Dimensions Of Construction Engineers In Thailand Related To On-Site Management
6. Mr. Truong Ngoc Quy, Current Practices Of Public Private Partnership In Low-Income Housing Development In Vietnam
7. Mr. Aung Chan Thar, Web Application For Contractor Claim Analysis
8. Miss Truong Thi My Thanh, Success Factors For Financial Sustainability Of Tool Road Project In China
9. Ms. Saw Sandar, Assessing Project Management In Myanmar Construction Companies
10. Ms. Truong Thi Van Anh, Special Purpose Vehicle I N Too-Road Project Development : A Case Study Of The National Highway 14 Project In Vietnam
11. Mr. Nguyen Xuan Phong, Owner's Contract Administration For Project Time And Cost Control Strategy In Comercial Building Projects
12. Mr. Duong Thanh Hai, Improving Quality Assurance In Construction : Cantho Storage Tank Capacity Enhancement Project Case Study, Vietnam
13. Miss Bich Ngoc Nguyen, Application Of Portfolio Resource Management For Construction Contractors In Vietnam
14. Mr. Le Dang Thuc, Investigation Of Change Order Management: A Case Study Of Oil & Gas Projects
Professional Master Degree (MPM)
1. Mr. Vu Van Ngu, Subcontractor Management In LPG Truck Loading Projects
2. Ms. Phan Thi Hai Giang, Sub-Contractor Management In Gas Projects: A Case Study Fo Pvgas Gas Distribution Centre Project
3. Mr. Trieu Quoc Tuan, Risk Management In Pipeline Operation Management: A Case Study Of Petrovietnam Gas Pipeline System
Project Materials Management For Telecom Steel Towers Erected Project In Viet Nam
Along with the growth of economy, the telecommunication industry also was developed to satisfy the demands for using the internet, voice, fax, data, multimedia, and entertainment of individual, community and company.
The erection for self support steel towers for telecommunication industry is one of the difficult infrastructures in Vietnam. Two main problems of telecom projects are:
1. Difficult geographical and topography conditions to access the construction sites to deliver materials.
2. Difficulties of fabricating the steel on site
These problems are different for each project since every project has particular geography and topography, and problems are not only happen for purchasing and managing materials but also in transporting materials to site.
Nguyen Huu Phuc made a case study which main objective is to find out An Effective Project Materials Management for erecting of self-support steel towers for telecom based on real conditions in Vietnam.
Conclusion
The project material management is major function in construction to assure quality, cost and schedule of project. With good way for project material management, the contractors can reduce project cost and make more profit from project.
An effective material management is not only good techniques for planning, monitoring and control of processes, materials and products at the site, office and factory but also is good function to avoid the most frequently occurring problem and the most frequently occurring place or step of problems.
The planning is the first step to do the project material management. It is a blueprint to set up sound basis for project life cycle. Due to data of planning, the activities for processes behind the planning were determined. Thus, planning is major figures to get the success of project. If the actual work does not meet the requirement of the planning for schedule or budget, the project will fail.
The appropriate organization in construction for each project and for the success depends on personal skills of members and their geographical location in the department or on the site. The skills of members in organization are very important to do their tasks.
One more thing, the purchasing in the project must connect between planning for requirement and ordering of demand for material and equipment on the site. The purchasing ensures that materials and equipment are supplied with competitive price, on schedule work and good quality. In purchasing, the relationship with suppliers and performance of suppliers are keys to have the effective material management
For the transportation, the company can save the cost through out the negotiated agreements or special agreement such as special scope of transportation work or special duty of transporters or special for handling and packaging. In addition, the survey for conditions of transportation also has the main role to eliminate the risk in the traffic.
The activities for monitoring and controlling of estimation, ordering, checking of the performance and surplus on the site are supported by requirement planning and actual work on the site. It affects project productivity and other factors in the project. Solving procedures for improving the site monitoring and controlling are requirements that the project manager must be consider.
According to the contract, the quality always is the most important provision. It involves all material management cycle and affects all project phase. Accordingly, quality assurance and control related with all responsible of contractor, suppliers and owner.
Recommendations
In order to improve actions and processes for project management in the future, from this study, some proposals are given to correct activities and reduce cost for materials in construction such as:
A plan for short interval planning, monthly planning and project planning should be written down and communicated to the related people. In planning for material management, the material that it has the high value, when comparison with project cost, must be cared first. The information for planning must be more detail and complying with the scope. Beside, historical data and job review should be collected to help us to learn from past successes and failure. It is a tool to plan with accurate data to implement the work on site.
Top leader must support the organization for project material management and have the members with appropriate skill based on the scope of work. The individual must know his responsibility and his role in the organization.
The evaluated suppliers must be checked carefully not only with their history but also their performance in the present. The price, quantity, quality, delivery time, the rights and penalties must be defined clearly in the contract with suppliers.
The materials for the project must be tested to meet the standard on the sources before using on the site. When the site manager receives these materials, they must check against to ensure the quality of material that they use for work. In addition, the procedure work must be inspected and review to ensure the quality of products.
The communication for the organization and other parties must set up with appropriate ways to connect all related people. With good communication processes, the contacts of related people will be come easily to avoid the refusing actions.
For further study, the study should research deeply on material cost variance and behaviors of workers when they use the materials on the site to get more effective material management.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
The reported project relate materials management in construction and applications for erecting of steel towers based on real conditions of Viet Nam to identify an effective process of the project materials management for erecting steel towers in Viet Nam.
With using qualitative approach, the report explains more detail about project materials management when using the single case study to maintain the real conditions of materials management in the project to analyse the situations to find the problems and solution for it.
In this report, the documents will summarize the knowledge for the project materials management in project materials planning, in project materials logistic management, in supplier management, in project materials monitoring and controlling and focus on some problems in erecting of steel towers in Viet Nam.
Based on the knowledge for the project materials management and the case study, what are the advantages for the project materials management and the disadvantages are faced in erecting the steel towers in Viet Nam. For example: location, scope, size, transportation....
Besides, the analyses also provide some figures to prove the knowledge for the materials management in a logical and discuss about some effective materials management to find the conclusions. And then, the recommendations are established for the effective process in the future.
The erection for self support steel towers for telecommunication industry is one of the difficult infrastructures in Vietnam. Two main problems of telecom projects are:
1. Difficult geographical and topography conditions to access the construction sites to deliver materials.
2. Difficulties of fabricating the steel on site
These problems are different for each project since every project has particular geography and topography, and problems are not only happen for purchasing and managing materials but also in transporting materials to site.
Nguyen Huu Phuc made a case study which main objective is to find out An Effective Project Materials Management for erecting of self-support steel towers for telecom based on real conditions in Vietnam.
Conclusion
The project material management is major function in construction to assure quality, cost and schedule of project. With good way for project material management, the contractors can reduce project cost and make more profit from project.
An effective material management is not only good techniques for planning, monitoring and control of processes, materials and products at the site, office and factory but also is good function to avoid the most frequently occurring problem and the most frequently occurring place or step of problems.
The planning is the first step to do the project material management. It is a blueprint to set up sound basis for project life cycle. Due to data of planning, the activities for processes behind the planning were determined. Thus, planning is major figures to get the success of project. If the actual work does not meet the requirement of the planning for schedule or budget, the project will fail.
The appropriate organization in construction for each project and for the success depends on personal skills of members and their geographical location in the department or on the site. The skills of members in organization are very important to do their tasks.
One more thing, the purchasing in the project must connect between planning for requirement and ordering of demand for material and equipment on the site. The purchasing ensures that materials and equipment are supplied with competitive price, on schedule work and good quality. In purchasing, the relationship with suppliers and performance of suppliers are keys to have the effective material management
For the transportation, the company can save the cost through out the negotiated agreements or special agreement such as special scope of transportation work or special duty of transporters or special for handling and packaging. In addition, the survey for conditions of transportation also has the main role to eliminate the risk in the traffic.
The activities for monitoring and controlling of estimation, ordering, checking of the performance and surplus on the site are supported by requirement planning and actual work on the site. It affects project productivity and other factors in the project. Solving procedures for improving the site monitoring and controlling are requirements that the project manager must be consider.
According to the contract, the quality always is the most important provision. It involves all material management cycle and affects all project phase. Accordingly, quality assurance and control related with all responsible of contractor, suppliers and owner.
Recommendations
In order to improve actions and processes for project management in the future, from this study, some proposals are given to correct activities and reduce cost for materials in construction such as:
A plan for short interval planning, monthly planning and project planning should be written down and communicated to the related people. In planning for material management, the material that it has the high value, when comparison with project cost, must be cared first. The information for planning must be more detail and complying with the scope. Beside, historical data and job review should be collected to help us to learn from past successes and failure. It is a tool to plan with accurate data to implement the work on site.
Top leader must support the organization for project material management and have the members with appropriate skill based on the scope of work. The individual must know his responsibility and his role in the organization.
The evaluated suppliers must be checked carefully not only with their history but also their performance in the present. The price, quantity, quality, delivery time, the rights and penalties must be defined clearly in the contract with suppliers.
The materials for the project must be tested to meet the standard on the sources before using on the site. When the site manager receives these materials, they must check against to ensure the quality of material that they use for work. In addition, the procedure work must be inspected and review to ensure the quality of products.
The communication for the organization and other parties must set up with appropriate ways to connect all related people. With good communication processes, the contacts of related people will be come easily to avoid the refusing actions.
For further study, the study should research deeply on material cost variance and behaviors of workers when they use the materials on the site to get more effective material management.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
The reported project relate materials management in construction and applications for erecting of steel towers based on real conditions of Viet Nam to identify an effective process of the project materials management for erecting steel towers in Viet Nam.
With using qualitative approach, the report explains more detail about project materials management when using the single case study to maintain the real conditions of materials management in the project to analyse the situations to find the problems and solution for it.
In this report, the documents will summarize the knowledge for the project materials management in project materials planning, in project materials logistic management, in supplier management, in project materials monitoring and controlling and focus on some problems in erecting of steel towers in Viet Nam.
Based on the knowledge for the project materials management and the case study, what are the advantages for the project materials management and the disadvantages are faced in erecting the steel towers in Viet Nam. For example: location, scope, size, transportation....
Besides, the analyses also provide some figures to prove the knowledge for the materials management in a logical and discuss about some effective materials management to find the conclusions. And then, the recommendations are established for the effective process in the future.
Safety and Quality Management for Construction Based on Construction Regulation and Contract in Vietnam
For the last 20 years, the political innovation of the Vietnam leaders has made the face of the whole country be changed. With the new policies of government, all of sectors of Vietnam economy have been developing strongly since beginning of decade 1990 and construction industrial sector may not be out of that movement, it has been booming to meet the requirements of economical development. In fact, construction industry achieved complete success in executing its mission.
However, in other side of success, the weakness has appeared: many accidents happened in recent years, hundreds construction workers died and injury, many construction parts and elements collapse. These accidents happened in many projects with different owners, contractors and consultants. Number of dead and injury people is very big, many times comparing 10 years ago.
The fatal accidents still happen everywhere in the whole country and many times more than decades before. Moreover, the happened accidents are not only influence to workers and projects but also to money and time. It normally takes much money to compensate the loss of workers and to repair the damages of the project and many other expenses. Besides, is takes much time-consuming for accident investigation and designing and repairing and sometime for legal questions.
Some people think they are just bad lucky of those projects due to the rate between the projects in which accident happened and total projects each year is not too high. That is worth for developing economy. Evenly they said that accidents are unavoidable. Is that true? Should we have the right to feel contempt the workers’ life when they serve for construction projects?
To have a better situation, with the supporting from studying of AIT dossier I hope that this material will give a hand to improve it analyzing every aspect of the problem in detail and then putting forward proper recommendation.
Mr. Hoang Don Dung made a study aimed to : (1) analyze the reasons of the recent constructing accidents in Vietnam which are related with the quality of temporary structure; (2) apply the regulation of Vietnam government and FIDIC contract to study these accidents; and (3) give out some recommendations to improve the safety and quality of temporary support structure in construction process.
His Conclusion
Studying occupational accidents happened in the past, we can recognize that there were two kinds of them: predictable or unpredictable. But the damages of these accidents were taken by human. A predictable occupational accident means avoidable if we do the right work. Most accidents of temporary construction structure in the past are predictable and avoidable but they have happened because a behavior of construction employees: subjective.
Many people at site often think that every temporary structure is just serving for executing a super-structure, it is not worth for long time. The executing weight loading on temporary structure is short-term load, too. They suppose that owners or customers won’t check it closely and in detail like other parts of project. In fact, some kinds of loading capacity may load on superstructure but not on temporary structure such as loads defined by probability, loads following seasons, earthquake, etc. This makes ideas of disregarding the temporary structure systems.
Combination with the conclusion in the end of Chapter 3 and my above opinion, I have a general conclusion for all happened occupational accidents caused by the quality of temporary structures at site:
In many projects, temporary structures have not been considering as superstructure in processes of designing and executing.
That means before implementation the temporary structure at site, it must be designed in detail attending the applied standard and codes. The design drawings and specification must be verified and accepted carefully by the Engineer/Supervisor as defined by Fidic terms or Vietnam Decree 209 to the superstructure.
Before implementation the temporary structure at site, its materials must be tested attending the applied standard and codes. Contractor may use old material but loading capacity must be ensured. Besides, using materials for the temporary structure must obey specification.
Contractor’s technical staff and owner’s supervisor must supervise and accept temporary structures carefully to achieve technical requirements defined by approved design and specification.
Recommendations
To solve the problems, the support of authority is indispensable. Government policies should have to regulate besides the regulations that were defined in Decree 209 (or the Fidic conditions of contract if applied) as follows:
a. Every temporary structure must be behaved as superstructure in designing and executing process.
b. Contractor’s employees have to be trained appropriately. They have to have proper profession certificates.
Abstract
Years by years, the persons who do their routine work at construction site still try to devote themselves to their jobs. Now and then there is information of a construction accident happened some where, they hear information and feel sorry for their coworkers. Then they can forget it at once because they think simply that accident was not their case; it does not relate to them.
Is that true? Don’t they relate completely and absolutely to any occupational accident though it happens out of their construction site? The answer is no because each of them is playing a roll in construction sector. Each person has his obligation of occupation. Somehow, by his opinions or activities he can help either to prevent accidents or reduce damage. He may not keep it for himself. Therefore those opinions must be written down.
This report writes about occupational accidents happened in Vietnam construction site in several recent years. The accidents happened by poor-quality and un-safety of the different temporary structure systems at the different site but basically the causation is human. They did not put all their consideration to the temporary structure because it’s non-permanent. In fact, they did design, manage, execute and check the temporary structure carelessly.
The author hopes that this report will give a more opinion to persons who do their routine work at construction site related to temporary structure systems. They will play very well their rolls at site as defined by government regulations and/or terms of Fidic contract.
However, in other side of success, the weakness has appeared: many accidents happened in recent years, hundreds construction workers died and injury, many construction parts and elements collapse. These accidents happened in many projects with different owners, contractors and consultants. Number of dead and injury people is very big, many times comparing 10 years ago.
The fatal accidents still happen everywhere in the whole country and many times more than decades before. Moreover, the happened accidents are not only influence to workers and projects but also to money and time. It normally takes much money to compensate the loss of workers and to repair the damages of the project and many other expenses. Besides, is takes much time-consuming for accident investigation and designing and repairing and sometime for legal questions.
Some people think they are just bad lucky of those projects due to the rate between the projects in which accident happened and total projects each year is not too high. That is worth for developing economy. Evenly they said that accidents are unavoidable. Is that true? Should we have the right to feel contempt the workers’ life when they serve for construction projects?
To have a better situation, with the supporting from studying of AIT dossier I hope that this material will give a hand to improve it analyzing every aspect of the problem in detail and then putting forward proper recommendation.
Mr. Hoang Don Dung made a study aimed to : (1) analyze the reasons of the recent constructing accidents in Vietnam which are related with the quality of temporary structure; (2) apply the regulation of Vietnam government and FIDIC contract to study these accidents; and (3) give out some recommendations to improve the safety and quality of temporary support structure in construction process.
His Conclusion
Studying occupational accidents happened in the past, we can recognize that there were two kinds of them: predictable or unpredictable. But the damages of these accidents were taken by human. A predictable occupational accident means avoidable if we do the right work. Most accidents of temporary construction structure in the past are predictable and avoidable but they have happened because a behavior of construction employees: subjective.
Many people at site often think that every temporary structure is just serving for executing a super-structure, it is not worth for long time. The executing weight loading on temporary structure is short-term load, too. They suppose that owners or customers won’t check it closely and in detail like other parts of project. In fact, some kinds of loading capacity may load on superstructure but not on temporary structure such as loads defined by probability, loads following seasons, earthquake, etc. This makes ideas of disregarding the temporary structure systems.
Combination with the conclusion in the end of Chapter 3 and my above opinion, I have a general conclusion for all happened occupational accidents caused by the quality of temporary structures at site:
In many projects, temporary structures have not been considering as superstructure in processes of designing and executing.
That means before implementation the temporary structure at site, it must be designed in detail attending the applied standard and codes. The design drawings and specification must be verified and accepted carefully by the Engineer/Supervisor as defined by Fidic terms or Vietnam Decree 209 to the superstructure.
Before implementation the temporary structure at site, its materials must be tested attending the applied standard and codes. Contractor may use old material but loading capacity must be ensured. Besides, using materials for the temporary structure must obey specification.
Contractor’s technical staff and owner’s supervisor must supervise and accept temporary structures carefully to achieve technical requirements defined by approved design and specification.
Recommendations
To solve the problems, the support of authority is indispensable. Government policies should have to regulate besides the regulations that were defined in Decree 209 (or the Fidic conditions of contract if applied) as follows:
a. Every temporary structure must be behaved as superstructure in designing and executing process.
b. Contractor’s employees have to be trained appropriately. They have to have proper profession certificates.
Abstract
Years by years, the persons who do their routine work at construction site still try to devote themselves to their jobs. Now and then there is information of a construction accident happened some where, they hear information and feel sorry for their coworkers. Then they can forget it at once because they think simply that accident was not their case; it does not relate to them.
Is that true? Don’t they relate completely and absolutely to any occupational accident though it happens out of their construction site? The answer is no because each of them is playing a roll in construction sector. Each person has his obligation of occupation. Somehow, by his opinions or activities he can help either to prevent accidents or reduce damage. He may not keep it for himself. Therefore those opinions must be written down.
This report writes about occupational accidents happened in Vietnam construction site in several recent years. The accidents happened by poor-quality and un-safety of the different temporary structure systems at the different site but basically the causation is human. They did not put all their consideration to the temporary structure because it’s non-permanent. In fact, they did design, manage, execute and check the temporary structure carelessly.
The author hopes that this report will give a more opinion to persons who do their routine work at construction site related to temporary structure systems. They will play very well their rolls at site as defined by government regulations and/or terms of Fidic contract.
Analyzing the Logistic Process for Pre Engineering Building (P.E.B) Construction
In the industrial construction projects, Erection is the last important stage of P.E.B product life cycle which deals with installation P.E.B products. This stage needs the fulfillment of previous stages such as design, fabrication, shipping to job sites. However, in the real erection job sites, especially the job sites in Vietnam, there are lots of problems happened in these stages that make erection stage being delay and can not be completed as expected.
As observation from industrial construction projects in Vietnam, the schedule delay currently becomes very popular. Among the causes of this issue, problems have occurred as a result of poor logistics supply chain network management such as:
1. Delay in delivery time of material , equipment , labor compare to plan
2. Materials were delivered inadequately.
3. Materials were delivered wrongly in type as well as differently from specification.
4. Raw materials for production main structures can not be provided enough for production.
5. Plan and schedule ineffectively that leads to inefficiency in arrangement of equipments and labor.
Mr. Le Khac Bao made a study on construction logistic for Pre Engineering Building construction where the integration of all process of designing, detailing, procurement, fabrication and delivery of finished products to job site for the accomplishment of erection work.
The objectives of his case study were to: (1) provide further insights into the arising problems from construction logistic process for erection job sites of P.E.B company as a real case study; and (2) develop specific recommendations for future improvements.
Conclusion
The results revealed that many causes come from the processes in Plant such as fabrication, purchasing or logistic deliveries, than other stages such as job site and office , and stage should be paid more effort to improve than the other ones . The office stage of engineering department could be seen as the best, but there are still more issues need to be solved.
Finally, no matter what the stage issues were in, all issues should be solved properly in order to implement the current logistic process for propose of success of P.E.B projects.
With objectives of continuous improvement, the implement of these improvements might lead to the needs of new improvements; the new similar studies will be made for implement them.
Recommendation
With the objectives of sustainable development of a new construction area - Steel structure in Vietnamese market, these recommendations should be carefully considered to maintain and improve for final result is the increasing of trade mark reputation and long term relation ship with the customers.
As above analysis, almost of issues of construction logistic process for erection are related closely with human factor, therefore , if something need to be recommended , I would like to recommend to improve which related to human factors. Hereafters are the characters might need to consider to success the purpose of improvement construction logistic for P.E.B projects:
1. Clear policy —Top management should take a leader role in commitment toward improvement. There should be clear policy from top management to support the implement process.
2. The term ‘Just-In-Time’ (JIT) — used for instance to describe the delivery of materials to a construction job site, suggests that materials will be brought to their location for final installation and be installed immediately upon arrival without incurring any delay due to storage in a lay down or staging area. The ultimate objective of JIT production is to supply the right materials at the right time and in the right amount at every step in the process.
3. Being responsible — Each people who involved into construction logistic process should be responsible to what they were assigned is to contribute their part to the success.
4. Honest — always be honest in every situation is the key to success in developing construction logistic.
5. Clear in scope of work — always make clear every thing to Customer Subcontractors as well as between internal departments to avoid unexpected conflict later.
6. By establishing a subcontractor database — we are able to know the information about subcontractors. It helps to have better understanding about sub contractors’ performance.
7. Flexible and Creation — apply the existing value and properties to increase maximum their effectiveness.
8. Looking ahead for sustainable development — doing in professional way for sustainability in development.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
Erection is the last important stage of P.E.B product life cycle, to complete success this stage, it is requested the fulfillment of previous stages as the erection logistic stage. However, in the real erection job sites, especially the job sites in Vietnam, there a lot of problems happened in this stage that make erection stage can not be completed as expected, by analyzing to find out the root causes of these problems from the data, which are investigated from a real P.E.B company, base on key relevant theories, the Author would like to develop the solutions for future improvements.
Note : (P.E.B : Abbreviation of Pre-Engineering-Building )
As observation from industrial construction projects in Vietnam, the schedule delay currently becomes very popular. Among the causes of this issue, problems have occurred as a result of poor logistics supply chain network management such as:
1. Delay in delivery time of material , equipment , labor compare to plan
2. Materials were delivered inadequately.
3. Materials were delivered wrongly in type as well as differently from specification.
4. Raw materials for production main structures can not be provided enough for production.
5. Plan and schedule ineffectively that leads to inefficiency in arrangement of equipments and labor.
Mr. Le Khac Bao made a study on construction logistic for Pre Engineering Building construction where the integration of all process of designing, detailing, procurement, fabrication and delivery of finished products to job site for the accomplishment of erection work.
The objectives of his case study were to: (1) provide further insights into the arising problems from construction logistic process for erection job sites of P.E.B company as a real case study; and (2) develop specific recommendations for future improvements.
Conclusion
The results revealed that many causes come from the processes in Plant such as fabrication, purchasing or logistic deliveries, than other stages such as job site and office , and stage should be paid more effort to improve than the other ones . The office stage of engineering department could be seen as the best, but there are still more issues need to be solved.
Finally, no matter what the stage issues were in, all issues should be solved properly in order to implement the current logistic process for propose of success of P.E.B projects.
With objectives of continuous improvement, the implement of these improvements might lead to the needs of new improvements; the new similar studies will be made for implement them.
Recommendation
With the objectives of sustainable development of a new construction area - Steel structure in Vietnamese market, these recommendations should be carefully considered to maintain and improve for final result is the increasing of trade mark reputation and long term relation ship with the customers.
As above analysis, almost of issues of construction logistic process for erection are related closely with human factor, therefore , if something need to be recommended , I would like to recommend to improve which related to human factors. Hereafters are the characters might need to consider to success the purpose of improvement construction logistic for P.E.B projects:
1. Clear policy —Top management should take a leader role in commitment toward improvement. There should be clear policy from top management to support the implement process.
2. The term ‘Just-In-Time’ (JIT) — used for instance to describe the delivery of materials to a construction job site, suggests that materials will be brought to their location for final installation and be installed immediately upon arrival without incurring any delay due to storage in a lay down or staging area. The ultimate objective of JIT production is to supply the right materials at the right time and in the right amount at every step in the process.
3. Being responsible — Each people who involved into construction logistic process should be responsible to what they were assigned is to contribute their part to the success.
4. Honest — always be honest in every situation is the key to success in developing construction logistic.
5. Clear in scope of work — always make clear every thing to Customer Subcontractors as well as between internal departments to avoid unexpected conflict later.
6. By establishing a subcontractor database — we are able to know the information about subcontractors. It helps to have better understanding about sub contractors’ performance.
7. Flexible and Creation — apply the existing value and properties to increase maximum their effectiveness.
8. Looking ahead for sustainable development — doing in professional way for sustainability in development.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
Erection is the last important stage of P.E.B product life cycle, to complete success this stage, it is requested the fulfillment of previous stages as the erection logistic stage. However, in the real erection job sites, especially the job sites in Vietnam, there a lot of problems happened in this stage that make erection stage can not be completed as expected, by analyzing to find out the root causes of these problems from the data, which are investigated from a real P.E.B company, base on key relevant theories, the Author would like to develop the solutions for future improvements.
Note : (P.E.B : Abbreviation of Pre-Engineering-Building )
New Urban Zone Infrastructure Development Project Risks
Risk and uncertainties comes from various sources. In new residential zone project, risk impact schedule of project implement, project quality, project finance and time of customers and government hand-over.
In recent years, many real estate companies have been establishing and many New Residential Zone Projects were established. Along Nguyen Van Linh highway and in HCMC many of new residential zone Infrastructure development projects have been being delayed and project cost over run due to many reason such as land compensation issues, lack of social agreement, insufficient of capital for buying the land, late in permitted from authority especially in master plan and architectural city design, poor in design and construction, water treat and environment issue and so on. In those projects managers could not deal with the risks and uncertainties which they met in project implementation process.
Project risk is an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or a negative effect on at least one project objective, such as time, cost, scope, or quality (PMI, 2004). Additionally, Ahuja and Nandakumar (1985) demonstrated that a delay in project completion can cause a cost escalation at least equal to the sum of inflation, overhead cost, and addition interest cost for the period.
Furthermore, there is another actuality to be noted that even successful project have not been able to transfer their best performance and knowledge in the effectively and efficiently way to other projects. Consequently, realizing the list of factors contributing to reducing project time and cost is lacking.
Mr. Hoang Ngoc Anh made a study to find out the risks or uncertainties in new urban infrastructure development project in general and in particular An Phu Tay residential zone project of SADECO and to conduct a risk management to response to them. The objectives of his study were: (1) identifying the risk factors in the infrastructure development in new residential area project; and (2) propose strategies to effectively avoid or mitigate the negative impacts of major risks.
Conclusions
Risks and uncertainties come from various sources. Risk can not be eliminated, but can be minimized, transferred or retained. There are some ways of risk dealing such as transfers the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk.
The process of taking a construction project in general as well as Development infrastructure for new residential project in particular from initial to completion and transfer is complex. Moreover, there are many organizations and partners who involved a construction project, especial in New urban zone Infrastructure Development project. These organizations involve land owners, client, designers, contractors and subcontractors, consultants, material suppliers, power and water suppliers, customers, public facility agencies, authorities and so on.
In new urban zone development project, risk impact schedule of project implement, project quality, project finance and time of customers and government hand-over. In order to deal with risks, it is essential to establish a strategy that can effectively and efficiently response. Thus, this project study tried to identify major risks and conducted a risk management study for New urban zone Infrastructure Development project. Besides it, the author proposed appropriate strategies to mitigate these major risks.
Identify major risks
Characters of New Urban Development Project as follow:
1. Land area of the project has to big enough over 20ha following Decree 02/ND-CP issued by VN Government. Thus, there are a lot of land owners at area that will be construction site.
2. There are various specialized design consultant organizations on engineering infrastructure joining in design.
3. There are many contractors different from specialized technology, constructing in the same site on surface and underground at the same time.
4. Running time for the project implementation is often long.
5. After engineering infrastructure construction completed, developers have to transfer them to Public Facility Agencies and Government for management.
These above characters related with risks and uncertainties occurring in the project. It is essential to understand project’s characters so that we can deal with risks occurring in the project.
According to data from An Phu Tay residential zone project, statistics of new urban zone development projects and the similar projects in HCMC and throughout VN recent, many major risks were identified and found out that the top three risks occurring in this project as follow:
1. Late in design approval by the authorities,
2. Late in site clearance in construction process, and
3. Construction cost increase because of delay and inflation.
Recommendations
The findings of this study are expected to contribute to identify major risks and more effective risk management process in project. This study proposes some recommendation:
1. When planning the Feasibility Study, it is necessary to study carefully on financial capacity of developers, size and implement time of the project, as well as inflation predictions.
2. Specialists of project planning have to master on engineering, get much working experience. They are to estimate scope of works in order to take project running time reasonably.
3. Feasibility Study Evaluation Authority needs to consider the reality to access project’s feasibility; especially, site clearance issue.
4. It is necessary to define clearly capital flow, option for partitioning investment and business in Feasibility Study. Besides, it is suggested to submit ideas to the Government on construction investment, engineering infrastructure constructions lying outside of fences of the project, connection point and so on.
5. To site clearance, developers need to have planning and schedule suitable to construction procedure of the project.
6. Clients must make timely and quickly decisions in negotiating costs with land owners and need to have good relationship with local authorities to get supports in compensation on site clearance. Beside, it is necessary to make arrangements for resettlement area or temporary residence zone for households living at construction region, so that can hand over site area sufficiently to contractor.
7. Choose experienced design companies; project leader of design team has experienced in design the same construction items.
8. Design contract has to be stipulated conditions on reward and punishment; especially, responsibilities on submission and approval at Public Facility Agencies.
9. Designers and consultants have to always update regulations and standards of Government and Public Facility Agency, and responsible for their acceptance and accept of contract based on their ability only.
10. Design costs are low following Vietnam Government’s regulation; therefore, developers should not recommend designers down expenses.
11. EPC contract should be applied on construction items transferred to Public Facility Agencies. EPC contracts will be signed with high-capable companies dealing with transferring products to Public Facility Agencies.
12. As planning construction schedule, it is necessary to study carefully overlapped building items; from then, take measures fitted with surface and underground engineering items building in the same lay-out.
13. Clients should know that high commitment of all people involved in all processes of project is very important to solve complex conflicts and problems occurring in project. In addition, developers have to set up a Project Management Unit (PMU) that owns a team of experienced and capable experts in order to manage and run the project. The PMU must have authority to make decisions quickly under delegation of developers.
14. Clients should make favorable conditions for staffs improving their knowledge, skills and to update new knowledge. On the other hand, to attract capable and experienced experts and engineers, developers should pay high salaries for them.
15. Building construction progress and program must be planned strictly. It should be taken care of items be able to overlapped. For example, as road contractors finish road foundation, contractors on water, electricity are to install uptime underground systems; avoiding that contractors on underground works excavate the roads accomplished to install underground systems; then, reconstruct them as happened to some projects in Vietnam. Besides, it is avoided damages for road contractors as stopping construction to wait for operation of contractors on underground systems.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
Risks and uncertainties come from various sources. In New Urban Zone Infrastructure Development Project, risks related participants involving the project, impacted schedule of project implement, project quality, project finance and time of customers and government hand-over.
Risk management is an important part of the decision-making process of all construction companies. Risk and uncertainty can potentially have damaging consequences for some construction projects. Risk can be affect productivity, performance, quality, and the budget of the project. Risk can not be eliminated, but can be minimised, transferred or retained
Risk management is a systematic approach to managing unexpected related to a threat, through a sequence of human activities including: Risk identification, Risk classification, Risk analysis, Risk response, Risk evaluation.
In the organization, there are some ways of risk dealing such as transfers the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk.
In recent years, many real estate companies have been establishing and many New Residential Zone Projects were established. Along Nguyen Van Linh highway and in HCMC many of new residential zone Infrastructure development projects have been being delayed and project cost over run due to many reason such as land compensation issues, lack of social agreement, insufficient of capital for buying the land, late in permitted from authority especially in master plan and architectural city design, poor in design and construction, water treat and environment issue and so on. In those projects managers could not deal with the risks and uncertainties which they met in project implementation process.
Project risk is an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or a negative effect on at least one project objective, such as time, cost, scope, or quality (PMI, 2004). Additionally, Ahuja and Nandakumar (1985) demonstrated that a delay in project completion can cause a cost escalation at least equal to the sum of inflation, overhead cost, and addition interest cost for the period.
Furthermore, there is another actuality to be noted that even successful project have not been able to transfer their best performance and knowledge in the effectively and efficiently way to other projects. Consequently, realizing the list of factors contributing to reducing project time and cost is lacking.
Mr. Hoang Ngoc Anh made a study to find out the risks or uncertainties in new urban infrastructure development project in general and in particular An Phu Tay residential zone project of SADECO and to conduct a risk management to response to them. The objectives of his study were: (1) identifying the risk factors in the infrastructure development in new residential area project; and (2) propose strategies to effectively avoid or mitigate the negative impacts of major risks.
Conclusions
Risks and uncertainties come from various sources. Risk can not be eliminated, but can be minimized, transferred or retained. There are some ways of risk dealing such as transfers the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk.
The process of taking a construction project in general as well as Development infrastructure for new residential project in particular from initial to completion and transfer is complex. Moreover, there are many organizations and partners who involved a construction project, especial in New urban zone Infrastructure Development project. These organizations involve land owners, client, designers, contractors and subcontractors, consultants, material suppliers, power and water suppliers, customers, public facility agencies, authorities and so on.
In new urban zone development project, risk impact schedule of project implement, project quality, project finance and time of customers and government hand-over. In order to deal with risks, it is essential to establish a strategy that can effectively and efficiently response. Thus, this project study tried to identify major risks and conducted a risk management study for New urban zone Infrastructure Development project. Besides it, the author proposed appropriate strategies to mitigate these major risks.
Identify major risks
Characters of New Urban Development Project as follow:
1. Land area of the project has to big enough over 20ha following Decree 02/ND-CP issued by VN Government. Thus, there are a lot of land owners at area that will be construction site.
2. There are various specialized design consultant organizations on engineering infrastructure joining in design.
3. There are many contractors different from specialized technology, constructing in the same site on surface and underground at the same time.
4. Running time for the project implementation is often long.
5. After engineering infrastructure construction completed, developers have to transfer them to Public Facility Agencies and Government for management.
These above characters related with risks and uncertainties occurring in the project. It is essential to understand project’s characters so that we can deal with risks occurring in the project.
According to data from An Phu Tay residential zone project, statistics of new urban zone development projects and the similar projects in HCMC and throughout VN recent, many major risks were identified and found out that the top three risks occurring in this project as follow:
1. Late in design approval by the authorities,
2. Late in site clearance in construction process, and
3. Construction cost increase because of delay and inflation.
Recommendations
The findings of this study are expected to contribute to identify major risks and more effective risk management process in project. This study proposes some recommendation:
1. When planning the Feasibility Study, it is necessary to study carefully on financial capacity of developers, size and implement time of the project, as well as inflation predictions.
2. Specialists of project planning have to master on engineering, get much working experience. They are to estimate scope of works in order to take project running time reasonably.
3. Feasibility Study Evaluation Authority needs to consider the reality to access project’s feasibility; especially, site clearance issue.
4. It is necessary to define clearly capital flow, option for partitioning investment and business in Feasibility Study. Besides, it is suggested to submit ideas to the Government on construction investment, engineering infrastructure constructions lying outside of fences of the project, connection point and so on.
5. To site clearance, developers need to have planning and schedule suitable to construction procedure of the project.
6. Clients must make timely and quickly decisions in negotiating costs with land owners and need to have good relationship with local authorities to get supports in compensation on site clearance. Beside, it is necessary to make arrangements for resettlement area or temporary residence zone for households living at construction region, so that can hand over site area sufficiently to contractor.
7. Choose experienced design companies; project leader of design team has experienced in design the same construction items.
8. Design contract has to be stipulated conditions on reward and punishment; especially, responsibilities on submission and approval at Public Facility Agencies.
9. Designers and consultants have to always update regulations and standards of Government and Public Facility Agency, and responsible for their acceptance and accept of contract based on their ability only.
10. Design costs are low following Vietnam Government’s regulation; therefore, developers should not recommend designers down expenses.
11. EPC contract should be applied on construction items transferred to Public Facility Agencies. EPC contracts will be signed with high-capable companies dealing with transferring products to Public Facility Agencies.
12. As planning construction schedule, it is necessary to study carefully overlapped building items; from then, take measures fitted with surface and underground engineering items building in the same lay-out.
13. Clients should know that high commitment of all people involved in all processes of project is very important to solve complex conflicts and problems occurring in project. In addition, developers have to set up a Project Management Unit (PMU) that owns a team of experienced and capable experts in order to manage and run the project. The PMU must have authority to make decisions quickly under delegation of developers.
14. Clients should make favorable conditions for staffs improving their knowledge, skills and to update new knowledge. On the other hand, to attract capable and experienced experts and engineers, developers should pay high salaries for them.
15. Building construction progress and program must be planned strictly. It should be taken care of items be able to overlapped. For example, as road contractors finish road foundation, contractors on water, electricity are to install uptime underground systems; avoiding that contractors on underground works excavate the roads accomplished to install underground systems; then, reconstruct them as happened to some projects in Vietnam. Besides, it is avoided damages for road contractors as stopping construction to wait for operation of contractors on underground systems.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
Risks and uncertainties come from various sources. In New Urban Zone Infrastructure Development Project, risks related participants involving the project, impacted schedule of project implement, project quality, project finance and time of customers and government hand-over.
Risk management is an important part of the decision-making process of all construction companies. Risk and uncertainty can potentially have damaging consequences for some construction projects. Risk can be affect productivity, performance, quality, and the budget of the project. Risk can not be eliminated, but can be minimised, transferred or retained
Risk management is a systematic approach to managing unexpected related to a threat, through a sequence of human activities including: Risk identification, Risk classification, Risk analysis, Risk response, Risk evaluation.
In the organization, there are some ways of risk dealing such as transfers the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk.
Safety Management In Steel Structure Fabrication And Erection
Safety in Construction is considered the success of project. In developed countries, safety is the always concern and closely controlled whereas in developing countries, in order to reduce expenses, this work seems unconcerned in many projects which results in many accidents that really affect the project seriously.
Safety in the fabrication and erection steel structure has always been a major problem. Steel construction is found to be one of the most dangerous on safety and health criteria, particularly in developing countries with a lot of accidents. Though much improvement in steel construction safety has been achieved, the steel structure fabrication and erection still continues to lag behind most other activities with regard to safety.
In Vietnam steel construction industry, safety accident rate is very high. This is due a lot of causes such as lack of workers’ awareness on safety, lack of safety training for workers to implement in the project, lack of PPE for workers, substandard construction equipments, lack of safety policy, safety plan, and so on.
The company-TT Construction has set the safety management system and it has been implemented in the GREEN STAR projects. In construction stage, some minor accidents and one major accident happened.
Mr. Bui Giang Nam wanted to assess the project safety plan and the safety management system of the project so we have information and experience for other projects in analyzing accidents happened in his company. His study focused on the specific objectives as follows:
1. Analyze the typical accident in the steel structure project;
2. Assess the project safety plan and safety management system; and
3. Propose recommendations for improvements safety management system
Conclusion
Most of the construction companies in Vietnam emphasize more on quality and productivity in terms of output. However, safety is one of the key measurements of good productivity which the people seldom realize. Through the analyzing of some accidents happened on the Green Start Project, the Safety plan was lack of some articles . The characteristic of ironworks are different and more dangerous from other works in construction . TT company should establish some procedures on the safety plan in future project
Following the Accident/Incident theory: Management of TT Company does not establish a comprehensive safety policy. Responsibility and authority with regard to safety are not clearly defined. Safety procedures such as measurement, inspection, correction, and investigation are ignored or given insufficient attention. Employees do not receive proper orientation. Employees are not given sufficient safety training or persons were trained on hazards and safe work procedures but not follow when performing the task.
Some problems of the Safety management system of TT Company :
- Unadequate commitment of top management
- Lack of Human resources for SMS
- Lack of Incentive and Reward
There are some key elements that can be the examples for other companies especially construction companies in Vietnam has written job description for each safety personnel on company and on site, provide safety training and record keeping which can be used as the document for safety measurement. Furthermore, there are written rules and regulations for each site personnel, safety committees to ensure the deployment of the safety plan, policy and programs.
Recommendation
TT Company should has some adjustments with their Safety management system such as:
1. Top manager should has commitment to supporting OH&S
2. Top manager commit to support OH&S. Establishing a Safety Management Organization with defined responsibilities of management staff as overall co-ordination and implementation of the Policy and the Safety Management System in the project
Besides financial supporting adequacy, top management staff have to realize their roles to play in safety. They should appreciate the communication between them and the frontline workers, which could impress the workers and thus improve the workers’ risk-taking mindset.
- Ensure that human resource is adequate for implementing and maintaining Safety Management System
TT company should recruit safety managers and safety supervisors for other projects in the future. The supervisor should provide the means to ensure that all workers are adequately instructed and trained , ensure that workers doing dangerous work have adequate training, experience and other qualities to carry out the work safely.
- Establish the incentive programme in order to motivate workers doing their jobs safely
• Behaviors required to achieve a safety reward should be specified and perceived as achievable by participants
• Everyone who meets behavioral criteria should be rewarded
• It is better for many participants to receive small rewards than for one person to receive a large reward
• Rewards should be displayable and represent safety achievement (I.e., coffee mugs, t-shirts, hats or jackets with a safety message)
• Contests should not reward one group at the expense of others
• Groups should not be penalized (lose rewards) for failure by individuals
• Progress towards achieving a safety reward should be systematically monitored and publicly posted
TT Company should also conducts Job Hazard Analysis which includes hazard identification and risk assessment to anticipate the hazard on site, the harshness of the consequences and the probability to happen. Moreover, TT company should also implement PPE program, accident investigation to reduce the probability of re-happening, emergency preparedness, safety promotion to induce the workers to work safely, evaluation of the subcontractor, health and welfare, security control, equipment inspection and waste material movement plan.
There are some key provisions of steel fabrication and erection when setting procedures for ironworks like: Cold stress; Heat stress; Lead exposure; Site Layout and Construction Sequence; Site-Specific Erection Plan; Hoisting and Rigging; Structural Steel Assembly; Column Anchorage; Beams and Columns; Open-Web Steel Joists; Systems-Engineered Metal Buildings; Falling Object Protection; and Training
Besides establishing appropriate safety procedures related with steel fabrication and erection Safety Policies of TT company should include:
1. The commitment of the top management to support OH&S. Ensure adequate supporting for implementing, maintaining and improving the SMS. To give Safety to be the highest priority and to inject safety consideration into every aspect of the Project
2. To recognize employees are the most important assets and to enrich their safety awareness by ways of Interactive Safety Training, Safety Promotion, Safety Meeting and Counseling.
3. To regular review, not least than once per year, the Policy, the Safety Management System for its efficiency and effectiveness by way of Management Inspection and Review and Safety Audit conducted by Senior Management Staff,
4. To maintain a high standard of safety performance and to the satisfaction of the Client at all time and also a progressively improvement in the standard achieved by continue monitoring and regular review.
His Thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
Safety in the fabrication and erection steel structure has always been a major issue. Wherever reliable records are available, steel construction is found to be one of the most dangerous on safety and health criteria, particularly in developing countries. Though much improvement in steel construction safety has been achieved, the erection steel structure still continues to lag behind most other activities with regard to safety. In developing countries, safety in fabrication and erection rules usually do not exist; if any exist, the regulatory authority is usually very weak in implementing such rules effectively. Further, work hazards at the construction workplace are either not perceived at all, or perceived to be less dangerous than what they actually are.
Most steel companies can give many good reasons why they want to implement management safety system. A well-designed safety management system can help to reduce injuries and illnesses and prevent risks and hazards. In addition, a good management system can increase efficiency, improve productivity and quality of services.
Through the assessment of some typical accident cases in steel construction of one project in LONG AN- The Green Star Factory, I want to assess the project safety plan and the safety management system of TT Company. Furthermore, I want to improve the existing safety management system of the company in order to prevent the accident happening in the future.
Safety in the fabrication and erection steel structure has always been a major problem. Steel construction is found to be one of the most dangerous on safety and health criteria, particularly in developing countries with a lot of accidents. Though much improvement in steel construction safety has been achieved, the steel structure fabrication and erection still continues to lag behind most other activities with regard to safety.
In Vietnam steel construction industry, safety accident rate is very high. This is due a lot of causes such as lack of workers’ awareness on safety, lack of safety training for workers to implement in the project, lack of PPE for workers, substandard construction equipments, lack of safety policy, safety plan, and so on.
The company-TT Construction has set the safety management system and it has been implemented in the GREEN STAR projects. In construction stage, some minor accidents and one major accident happened.
Mr. Bui Giang Nam wanted to assess the project safety plan and the safety management system of the project so we have information and experience for other projects in analyzing accidents happened in his company. His study focused on the specific objectives as follows:
1. Analyze the typical accident in the steel structure project;
2. Assess the project safety plan and safety management system; and
3. Propose recommendations for improvements safety management system
Conclusion
Most of the construction companies in Vietnam emphasize more on quality and productivity in terms of output. However, safety is one of the key measurements of good productivity which the people seldom realize. Through the analyzing of some accidents happened on the Green Start Project, the Safety plan was lack of some articles . The characteristic of ironworks are different and more dangerous from other works in construction . TT company should establish some procedures on the safety plan in future project
Following the Accident/Incident theory: Management of TT Company does not establish a comprehensive safety policy. Responsibility and authority with regard to safety are not clearly defined. Safety procedures such as measurement, inspection, correction, and investigation are ignored or given insufficient attention. Employees do not receive proper orientation. Employees are not given sufficient safety training or persons were trained on hazards and safe work procedures but not follow when performing the task.
Some problems of the Safety management system of TT Company :
- Unadequate commitment of top management
- Lack of Human resources for SMS
- Lack of Incentive and Reward
There are some key elements that can be the examples for other companies especially construction companies in Vietnam has written job description for each safety personnel on company and on site, provide safety training and record keeping which can be used as the document for safety measurement. Furthermore, there are written rules and regulations for each site personnel, safety committees to ensure the deployment of the safety plan, policy and programs.
Recommendation
TT Company should has some adjustments with their Safety management system such as:
1. Top manager should has commitment to supporting OH&S
2. Top manager commit to support OH&S. Establishing a Safety Management Organization with defined responsibilities of management staff as overall co-ordination and implementation of the Policy and the Safety Management System in the project
Besides financial supporting adequacy, top management staff have to realize their roles to play in safety. They should appreciate the communication between them and the frontline workers, which could impress the workers and thus improve the workers’ risk-taking mindset.
- Ensure that human resource is adequate for implementing and maintaining Safety Management System
TT company should recruit safety managers and safety supervisors for other projects in the future. The supervisor should provide the means to ensure that all workers are adequately instructed and trained , ensure that workers doing dangerous work have adequate training, experience and other qualities to carry out the work safely.
- Establish the incentive programme in order to motivate workers doing their jobs safely
• Behaviors required to achieve a safety reward should be specified and perceived as achievable by participants
• Everyone who meets behavioral criteria should be rewarded
• It is better for many participants to receive small rewards than for one person to receive a large reward
• Rewards should be displayable and represent safety achievement (I.e., coffee mugs, t-shirts, hats or jackets with a safety message)
• Contests should not reward one group at the expense of others
• Groups should not be penalized (lose rewards) for failure by individuals
• Progress towards achieving a safety reward should be systematically monitored and publicly posted
TT Company should also conducts Job Hazard Analysis which includes hazard identification and risk assessment to anticipate the hazard on site, the harshness of the consequences and the probability to happen. Moreover, TT company should also implement PPE program, accident investigation to reduce the probability of re-happening, emergency preparedness, safety promotion to induce the workers to work safely, evaluation of the subcontractor, health and welfare, security control, equipment inspection and waste material movement plan.
There are some key provisions of steel fabrication and erection when setting procedures for ironworks like: Cold stress; Heat stress; Lead exposure; Site Layout and Construction Sequence; Site-Specific Erection Plan; Hoisting and Rigging; Structural Steel Assembly; Column Anchorage; Beams and Columns; Open-Web Steel Joists; Systems-Engineered Metal Buildings; Falling Object Protection; and Training
Besides establishing appropriate safety procedures related with steel fabrication and erection Safety Policies of TT company should include:
1. The commitment of the top management to support OH&S. Ensure adequate supporting for implementing, maintaining and improving the SMS. To give Safety to be the highest priority and to inject safety consideration into every aspect of the Project
2. To recognize employees are the most important assets and to enrich their safety awareness by ways of Interactive Safety Training, Safety Promotion, Safety Meeting and Counseling.
3. To regular review, not least than once per year, the Policy, the Safety Management System for its efficiency and effectiveness by way of Management Inspection and Review and Safety Audit conducted by Senior Management Staff,
4. To maintain a high standard of safety performance and to the satisfaction of the Client at all time and also a progressively improvement in the standard achieved by continue monitoring and regular review.
His Thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
Safety in the fabrication and erection steel structure has always been a major issue. Wherever reliable records are available, steel construction is found to be one of the most dangerous on safety and health criteria, particularly in developing countries. Though much improvement in steel construction safety has been achieved, the erection steel structure still continues to lag behind most other activities with regard to safety. In developing countries, safety in fabrication and erection rules usually do not exist; if any exist, the regulatory authority is usually very weak in implementing such rules effectively. Further, work hazards at the construction workplace are either not perceived at all, or perceived to be less dangerous than what they actually are.
Most steel companies can give many good reasons why they want to implement management safety system. A well-designed safety management system can help to reduce injuries and illnesses and prevent risks and hazards. In addition, a good management system can increase efficiency, improve productivity and quality of services.
Through the assessment of some typical accident cases in steel construction of one project in LONG AN- The Green Star Factory, I want to assess the project safety plan and the safety management system of TT Company. Furthermore, I want to improve the existing safety management system of the company in order to prevent the accident happening in the future.
SET Industry Day in HCM, 29 May 2010
ENGINEER FOR FUTURE - TECHNOLOGY AND APPLICATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
SOFITEL HOTEL, HCM
29 MAY 2010
SET/CEIM opens first batch of MPM in Cantho City
The Professional Master in Project Management Specialized in Construction was launched in Can Tho City on May 7, 2010. The opening ceremony was attended by Dr. Amrit Bart, AIT-CV Director; Ms. Nguyen Thi Bich Hoa, AIT-CV Deputy Director; Dr. Nitin Vasant Afzulfurkar, Associate Professor and Dean of School of Engineering and Technology; Dr. B. H. W. Hadikusumo, Associate Professor and Coordinator for Construction Engineering and Infrastructure Management and Master in Project Management (Professional); Ms. Nguyen Le Tuong, Local Program Coordinator for AIT-CV; Ms. Kieu Phu Ly, SET Secretary-Hanoi; and Ms. Bui Thuy Nga, SET Secretary-Ho Chi Minh City.
Twenty students enrolled in the MPM program for May (2010) Semester intake. Below is the complete list.
Full name Organization
1 Mr. Nguyễn Hoàng Đạo, Can Tho Department of Transportation
2 Mr. Hồ Chí Linh, College of Engineering Technology - CanTho University, Campus II
3 Mr. Tạ Chí Nhân, Can Tho Department of Construction
4 Mr. Lê Minh Nhựt, Hoa Binh Company
5 Mr. Lê Thành Phiêu, College of Engineering Technology - CanTho University, Campus II
6 Mr. Đặng Thái Sơn, TKN Kajima-Nippon steel
7 Mr. Huỳnh Thanh Sử, Can Tho Housing Development and Trading Company
8 Mr. Nguyễn Tiến Thực, Board of management of development and investment project - Thoi Lai district, Can Tho city
9 Mr. Nguyễn Thanh Trong, Soc Trang Department of Construction
10 Mr. Phạm Thành Trung, Constexim Holdings Projects
11 Mr. Phùng Quang Hiệp, PVSWG ( Petro Vietnam South West Gas )
12 Mr. Phạm Văn Hùng, PVSWG ( Petro Vietnam South West Gas )
13 Mr. Phạm Bình Lâm, PVSWG ( Petro Vietnam South West Gas )
14 Mr. Lê Quang Sơn, PVSWG ( Petro Vietnam South West Gas )
15 Mr. Lê Anh Thông Long Phu, Song Hau Petroleum Power Project Management Board
16 Mr. Nguyễn Viết Hiến, PVC (Petro Vietnam construction joint stock Corporation)
17 Mr. Hoàng Duy Phước, PVC (Petro Vietnam construction joint stock Corporation)
18 Mr. Lưu Hồng Linh, PVF Can Tho
19 Mr. Nguyễn Thanh Hải, PVF Can Tho
20 Ms. Lê Trương Mai Hoàng, PVF Can Tho
Photos during the opening ceremony.
Twenty students enrolled in the MPM program for May (2010) Semester intake. Below is the complete list.
Full name Organization
1 Mr. Nguyễn Hoàng Đạo, Can Tho Department of Transportation
2 Mr. Hồ Chí Linh, College of Engineering Technology - CanTho University, Campus II
3 Mr. Tạ Chí Nhân, Can Tho Department of Construction
4 Mr. Lê Minh Nhựt, Hoa Binh Company
5 Mr. Lê Thành Phiêu, College of Engineering Technology - CanTho University, Campus II
6 Mr. Đặng Thái Sơn, TKN Kajima-Nippon steel
7 Mr. Huỳnh Thanh Sử, Can Tho Housing Development and Trading Company
8 Mr. Nguyễn Tiến Thực, Board of management of development and investment project - Thoi Lai district, Can Tho city
9 Mr. Nguyễn Thanh Trong, Soc Trang Department of Construction
10 Mr. Phạm Thành Trung, Constexim Holdings Projects
11 Mr. Phùng Quang Hiệp, PVSWG ( Petro Vietnam South West Gas )
12 Mr. Phạm Văn Hùng, PVSWG ( Petro Vietnam South West Gas )
13 Mr. Phạm Bình Lâm, PVSWG ( Petro Vietnam South West Gas )
14 Mr. Lê Quang Sơn, PVSWG ( Petro Vietnam South West Gas )
15 Mr. Lê Anh Thông Long Phu, Song Hau Petroleum Power Project Management Board
16 Mr. Nguyễn Viết Hiến, PVC (Petro Vietnam construction joint stock Corporation)
17 Mr. Hoàng Duy Phước, PVC (Petro Vietnam construction joint stock Corporation)
18 Mr. Lưu Hồng Linh, PVF Can Tho
19 Mr. Nguyễn Thanh Hải, PVF Can Tho
20 Ms. Lê Trương Mai Hoàng, PVF Can Tho
Photos during the opening ceremony.
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Construction Work Performance Under Bovis Lend Lease Safety Program
Throughout the construction projects starting from the design phase till the end of construction execution phase, numerous project management actions are deployed i.e. planning, quality assurance, communication system, and so forth (Chan et. al, 2004). Safety issues action is also included in order to execute the project safely. This is because if the accident occurs during execution, particularly major accidents, it leads to many disadvantages for company such as cost incurred from medical treatment, interrupting construction schedule, and impairing the reputation of firms.
Consequently, each company has established its own safety program for preventing the occurrence of accidents, as many companies have recognized the potential impacts of accidents. But do they ever review “What are the impacts of such safety program”, or in other words whether the program positively or negatively affected their execution. NOHSC (National Occupational Health & Safety Commission) has stated that most of companies have traditionally focused only on outcome measures of performance, for example, the accident records.
Systematic reviewing of performance is the key to successful management as stated in Holt (2001) since it reflects the actual conditions of the operation. Thus it will enable the re-development and modification of the strategy.
Therefore, these problems have arisen in Mr. Thanapat Leingtong’s study. His study focused in two aspects for reviewing the actual position. The first aspect is, for example, under their safety program, do they know that:
• Whether the root causes of accidents still exist or were eliminated – according to Holt (2001), the root causes of accidents are primarily referred to unsafe activities and conditions.
• Whether project participants satisfied the program.
• How does such safety program contribute to improving or declining the project work performances?
The second aspect is, whether their situation is superior or inferior to other companies that applied different programs.
According to the first aspect, the research has developed three significant issues in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in order to determine the impact of safety implementation. To this effect, Bovis Lend Lease Company has been selected as a case study and also it has been compared with other Non-BLL companies to study the second aspect of this study.
The study aimed to investigate the actual construction work performances under safety operation of Case Study Company i.e. Bovis Lend Lease Company. The main objectives of the study were enumerated as follows:
1. To study the Environment Health & safety program under Bovis Lend Lease Company
2. To study the impacts of Bovis Lend Lease EH&S program and safety management on construction work performances in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.
Conclusions
Similar with finance, production or sales, the companies also need to measure and study the impact of their health and safety performances in order to find out if they are being successful. They need to know: where they are; and what’s the difference –and why. Therefore, the safety performance measurements are taken into account in order to answer these questions and provide related information as well as facilitate the management in decision making. Measures of safety performance are intended to give an indication of how a company is performing. The above mentioned questions such as where they are, what’s the difference and why, can be answered by conducting the safety performances measurement and making comparisons against a company’s past performances, industry standard, or other companies. Since this study undertakes to capture safety performances of Bovis Lend Lease Company, which is the case study company, the comparisons against other companies approach was selected in order to identify where BLL is and also the difference between BLL and Non-BLL Company.
After having determined the approach to track the company performances, the next problem was what should be measured to make comparisons. The reviews of past researches on the various types of safety performance measures showed that different types of information are provided by different measures. Therefore, the study has employed various effective measures, which are both positive and negative indicators, and reasonably measured the process, output, and outcome of each company for making comparisons against other companies.
Commencing from “input”, the study controlled the samples by selecting same scale and type of comparative companies, therefore, the uncontrolled hazards are not much of difference. In addition, comparative companies must have safety management system and its implementation during execution. Next, the measurement of “process” is conducted to see the differences and adequacy of system. Subsequently, the “output” and “outcome” are measured and compared to identify the differences in effectiveness and satisfaction of safety implementation in all aspects. Furthermore, the study of efficiency and productivity of workers are also included in this research to identify the labor productivity of each project i.e. if they have the same or different proportion of productivity when the site conditions are different.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
Similar with finance, production or sales, the companies also need to measure the impact of their health and safety performances to analyze if they are being successful. Therefore, safety performance measurements are considered to provide information and facilitate management in decision-making relevant to re-evaluation and development of strategy. This study is concerned with the systematic reviewing of safety performance in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Study has been carried out with an aim to examine safety performances of BLL and Non-BLL Company. In order to compare BLL against Non-BLL Company, the study has employed various effective measures, both positive and negative indicators. The study has also reasonably measured the process, output, and outcome of the companies for making comparisons and in order to identify the current status of BLL and their differences with the Non-BLL in terms of safety management. The study indicated that BLL has better safety management than Non-BLL. Moreover, BLL’s performances are statistically better in terms of site conditions and employee satisfaction. But unsafe acts performed, worker satisfaction, and proportion of productivity are not statistically different. Strengths of BLL are comprehensive safety management, clear safety roles and responsibilities, systematic hazard control, well-organized safety training, high commitment, regularly conduct self-inspection, and employed full-time safety manager. Weaknesses of BLL are negligence, numerous subcontractors, and team conflicts.
Consequently, each company has established its own safety program for preventing the occurrence of accidents, as many companies have recognized the potential impacts of accidents. But do they ever review “What are the impacts of such safety program”, or in other words whether the program positively or negatively affected their execution. NOHSC (National Occupational Health & Safety Commission) has stated that most of companies have traditionally focused only on outcome measures of performance, for example, the accident records.
Systematic reviewing of performance is the key to successful management as stated in Holt (2001) since it reflects the actual conditions of the operation. Thus it will enable the re-development and modification of the strategy.
Therefore, these problems have arisen in Mr. Thanapat Leingtong’s study. His study focused in two aspects for reviewing the actual position. The first aspect is, for example, under their safety program, do they know that:
• Whether the root causes of accidents still exist or were eliminated – according to Holt (2001), the root causes of accidents are primarily referred to unsafe activities and conditions.
• Whether project participants satisfied the program.
• How does such safety program contribute to improving or declining the project work performances?
The second aspect is, whether their situation is superior or inferior to other companies that applied different programs.
According to the first aspect, the research has developed three significant issues in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in order to determine the impact of safety implementation. To this effect, Bovis Lend Lease Company has been selected as a case study and also it has been compared with other Non-BLL companies to study the second aspect of this study.
The study aimed to investigate the actual construction work performances under safety operation of Case Study Company i.e. Bovis Lend Lease Company. The main objectives of the study were enumerated as follows:
1. To study the Environment Health & safety program under Bovis Lend Lease Company
2. To study the impacts of Bovis Lend Lease EH&S program and safety management on construction work performances in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.
Conclusions
Similar with finance, production or sales, the companies also need to measure and study the impact of their health and safety performances in order to find out if they are being successful. They need to know: where they are; and what’s the difference –and why. Therefore, the safety performance measurements are taken into account in order to answer these questions and provide related information as well as facilitate the management in decision making. Measures of safety performance are intended to give an indication of how a company is performing. The above mentioned questions such as where they are, what’s the difference and why, can be answered by conducting the safety performances measurement and making comparisons against a company’s past performances, industry standard, or other companies. Since this study undertakes to capture safety performances of Bovis Lend Lease Company, which is the case study company, the comparisons against other companies approach was selected in order to identify where BLL is and also the difference between BLL and Non-BLL Company.
After having determined the approach to track the company performances, the next problem was what should be measured to make comparisons. The reviews of past researches on the various types of safety performance measures showed that different types of information are provided by different measures. Therefore, the study has employed various effective measures, which are both positive and negative indicators, and reasonably measured the process, output, and outcome of each company for making comparisons against other companies.
Commencing from “input”, the study controlled the samples by selecting same scale and type of comparative companies, therefore, the uncontrolled hazards are not much of difference. In addition, comparative companies must have safety management system and its implementation during execution. Next, the measurement of “process” is conducted to see the differences and adequacy of system. Subsequently, the “output” and “outcome” are measured and compared to identify the differences in effectiveness and satisfaction of safety implementation in all aspects. Furthermore, the study of efficiency and productivity of workers are also included in this research to identify the labor productivity of each project i.e. if they have the same or different proportion of productivity when the site conditions are different.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
Similar with finance, production or sales, the companies also need to measure the impact of their health and safety performances to analyze if they are being successful. Therefore, safety performance measurements are considered to provide information and facilitate management in decision-making relevant to re-evaluation and development of strategy. This study is concerned with the systematic reviewing of safety performance in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Study has been carried out with an aim to examine safety performances of BLL and Non-BLL Company. In order to compare BLL against Non-BLL Company, the study has employed various effective measures, both positive and negative indicators. The study has also reasonably measured the process, output, and outcome of the companies for making comparisons and in order to identify the current status of BLL and their differences with the Non-BLL in terms of safety management. The study indicated that BLL has better safety management than Non-BLL. Moreover, BLL’s performances are statistically better in terms of site conditions and employee satisfaction. But unsafe acts performed, worker satisfaction, and proportion of productivity are not statistically different. Strengths of BLL are comprehensive safety management, clear safety roles and responsibilities, systematic hazard control, well-organized safety training, high commitment, regularly conduct self-inspection, and employed full-time safety manager. Weaknesses of BLL are negligence, numerous subcontractors, and team conflicts.
Risk Management In The Pakistan Construction Industry: A Contractors’ Perspective
The Construction Industry in Pakistan has gone through a rough patch with its compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the three years up to FY2002 being well below the two percent as compared to a CAGR of nearly four percent for the overall GDP of the country during this period. This shows that instead of being a source of economic stimulus, the construction industry has actually lagged behind the rest of the economy in terms of growth. This negative perception regarding the macroeconomic and political instability and the law and order situation has deterred serious investors (JCR, 2003).
The problems facing the construction industry of Pakistan has persisted despite efforts made. It is important that the construction industry of Pakistan is more fully understood in order for more appropriate solutions, relevant to its contexts, to be found. This industry requires separate, special treatment.
Now there is a need to search the difficulties and problems being faced by the Pakistan construction industry, along with recommended solutions. Researchers, Developers, Builders and Contractors working together can identify the solutions to the problems and can boost the Pakistan Construction Industry.
Construction is a high-risk business which haunts every participant in the business, the project owner, construction companies, consultants, bankers, financial institutions, vendors & suppliers and even the service providers, each has his own fears of facing risks in the conduct of business. Risk management is important part of the decision making process in the construction. Risk is also the object of attention because of time overrun associated with the construction projects. Although the risk analysis and management is important to the activities of the construction industry, little is known about the industry response and the techniques employed for the risk management in the Pakistan construction industry. There is a need to investigate the construction industry's perception of risk associated with its activities and the extent to which the industry uses risk analysis and management techniques.
Mr. Asif Hameed Malik made a study which main objective to investigate the risk management practices of the construction contractors in public sector projects of Pakistan and to recommend the appropriate risk management techniques, which better fit the Pakistan context and environment.
To achieve his objective, the sub-objectives can be identified as follows:
a) To evaluate the current attitude of the contractors regarding the importance of risk and risk allocation.
b) To uncover the underlying relationships between the identified risks using the factor analysis.
c) To investigate the difficulties and the benefits relevant to the risk management and the current usage of risk management techniques in the construction organizations.
d) To propose recommendations to the contractors to cope with the major risks in the industry and manage risk effectively in long terms.
Conclusions
The following are the conclusions based on the work carried out and the results of the analyses.
1.Risk Importance and allocation
a. The ten-top major risks identified are: (1) Delays in resolving contractual issues; (2) Delayed payment on contracts; (3) Political uncertainty; (4) Financial failure; (5) Scope of work definition; (6) War threats; (7) Suppliers/subcontractors poor performance; (8) Change in work; (9) Defective design; (10) Labor and equipment productivity.
b. Out of thirty-one listed construction risks, thirteen construction risks are allocated to the contractor; seven to the owner and eleven are shared between the contractor and owner. Although, it is generally recognized that the risk should be transferred to the party that is in the best position to deal with it, the survey indicates that Pakistani contractors are often responsible for most of the risk. Contractors consider themselves responsible to take care of the risks associated with physical and environmental problems. The risks of this type include differing site conditions and adverse weather conditions.
c. Experienced engineers have rated the importance of risk events lower than less experienced engineers. The main reasons are experience level and management level of the experienced engineers. The experience gained in construction life may have enabled the engineers to develop additional ability and competency in managing, anticipating and solving possible problems. This result is contradictory to the findings of the Dung (2004) and Thuyet (2003), in which they concluded that experience level has a no big influence on engineers’ attitude. However this result is supportive to some extent to the findings of Santoso (1999).
d. The result shows that the respondents working in large companies have rated the risks less, which are of technical and managerial nature. This may be due to the reason that the large contractors have formal management practices in their organizations and also they have enough resources to mitigate the encountered risks more efficiently than the small contractors.
2. Grouping of identified risks
Factor analysis is applied to find any interrelationship existing among the risks in terms of their importance.The components extracted are labeled as managerial and technical risks; project scope and design risks; political, economic and regulatory risks; contractual delay risks and; site and weather risks.
3. Risk management practices
The results of risk management practices are similar to the findings of the other surveys conducted in developing countries by Dung (2004) and Thuyet (2003).
a. Importance of systematic risk management is well recognized in the Pakistan construction industry while the practice is far behind its importance.
b. The importance of training cannot be ignored in any organization. Conversely, the construction organizations in Pakistan provide poor job training in risk management to their staff.
c. There is a lack of formal risk identification teams in the organizations. Also the roles and responsibilities are not stated. Even sometimes only one person is responsible for the risk management process.
d. The main difficulties in the risk management process are lack of qualified experts, lack of budget and top management commitment.
e. Qualitative risk analysis techniques are more popular due to their simplicity and effectiveness. In qualitative analysis, the most used tools are checklist, brainstorming and interviewing. Quantitative risk analysis techniques have been rarely used due to limited understanding and experience.
f. The effectiveness of the risk responses in the descending order are: risk transfer, risk reduction, risk retention and risk avoidance.
g. Preventive actions are used to avoid and reduce risks at the early stage of project construction. Produce a proper schedule by getting updated project information and produce a proper program using subjective judgment are the two most effective risk preventive actions.
h. Mitigative actions are remedial steps aimed at minimizing the effects of risks. The most effective risk mitigative methods are to coordinate closely with subcontractor and to increase manpower and/or equipment.
i. Contract management is quite well performed, helping much risk allocation through contracts. Insurance serve as a second risk transfer for the parties involved. However, in reality they face lots of difficulties on the way of finding the insurance. High premium in insurance buying, long claim coverage procedure and lack of qualified experts are the most perceptible problems in purchasing insurance.
Recommendations
Based on the research results, the recommendations are made to the construction contractors to cope with the major risks in the industry and to improve their risk management practices.
1. Strategies to Mitigate the Major Risks
For projects to be successful, it is extremely important that the major risks affecting the projects should be thoroughly examined. The causes and characteristics must be carefully analyzed in order to propose the most appropriate and practical strategies to mitigate them. For the top-ten major risks, the proposed strategies to mitigate them are shown in the table below.
2. Strategies to Improve the Risk Management Practices
a. Integrate risk management in organizational culture in which everybody is a risk manager. This is more important than developing and issuing extensive policies and procedures. Management of risk is embedded in the management philosophy.
b. Implementing risk management requires resources. Investments will be required in: training, developing processes and techniques, management systems, specialist groups. Senior management must be committed to support the initiative with the required resources.
c. Open communication is necessary for risk management to succeed. Without open communication risk management cannot be "everybody's business". Managers require direct communication channels up, down and across their business units to help identify risks and take appropriate actions. Information must be shared.
d. Informal and formal teams are a mechanism that organizations should use to manage risks. Teaming brings together various risk attitudes and brings fresh thinking to issues and solutions. It also focuses diverse disciplines on common objectives.
e. A common business risk language enables managers to talk with individuals in terms of everybody understanding. This is important also in cases where everybody is expected to manage risks.
f. Set up a responsibility center for risk management. A Chief Risk Officer (CRO) who defines consistent approaches to managing risk should head it. The CRO is the organizational risk champion and is responsible for providing leadership and establishing and maintaining risk awareness across the organization.
g. Communicate the risk performance to top management and stakeholders/ shareholders. The reports should outline the major risks and how they are managed.
h. There is a need for risk management training, as part of a corporate training curriculum. Topic areas include: objectives for managing risk: risk-awareness, risk assessments, safety and legislative requirements.
i. The authorities should implement the performance assessment scoring system (PASS) as a mechanism for evaluating the effectiveness of a contractor's ability and to change the attitude of the contractors to simply win the projects rather than to deliver the projects to specified standards.
j. The internal audit function plays a key role in implementing risk management throughout an organization. Examples of this practice are: monitoring and reporting on the management of significant risks and reviewing processes for managing risks.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
ABSTRACT
The research study, on the basis of a questionnaire survey, describes the perception of construction contractors in Pakistan about the risk associated with its activities and the extent to which the industry uses risk analysis and management techniques.
The study has investigated the perception of the contractors regarding risk importance and risk allocation. The purpose was to provide insight into the current attitude of Pakistani contractors towards construction risk allocation and also to examine the importance of different risk categories.
Risk management practices in the construction industry of Pakistan have also been presented and discussed. First the organizational culture and support to the risk management is described and it is found that the importance of systematic risk management is well recognized in the Pakistan construction industry while the practice is far behind its importance. Then the extent/scope, responsibilities and problems in the risk identification; risk analysis; risk response; risk monitoring and control processes are discussed. The research results indicated that the application of the formal risk management techniques in the Pakistan construction industry is limited. It is also investigated that there is a lack of formal risk management teams in organizations and roles and responsibilities are not stated. The main difficulties during the risks management processes in the descending order are: the lack of qualified experts; lack of budget; complexity of tools and techniques; lack of top management commitment and support; and lack of historical data. This research also presents two types of risk management methods: preventive, which are effective at the early stages of the project life, and mitigative, which are remedial actions aimed at risk minimization during construction. At the end, risk allocation between the parties involved, through contract and insurance, is discussed.
The problems facing the construction industry of Pakistan has persisted despite efforts made. It is important that the construction industry of Pakistan is more fully understood in order for more appropriate solutions, relevant to its contexts, to be found. This industry requires separate, special treatment.
Now there is a need to search the difficulties and problems being faced by the Pakistan construction industry, along with recommended solutions. Researchers, Developers, Builders and Contractors working together can identify the solutions to the problems and can boost the Pakistan Construction Industry.
Construction is a high-risk business which haunts every participant in the business, the project owner, construction companies, consultants, bankers, financial institutions, vendors & suppliers and even the service providers, each has his own fears of facing risks in the conduct of business. Risk management is important part of the decision making process in the construction. Risk is also the object of attention because of time overrun associated with the construction projects. Although the risk analysis and management is important to the activities of the construction industry, little is known about the industry response and the techniques employed for the risk management in the Pakistan construction industry. There is a need to investigate the construction industry's perception of risk associated with its activities and the extent to which the industry uses risk analysis and management techniques.
Mr. Asif Hameed Malik made a study which main objective to investigate the risk management practices of the construction contractors in public sector projects of Pakistan and to recommend the appropriate risk management techniques, which better fit the Pakistan context and environment.
To achieve his objective, the sub-objectives can be identified as follows:
a) To evaluate the current attitude of the contractors regarding the importance of risk and risk allocation.
b) To uncover the underlying relationships between the identified risks using the factor analysis.
c) To investigate the difficulties and the benefits relevant to the risk management and the current usage of risk management techniques in the construction organizations.
d) To propose recommendations to the contractors to cope with the major risks in the industry and manage risk effectively in long terms.
Conclusions
The following are the conclusions based on the work carried out and the results of the analyses.
1.Risk Importance and allocation
a. The ten-top major risks identified are: (1) Delays in resolving contractual issues; (2) Delayed payment on contracts; (3) Political uncertainty; (4) Financial failure; (5) Scope of work definition; (6) War threats; (7) Suppliers/subcontractors poor performance; (8) Change in work; (9) Defective design; (10) Labor and equipment productivity.
b. Out of thirty-one listed construction risks, thirteen construction risks are allocated to the contractor; seven to the owner and eleven are shared between the contractor and owner. Although, it is generally recognized that the risk should be transferred to the party that is in the best position to deal with it, the survey indicates that Pakistani contractors are often responsible for most of the risk. Contractors consider themselves responsible to take care of the risks associated with physical and environmental problems. The risks of this type include differing site conditions and adverse weather conditions.
c. Experienced engineers have rated the importance of risk events lower than less experienced engineers. The main reasons are experience level and management level of the experienced engineers. The experience gained in construction life may have enabled the engineers to develop additional ability and competency in managing, anticipating and solving possible problems. This result is contradictory to the findings of the Dung (2004) and Thuyet (2003), in which they concluded that experience level has a no big influence on engineers’ attitude. However this result is supportive to some extent to the findings of Santoso (1999).
d. The result shows that the respondents working in large companies have rated the risks less, which are of technical and managerial nature. This may be due to the reason that the large contractors have formal management practices in their organizations and also they have enough resources to mitigate the encountered risks more efficiently than the small contractors.
2. Grouping of identified risks
Factor analysis is applied to find any interrelationship existing among the risks in terms of their importance.The components extracted are labeled as managerial and technical risks; project scope and design risks; political, economic and regulatory risks; contractual delay risks and; site and weather risks.
3. Risk management practices
The results of risk management practices are similar to the findings of the other surveys conducted in developing countries by Dung (2004) and Thuyet (2003).
a. Importance of systematic risk management is well recognized in the Pakistan construction industry while the practice is far behind its importance.
b. The importance of training cannot be ignored in any organization. Conversely, the construction organizations in Pakistan provide poor job training in risk management to their staff.
c. There is a lack of formal risk identification teams in the organizations. Also the roles and responsibilities are not stated. Even sometimes only one person is responsible for the risk management process.
d. The main difficulties in the risk management process are lack of qualified experts, lack of budget and top management commitment.
e. Qualitative risk analysis techniques are more popular due to their simplicity and effectiveness. In qualitative analysis, the most used tools are checklist, brainstorming and interviewing. Quantitative risk analysis techniques have been rarely used due to limited understanding and experience.
f. The effectiveness of the risk responses in the descending order are: risk transfer, risk reduction, risk retention and risk avoidance.
g. Preventive actions are used to avoid and reduce risks at the early stage of project construction. Produce a proper schedule by getting updated project information and produce a proper program using subjective judgment are the two most effective risk preventive actions.
h. Mitigative actions are remedial steps aimed at minimizing the effects of risks. The most effective risk mitigative methods are to coordinate closely with subcontractor and to increase manpower and/or equipment.
i. Contract management is quite well performed, helping much risk allocation through contracts. Insurance serve as a second risk transfer for the parties involved. However, in reality they face lots of difficulties on the way of finding the insurance. High premium in insurance buying, long claim coverage procedure and lack of qualified experts are the most perceptible problems in purchasing insurance.
Recommendations
Based on the research results, the recommendations are made to the construction contractors to cope with the major risks in the industry and to improve their risk management practices.
1. Strategies to Mitigate the Major Risks
For projects to be successful, it is extremely important that the major risks affecting the projects should be thoroughly examined. The causes and characteristics must be carefully analyzed in order to propose the most appropriate and practical strategies to mitigate them. For the top-ten major risks, the proposed strategies to mitigate them are shown in the table below.
2. Strategies to Improve the Risk Management Practices
a. Integrate risk management in organizational culture in which everybody is a risk manager. This is more important than developing and issuing extensive policies and procedures. Management of risk is embedded in the management philosophy.
b. Implementing risk management requires resources. Investments will be required in: training, developing processes and techniques, management systems, specialist groups. Senior management must be committed to support the initiative with the required resources.
c. Open communication is necessary for risk management to succeed. Without open communication risk management cannot be "everybody's business". Managers require direct communication channels up, down and across their business units to help identify risks and take appropriate actions. Information must be shared.
d. Informal and formal teams are a mechanism that organizations should use to manage risks. Teaming brings together various risk attitudes and brings fresh thinking to issues and solutions. It also focuses diverse disciplines on common objectives.
e. A common business risk language enables managers to talk with individuals in terms of everybody understanding. This is important also in cases where everybody is expected to manage risks.
f. Set up a responsibility center for risk management. A Chief Risk Officer (CRO) who defines consistent approaches to managing risk should head it. The CRO is the organizational risk champion and is responsible for providing leadership and establishing and maintaining risk awareness across the organization.
g. Communicate the risk performance to top management and stakeholders/ shareholders. The reports should outline the major risks and how they are managed.
h. There is a need for risk management training, as part of a corporate training curriculum. Topic areas include: objectives for managing risk: risk-awareness, risk assessments, safety and legislative requirements.
i. The authorities should implement the performance assessment scoring system (PASS) as a mechanism for evaluating the effectiveness of a contractor's ability and to change the attitude of the contractors to simply win the projects rather than to deliver the projects to specified standards.
j. The internal audit function plays a key role in implementing risk management throughout an organization. Examples of this practice are: monitoring and reporting on the management of significant risks and reviewing processes for managing risks.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
ABSTRACT
The research study, on the basis of a questionnaire survey, describes the perception of construction contractors in Pakistan about the risk associated with its activities and the extent to which the industry uses risk analysis and management techniques.
The study has investigated the perception of the contractors regarding risk importance and risk allocation. The purpose was to provide insight into the current attitude of Pakistani contractors towards construction risk allocation and also to examine the importance of different risk categories.
Risk management practices in the construction industry of Pakistan have also been presented and discussed. First the organizational culture and support to the risk management is described and it is found that the importance of systematic risk management is well recognized in the Pakistan construction industry while the practice is far behind its importance. Then the extent/scope, responsibilities and problems in the risk identification; risk analysis; risk response; risk monitoring and control processes are discussed. The research results indicated that the application of the formal risk management techniques in the Pakistan construction industry is limited. It is also investigated that there is a lack of formal risk management teams in organizations and roles and responsibilities are not stated. The main difficulties during the risks management processes in the descending order are: the lack of qualified experts; lack of budget; complexity of tools and techniques; lack of top management commitment and support; and lack of historical data. This research also presents two types of risk management methods: preventive, which are effective at the early stages of the project life, and mitigative, which are remedial actions aimed at risk minimization during construction. At the end, risk allocation between the parties involved, through contract and insurance, is discussed.
The Integrated Performance Indicator For Airport Pavement Evaluation
Modern lifestyle, high competitive business and globalization considered the speed of transmission to convey cargo and passengers. Aviation becomes one of alternatives to sustain that purpose. Many Airports have been constructed with its modules such as a ground access facility connecting the airport to the nearest city, parking structures, an air-traffic control tower, a terminal building, jet ways, apron(s), taxiway(s), and runway(s).
In Airfield facilities, the major problem occurred after the construction finished, is the deterioration of pavement that caused from:
1)Traffic load exceeding the forecast during pavement design stage
2)Fatigue effect from repetitive loads
3)Surface weathering
4)Faulty construction technique
The above four problems will shorten the airfield service life; nevertheless, Airport Pavement Management System (APMS) has been implemented to solve these issues so that safe operation will be taken place to the pavement in time. Airport infrastructures require the comprehensive maintenance program like other infrastructure for preserving its runways, taxiways, apron, and pavement area in order to keep the airfield performance above acceptable level.
Airport pavement condition assessment usually focuses on the runway by measuring some of its features such as load-carrying capacity. Human factor (Pilot and User) always overlook during condition assessments, although they are not the part of the airport pavement but their feeling from airport utilization can notify the condition such as pavement roughness, pavement friction, riding quality or services quality. Human factor that always change sensitively can fulfill the equipment capability. The concept that considered only solitary indicator becomes obsolete.
The equipments and software for APMS especially NDT for condition assessment are quite high cost, also the indicator gained from those equipments are still one aspect consideration. The difficulty burden on administrator who wants to complete all condition assessment but the budget allocation might not be affordable. The attractive choice is using available equipment and free software with integrating indicators concept that will spend less money and achieves identical purpose.
User’s requirements regarding to airport management always increase until they can make sure that the airport pavement condition is safe enough and ready to support aviation. Any airport agencies that can make more user confidence will get more advantages in high competitive aviation business.
New concept developed from infrastructure’s performance indicators (Hudson et al., 1997) will be conducted to solve these problems to reach the objectives below.
Mr. Yongyot Rotchaya made a study which main objective is to develop an integrated performance indicator for airport pavement; it is derived from different aspects of airport performance, which are Maintenance Unit Perception, Safety Perception, Physical Condition, and Structural Integrity.
The secondary objectives of his study were specified as follows:
1)To identify each different aspects of performance measurement for airport pavement.
2)To apply AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) to infrastructure management system as a weighting factor during the airport pavement evaluation.
3)Find the most influential factor to the Integrated Performance Indicator (IPI).
Conclusions
Different aspects of the airport pavement condition used to have its own condition indicator and some aspects has never considered before, such as safety issues. In this study, many aspects are combined into one indicator. People who are working close to the pavement are specified to be rater for particular indicators. These groups are supposed to give exact score to represent actual pavement condition through questionnaires, which had been prepared and adjusted in order to be suitable with each group. After the questionnaires had been distributed to two airports, the respondents gave a good cooperation in answering the questionnaires. As mentioned to the excellent competency of respondents, the achieved indicator can give high confidence to represent airport pavement condition. As well as the well-known indicator like PCI; high-technology tool like UPV are used to obtain the pavement condition.
Previously, the Analytical Hierarchy Process has been used as an important tool in supporting decision-making in complex issue that can be structured it as hierarchy such as marketing strategic planning, and finance. AHP applications in the non-profit organization are very few. The reason may be the problem in non-profit organization is not complex. Now, the situation is changed, non-profit organization like Royal Thai Air Force needs the effective tool to make decision under limited budget and other factors such as time constraint or effective utilization for all assets. One set of questionnaire had been distributed to engineers in Directorate of Civil Engineering, who has high experience in airport pavement design and management. Those engineers are also willing to give a precise answer and waiting attentively for new concept which will be useful for airport pavement management system.
Other conclusions:
a)The Integrated Performance Indicator, which is derived from integration of Maintenance Unit Perception, Safety Perception, Physical Condition, and Structural Integrity, can represent the actual condition of airport pavement.
b)The different aspects of infrastructure which are condition-related components are adapted from Hudson et al (1997) concept. In practical, the concept has been adjusted to be suitable with Air Force infrastructure and be appropriate with available tool or personnel, so the Service and User Perception is substituted by Maintenance Unit Perception. This study can find the indicators to represent each condition aspect.
c)Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been applied to give appropriate weight factors for isolate indicator in this study. This study is one of the attempts that try to apply AHP to current infrastructure management system, which is more complex and change sensitively now.
In the past, the Analytical Hierarchy Process has been used as an important tool in supporting decision-making in complex issue that can be structured it as hierarchy such as marketing strategic planning, and finance. The problem in non-profit organization is not complex so the AHP is not used widespread. Now, the situation is changed, non-profit organization like Royal Thai Air Force needs the effective tool to make decision under limited budget and other factors such as time constraint or effective utilization for all assets. The AHP illustrated its powerful capability for decision-making in non-profit organization like Royal Thai Air Force.
d)From the AHP, the most influential factor to the Integrated Performance Indicator (IPI) should be the one that has the highest weight factor. Physical condition is supposed to be the most influential factor but short study period can not give significant change in PCI value. Conversely, Maintenance Unit Perception, which has the second rank weight factor changes significantly and affects the overall indicator (IPI) obviously.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
In the past, most agencies considered only one aspect of infrastructure condition to be a tool in decision-making then performed maintenance activities. This practice has some shortcomings, which lead to wrong interpretation and misunderstood about actual condition. It is the fact that one indicator can not represent overall performance of infrastructure. In order to overcome those shortcomings, the Integrated Performance Indicator has been developed by adaptation from Hudson et al (1997) concept; it clarifies four approaches to find infrastructure performance. Nevertheless, the original concept was adapted to fit with available tool and personnel, and then the approaches are changed to be Maintenance Unit Perception, Safety Perception, Physical Condition, and Structural Integrity. Each aspect of infrastructure performance is represented by isolate indicator, and then multipliers are calculated by Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to find the appropriate weight factors before the combination into the Integrated Performance Indicator. This study is one of the attempts to apply AHP technique with non-profit organization and government infrastructure, which are encountering the difficult decision-making in fast-pace and more complex environment. Two airports pavement, which are Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) runway under the responsibility of Royal Thai Air Force are selected to be sample areas.
In Airfield facilities, the major problem occurred after the construction finished, is the deterioration of pavement that caused from:
1)Traffic load exceeding the forecast during pavement design stage
2)Fatigue effect from repetitive loads
3)Surface weathering
4)Faulty construction technique
The above four problems will shorten the airfield service life; nevertheless, Airport Pavement Management System (APMS) has been implemented to solve these issues so that safe operation will be taken place to the pavement in time. Airport infrastructures require the comprehensive maintenance program like other infrastructure for preserving its runways, taxiways, apron, and pavement area in order to keep the airfield performance above acceptable level.
Airport pavement condition assessment usually focuses on the runway by measuring some of its features such as load-carrying capacity. Human factor (Pilot and User) always overlook during condition assessments, although they are not the part of the airport pavement but their feeling from airport utilization can notify the condition such as pavement roughness, pavement friction, riding quality or services quality. Human factor that always change sensitively can fulfill the equipment capability. The concept that considered only solitary indicator becomes obsolete.
The equipments and software for APMS especially NDT for condition assessment are quite high cost, also the indicator gained from those equipments are still one aspect consideration. The difficulty burden on administrator who wants to complete all condition assessment but the budget allocation might not be affordable. The attractive choice is using available equipment and free software with integrating indicators concept that will spend less money and achieves identical purpose.
User’s requirements regarding to airport management always increase until they can make sure that the airport pavement condition is safe enough and ready to support aviation. Any airport agencies that can make more user confidence will get more advantages in high competitive aviation business.
New concept developed from infrastructure’s performance indicators (Hudson et al., 1997) will be conducted to solve these problems to reach the objectives below.
Mr. Yongyot Rotchaya made a study which main objective is to develop an integrated performance indicator for airport pavement; it is derived from different aspects of airport performance, which are Maintenance Unit Perception, Safety Perception, Physical Condition, and Structural Integrity.
The secondary objectives of his study were specified as follows:
1)To identify each different aspects of performance measurement for airport pavement.
2)To apply AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) to infrastructure management system as a weighting factor during the airport pavement evaluation.
3)Find the most influential factor to the Integrated Performance Indicator (IPI).
Conclusions
Different aspects of the airport pavement condition used to have its own condition indicator and some aspects has never considered before, such as safety issues. In this study, many aspects are combined into one indicator. People who are working close to the pavement are specified to be rater for particular indicators. These groups are supposed to give exact score to represent actual pavement condition through questionnaires, which had been prepared and adjusted in order to be suitable with each group. After the questionnaires had been distributed to two airports, the respondents gave a good cooperation in answering the questionnaires. As mentioned to the excellent competency of respondents, the achieved indicator can give high confidence to represent airport pavement condition. As well as the well-known indicator like PCI; high-technology tool like UPV are used to obtain the pavement condition.
Previously, the Analytical Hierarchy Process has been used as an important tool in supporting decision-making in complex issue that can be structured it as hierarchy such as marketing strategic planning, and finance. AHP applications in the non-profit organization are very few. The reason may be the problem in non-profit organization is not complex. Now, the situation is changed, non-profit organization like Royal Thai Air Force needs the effective tool to make decision under limited budget and other factors such as time constraint or effective utilization for all assets. One set of questionnaire had been distributed to engineers in Directorate of Civil Engineering, who has high experience in airport pavement design and management. Those engineers are also willing to give a precise answer and waiting attentively for new concept which will be useful for airport pavement management system.
Other conclusions:
a)The Integrated Performance Indicator, which is derived from integration of Maintenance Unit Perception, Safety Perception, Physical Condition, and Structural Integrity, can represent the actual condition of airport pavement.
b)The different aspects of infrastructure which are condition-related components are adapted from Hudson et al (1997) concept. In practical, the concept has been adjusted to be suitable with Air Force infrastructure and be appropriate with available tool or personnel, so the Service and User Perception is substituted by Maintenance Unit Perception. This study can find the indicators to represent each condition aspect.
c)Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been applied to give appropriate weight factors for isolate indicator in this study. This study is one of the attempts that try to apply AHP to current infrastructure management system, which is more complex and change sensitively now.
In the past, the Analytical Hierarchy Process has been used as an important tool in supporting decision-making in complex issue that can be structured it as hierarchy such as marketing strategic planning, and finance. The problem in non-profit organization is not complex so the AHP is not used widespread. Now, the situation is changed, non-profit organization like Royal Thai Air Force needs the effective tool to make decision under limited budget and other factors such as time constraint or effective utilization for all assets. The AHP illustrated its powerful capability for decision-making in non-profit organization like Royal Thai Air Force.
d)From the AHP, the most influential factor to the Integrated Performance Indicator (IPI) should be the one that has the highest weight factor. Physical condition is supposed to be the most influential factor but short study period can not give significant change in PCI value. Conversely, Maintenance Unit Perception, which has the second rank weight factor changes significantly and affects the overall indicator (IPI) obviously.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
In the past, most agencies considered only one aspect of infrastructure condition to be a tool in decision-making then performed maintenance activities. This practice has some shortcomings, which lead to wrong interpretation and misunderstood about actual condition. It is the fact that one indicator can not represent overall performance of infrastructure. In order to overcome those shortcomings, the Integrated Performance Indicator has been developed by adaptation from Hudson et al (1997) concept; it clarifies four approaches to find infrastructure performance. Nevertheless, the original concept was adapted to fit with available tool and personnel, and then the approaches are changed to be Maintenance Unit Perception, Safety Perception, Physical Condition, and Structural Integrity. Each aspect of infrastructure performance is represented by isolate indicator, and then multipliers are calculated by Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to find the appropriate weight factors before the combination into the Integrated Performance Indicator. This study is one of the attempts to apply AHP technique with non-profit organization and government infrastructure, which are encountering the difficult decision-making in fast-pace and more complex environment. Two airports pavement, which are Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) runway under the responsibility of Royal Thai Air Force are selected to be sample areas.
A Web-Based Application to Support Quality Management Documentation System for a Construction Company
Since the emergence of ISO 9000 standards in 1987, it has been widely known and accepted by various organizations, mainly because ISO 9000 provides clearly documentation and systematic procedures and instruction that can be followed by everyone in organizations. Therefore, the most important benefit is a better management control on entirely organization system, greater awareness of procedural problems and promotion value (Tsim et al., 2002).
Although organizations already certified ISO 9000, documentations are still obvious in its difficulty. Since the concept of ISO 9000 focuses on the continual improvement of the system, some documentation need to be accurately and regularly revised and globally updated whenever changes are released. The major problem can usually be found in the companies where several site works in a various distance space are in operation. Sometime employees follow the “right” procedure from a “wrong” revision that can lead to inefficiency of Quality Management System within organization.
Organizations have should realized the importance of ISO 9000 standards, particularly in Quality System Documentation. The quality plan, another type of the Quality System Documentation is also very important for productivity of construction organizations. The quality plan is established to meet each project requirement. It may consist of several documentations including some parts of quality manuals and procedures, contract requirement, and specifically project procedures and work instruction.
By using Web-based technology, the organization can ensure that all employees can instantly access, validate, and retrieve all documentations. Moreover, the traceability of document can be easily implemented. This, of course, will certainly result in paperless work flow, faster exchange of information, and better documentary control.
Mr. Noppadol Kaewborisut made a study aimed to develop a Quality Management Documentation System (QMDS) application for supporting Quality Management System within construction organizations. The output of his study will enhance and facilitate organization to manage documentation more efficiently and also enhance the accessibility and speed in handling with entire Quality System Documentation. In order to achieve his main objective, sub objectives were defined as follows:
1. To investigate and study the mechanism of Quality Management System, ISO 9000 standard, in Construction Companies.
2. To develop a framework of Quality Management Documentation System.
3. To develop the prototype of Quality Management Documentation System for supporting Construction Company’s ISO 9000 operational processes.
Conclusion
The study has proved that the Quality Management Documentation System (QMDS) is a development tool to support operational processes of ISO 9000 standard, especially in a construction company. It is the process specially designed to deal with all documentation management in the organization like the one in the construction company which faces with complicated lines of procedures containing a lot of documentation, and concerning with different parties and activities. Therefore, the details of the study has gone into dept verification which resulted in the conclusion that the QMDS application can be an effective tool for a Construction Company to meet with the increasing demand of world market competition both in quality and quantify of productivity.
1. Quality Management System, ISO 9000 Standards, in Construction Companies
The standards of ISO 9000 are written a manual guideline for a general purpose rather than for any particular business. They interpret, to some extent, what sorts of accomplishment rather than specify how things must be done. It is, therefore, to be cited here that, the ISO 9000 standards are varied in their nature and details from each Construction Company to another. This is because Construction Companies are different in specific types of documentations, management performance, organizational culture and levels of employees’ educational background but on the same basis, the ISO 9000 standards should definitely provide three procedure modules as minimum requirements such as follows:
a. Documenting procedure is the major operation of ISO 9000 within scope of this thesis. This procedure deals effectively with all types of the Quality System Documentation generated from the head office and the project site. These documentations specify the authorization with qualified employee to manipulate which only specific qualified employee can manipulate (create, update, validate) with. The authorization in the Construction Company, therefore are set to look after their type of documentation already specified. The Quality team is responsible for a Quality Manual which provides the whole picture of the Quality Management System of a company. Department managers should be responsible for the Quality Procedure and Work Instruction, the content of which is related to their work. For a Quality Plan, it is established in order to reach the project objectives that construction department have be full responsibility to deal with. In addition, standard forms and records, which can generate from any activities, are also considered as Quality System Documentation and need to be organized properly.
b. In the ISO 9000 standard, an auditing procedure is also required. Its purpose is to inspect a Quality System whether the established documentations are effective and employees conform to such documentation. There are two types of audits: an internal audit and an external audit. An internal audit requires qualified employees to perform as an auditor to audit across different department in a specific period of time. They should have some basic knowledge on departmental operation so that they can use their expertise in bringing out the accurate and reliable inspection. The frequency of internal audit depends on how many problems at that department or direct requests from specific department are. However, they should perform their function at least twice a year for internal audit. Regarding the external audit, it is generally hire from the third party by the company. This third party must have qualification and experience in auditing according to the minimum requirement of ISO 9000 standard. The frequency of external audit also holds at least twice a year. After finishing the audit in each period, the audit reports are submitted to the authority incidental to the contents of the report. Such reports are reviewed for final and make a decision whether the established documentations need to be adjusted accordingly.
c. Measuring procedure purposes to verify the Quality System of a company whether specific operational processes, equipments, or activities can perform at acceptable level or according to established objective. Each employee can acknowledge from his/her occupied documentation that measurement of activities or equipment will be carried out as defined in initially in the documentation. For example, project team has to check whether materials from supplier are correct to theirs specification. The results of measurements are collected as records and have to be kept properly.
2. A Framework of Quality Management Documentation System
After accomplishing the first objective, the overall information (both from literature review and company investigation) are analyzed and conceptually put into the framework of QMDS application. Such framework demonstrates the relationship among essential parts of effective development in the system. There are three main parts of QMDS application such as:
a. The document database refers to electronic files of documentation that are stored systematically in a document center by a file system. There are various types of Quality System Documentation in the electronic files of QMDS application such as Quality Manual, Quality Procedure, Work Instruction, Quality Plan, Standard Form and Document Template. All of these files use Relational Database Management System, being classified by type of documentation and stored in separated tables. Some tables have their inter-relationship as referred by unique keys. The document database is vital. It can indicate the efficient or inefficient result of the running system.
b. The security system is introduced in the QMDS application to secure all documentation stored in database by allowing authorized users to access and operate therein. Security system is vital part for QMDS application due to all documentation stores at server side. QMDS application has set two levels of security system. The first level checks authorization at the first time when users access to the system. They must input accurate username and password for access. The second level then checks authorization of users whenever they want to access to each Web pages. Users can manipulate (review, insert, update, validate, discussion room, and mailing list) with documentation based on their authorization which defined initially by the authority. This security system must be ensured that QMDS application is reliable and can be adopted safely.
c. Document functions refer to all functions of QMDS application. These functions are aimed to support ISO 9000 operational processes which can be divided into three groups: Document Manipulation, Document Distribution, and Document Discussion and Survey. Document Manipulation is designed on the criteria relate to all functions originated form documentation such as searching, reviewing, downloading/uploading, inserting, updating, and validating. The Document Distribution is focused on how to distribute effectively available documentation to relevant employees. Finally, Document Discussion and Survey enhances users to express their opinion by submitting the feedback and discussion. Moreover, poll is used to survey user’s opinion on how such documentation is working efficiently.
3. Quality Management Documentation System (QMDS) for Supporting a Construction Company’s ISO 9000 Operational Processes
For the processes to develop QMDS application, the traditional approach of the system development is adopted. Because of there are some environmental restriction and limitation hidden behind such as the involvement of users, time constraint, and natural operation of Quality System Management, the QMDS application, therefore develops new processes which need to be carried out starting from System Requirement Identification, System Design and Development to System Testing.
System Requirement Identification
This is the initial phase in the development of the system. It consists of two steps for implementation: Requirement Acquisition and Requirement Analysis. The Requirement Acquisition purposes to investigate the overview of ISO 9000 standard in order to identify the frequent problems and significant areas. The semi-structure interview is introduced towards respondents of Construction Companies to acquire their information about the operational processes of ISO 9000 standard. This useful information then served as the input to Requirement Analysis. This step defined the main objective of QMDS application by focusing on the document procedure of ISO 9000 operational processes. Such objective is the systematic management of documentation which can reduce valuable resource use.
System Design
The System Design describes how to design the whole system of QMDS application in order to reach the main objectives of the application. The design has been in-depth classified for the studied into three: Information Requirement and Design, Technology Requirement, and Structure Design.
System Development
This phase, System Development, is carried out with the designed system accordingly. It starts from the creation of database processes in order to support the other functions as well. MySQL is the application in the development of the database at the server side. This database can interact directly with overall functions by using HTML, PHP script and SQL command. Moreover, Java script is also adopted to program some complicated functions. These programming languages are programmed together in the Web page which concerns the compatibility and effective functions.
Other approaches in the System Development are Security system and user interface. PHP provides the function “session” that can be applied to define the authorizations of users. This can protect the unauthorized users to access and get confidential information of the company. For user interface, HTML provides various tags and attributes for developing the structure of Web page and linked menu powerfully. The Internet technology gives advantage to click and link quickly and easily to whatever Web pages. The overall Web programming languages now are developed to succeed and make successfully the prototype of QMDS application.
System Testing
The system testing is the approach for the uses to examining the accomplishment of the developed prototype. The application is tested by using the concept of the System Verification and the System Validation. First concept wants to check an effective function performance. Each function is tested step by step at the actual remote server. Moreover, the feasibilities of malfunctions are also tested to some functions so that any errors behind are corrected immediately. The second concept tests the usefulness of QMDS application in order to support the actual ISO 9000 operational processes. The practitioners of Construction Companies are interviewed to suggest/recommend on the application and the feasible improvement. For this study, the result of interviewing indicates that the developed prototype of QMDS application is useful and can support document procedure of ISO 9000 standard at acceptable level.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
Construction companies must sustain and grow in a competitive market. Companies consider a better business processes to ensure that employees have adequate information to carry out their work. One of many methods can be used to ensure the consistency of business process is Quality Management System. Quality System Standard, ISO 9000, is set up to control the processes and operations which influence to the quality of product. The major requirement of ISO 9000 needs the company to establish Quality System Documentation that refers to all information in each business process. When the documentations are properly managed, they will be improved the Quality System which lead to increased quality of product, company image, and customer satisfaction.
This study uses Web-based approach for managing Quality System Documentations. Quality Management Documentation System (QMDS) is introduced in order to support ISO 9000 operational processes, particularly in document procedure. MySQL and PHP are adopted to develop the system. The benefits from this application provide all users to access and deal with the documentations regardless of time or distance space, reduction of time used in manual operation, and an increased efficiency of document management.
Although organizations already certified ISO 9000, documentations are still obvious in its difficulty. Since the concept of ISO 9000 focuses on the continual improvement of the system, some documentation need to be accurately and regularly revised and globally updated whenever changes are released. The major problem can usually be found in the companies where several site works in a various distance space are in operation. Sometime employees follow the “right” procedure from a “wrong” revision that can lead to inefficiency of Quality Management System within organization.
Organizations have should realized the importance of ISO 9000 standards, particularly in Quality System Documentation. The quality plan, another type of the Quality System Documentation is also very important for productivity of construction organizations. The quality plan is established to meet each project requirement. It may consist of several documentations including some parts of quality manuals and procedures, contract requirement, and specifically project procedures and work instruction.
By using Web-based technology, the organization can ensure that all employees can instantly access, validate, and retrieve all documentations. Moreover, the traceability of document can be easily implemented. This, of course, will certainly result in paperless work flow, faster exchange of information, and better documentary control.
Mr. Noppadol Kaewborisut made a study aimed to develop a Quality Management Documentation System (QMDS) application for supporting Quality Management System within construction organizations. The output of his study will enhance and facilitate organization to manage documentation more efficiently and also enhance the accessibility and speed in handling with entire Quality System Documentation. In order to achieve his main objective, sub objectives were defined as follows:
1. To investigate and study the mechanism of Quality Management System, ISO 9000 standard, in Construction Companies.
2. To develop a framework of Quality Management Documentation System.
3. To develop the prototype of Quality Management Documentation System for supporting Construction Company’s ISO 9000 operational processes.
Conclusion
The study has proved that the Quality Management Documentation System (QMDS) is a development tool to support operational processes of ISO 9000 standard, especially in a construction company. It is the process specially designed to deal with all documentation management in the organization like the one in the construction company which faces with complicated lines of procedures containing a lot of documentation, and concerning with different parties and activities. Therefore, the details of the study has gone into dept verification which resulted in the conclusion that the QMDS application can be an effective tool for a Construction Company to meet with the increasing demand of world market competition both in quality and quantify of productivity.
1. Quality Management System, ISO 9000 Standards, in Construction Companies
The standards of ISO 9000 are written a manual guideline for a general purpose rather than for any particular business. They interpret, to some extent, what sorts of accomplishment rather than specify how things must be done. It is, therefore, to be cited here that, the ISO 9000 standards are varied in their nature and details from each Construction Company to another. This is because Construction Companies are different in specific types of documentations, management performance, organizational culture and levels of employees’ educational background but on the same basis, the ISO 9000 standards should definitely provide three procedure modules as minimum requirements such as follows:
a. Documenting procedure is the major operation of ISO 9000 within scope of this thesis. This procedure deals effectively with all types of the Quality System Documentation generated from the head office and the project site. These documentations specify the authorization with qualified employee to manipulate which only specific qualified employee can manipulate (create, update, validate) with. The authorization in the Construction Company, therefore are set to look after their type of documentation already specified. The Quality team is responsible for a Quality Manual which provides the whole picture of the Quality Management System of a company. Department managers should be responsible for the Quality Procedure and Work Instruction, the content of which is related to their work. For a Quality Plan, it is established in order to reach the project objectives that construction department have be full responsibility to deal with. In addition, standard forms and records, which can generate from any activities, are also considered as Quality System Documentation and need to be organized properly.
b. In the ISO 9000 standard, an auditing procedure is also required. Its purpose is to inspect a Quality System whether the established documentations are effective and employees conform to such documentation. There are two types of audits: an internal audit and an external audit. An internal audit requires qualified employees to perform as an auditor to audit across different department in a specific period of time. They should have some basic knowledge on departmental operation so that they can use their expertise in bringing out the accurate and reliable inspection. The frequency of internal audit depends on how many problems at that department or direct requests from specific department are. However, they should perform their function at least twice a year for internal audit. Regarding the external audit, it is generally hire from the third party by the company. This third party must have qualification and experience in auditing according to the minimum requirement of ISO 9000 standard. The frequency of external audit also holds at least twice a year. After finishing the audit in each period, the audit reports are submitted to the authority incidental to the contents of the report. Such reports are reviewed for final and make a decision whether the established documentations need to be adjusted accordingly.
c. Measuring procedure purposes to verify the Quality System of a company whether specific operational processes, equipments, or activities can perform at acceptable level or according to established objective. Each employee can acknowledge from his/her occupied documentation that measurement of activities or equipment will be carried out as defined in initially in the documentation. For example, project team has to check whether materials from supplier are correct to theirs specification. The results of measurements are collected as records and have to be kept properly.
2. A Framework of Quality Management Documentation System
After accomplishing the first objective, the overall information (both from literature review and company investigation) are analyzed and conceptually put into the framework of QMDS application. Such framework demonstrates the relationship among essential parts of effective development in the system. There are three main parts of QMDS application such as:
a. The document database refers to electronic files of documentation that are stored systematically in a document center by a file system. There are various types of Quality System Documentation in the electronic files of QMDS application such as Quality Manual, Quality Procedure, Work Instruction, Quality Plan, Standard Form and Document Template. All of these files use Relational Database Management System, being classified by type of documentation and stored in separated tables. Some tables have their inter-relationship as referred by unique keys. The document database is vital. It can indicate the efficient or inefficient result of the running system.
b. The security system is introduced in the QMDS application to secure all documentation stored in database by allowing authorized users to access and operate therein. Security system is vital part for QMDS application due to all documentation stores at server side. QMDS application has set two levels of security system. The first level checks authorization at the first time when users access to the system. They must input accurate username and password for access. The second level then checks authorization of users whenever they want to access to each Web pages. Users can manipulate (review, insert, update, validate, discussion room, and mailing list) with documentation based on their authorization which defined initially by the authority. This security system must be ensured that QMDS application is reliable and can be adopted safely.
c. Document functions refer to all functions of QMDS application. These functions are aimed to support ISO 9000 operational processes which can be divided into three groups: Document Manipulation, Document Distribution, and Document Discussion and Survey. Document Manipulation is designed on the criteria relate to all functions originated form documentation such as searching, reviewing, downloading/uploading, inserting, updating, and validating. The Document Distribution is focused on how to distribute effectively available documentation to relevant employees. Finally, Document Discussion and Survey enhances users to express their opinion by submitting the feedback and discussion. Moreover, poll is used to survey user’s opinion on how such documentation is working efficiently.
3. Quality Management Documentation System (QMDS) for Supporting a Construction Company’s ISO 9000 Operational Processes
For the processes to develop QMDS application, the traditional approach of the system development is adopted. Because of there are some environmental restriction and limitation hidden behind such as the involvement of users, time constraint, and natural operation of Quality System Management, the QMDS application, therefore develops new processes which need to be carried out starting from System Requirement Identification, System Design and Development to System Testing.
System Requirement Identification
This is the initial phase in the development of the system. It consists of two steps for implementation: Requirement Acquisition and Requirement Analysis. The Requirement Acquisition purposes to investigate the overview of ISO 9000 standard in order to identify the frequent problems and significant areas. The semi-structure interview is introduced towards respondents of Construction Companies to acquire their information about the operational processes of ISO 9000 standard. This useful information then served as the input to Requirement Analysis. This step defined the main objective of QMDS application by focusing on the document procedure of ISO 9000 operational processes. Such objective is the systematic management of documentation which can reduce valuable resource use.
System Design
The System Design describes how to design the whole system of QMDS application in order to reach the main objectives of the application. The design has been in-depth classified for the studied into three: Information Requirement and Design, Technology Requirement, and Structure Design.
System Development
This phase, System Development, is carried out with the designed system accordingly. It starts from the creation of database processes in order to support the other functions as well. MySQL is the application in the development of the database at the server side. This database can interact directly with overall functions by using HTML, PHP script and SQL command. Moreover, Java script is also adopted to program some complicated functions. These programming languages are programmed together in the Web page which concerns the compatibility and effective functions.
Other approaches in the System Development are Security system and user interface. PHP provides the function “session” that can be applied to define the authorizations of users. This can protect the unauthorized users to access and get confidential information of the company. For user interface, HTML provides various tags and attributes for developing the structure of Web page and linked menu powerfully. The Internet technology gives advantage to click and link quickly and easily to whatever Web pages. The overall Web programming languages now are developed to succeed and make successfully the prototype of QMDS application.
System Testing
The system testing is the approach for the uses to examining the accomplishment of the developed prototype. The application is tested by using the concept of the System Verification and the System Validation. First concept wants to check an effective function performance. Each function is tested step by step at the actual remote server. Moreover, the feasibilities of malfunctions are also tested to some functions so that any errors behind are corrected immediately. The second concept tests the usefulness of QMDS application in order to support the actual ISO 9000 operational processes. The practitioners of Construction Companies are interviewed to suggest/recommend on the application and the feasible improvement. For this study, the result of interviewing indicates that the developed prototype of QMDS application is useful and can support document procedure of ISO 9000 standard at acceptable level.
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
Construction companies must sustain and grow in a competitive market. Companies consider a better business processes to ensure that employees have adequate information to carry out their work. One of many methods can be used to ensure the consistency of business process is Quality Management System. Quality System Standard, ISO 9000, is set up to control the processes and operations which influence to the quality of product. The major requirement of ISO 9000 needs the company to establish Quality System Documentation that refers to all information in each business process. When the documentations are properly managed, they will be improved the Quality System which lead to increased quality of product, company image, and customer satisfaction.
This study uses Web-based approach for managing Quality System Documentations. Quality Management Documentation System (QMDS) is introduced in order to support ISO 9000 operational processes, particularly in document procedure. MySQL and PHP are adopted to develop the system. The benefits from this application provide all users to access and deal with the documentations regardless of time or distance space, reduction of time used in manual operation, and an increased efficiency of document management.
Motivation of Construction Engineers in Yunnan, China
Construction has been perceived as a pillar industry in China’s economic revitalization (Han et al, 2001). Rapid economic expansion in China has resulted high volumes of construction activity. In the period 1990~1998, the strong construction industry and the rapidly growing construction industry were concentrated along the coast of China, but Han et al (2001) stated the construction industry contributed a higher proportion of GDP in the western and central provinces than the coastal provinces.
Yunnan province, as one of the above western provinces, has been developing at an amazing speed since 1980, especially during 1995~1998. Because Yunnan province shares a border of 4,060 km with Myanmar in the west, Laos in the south, and Vietnam in the southeast, accession to the World Trade Organization helped this province to draw considerable attention to its development of International Passageway connecting the South-Western China with South-Eastern Asia and South Asia.
After 2002, the government emphasized the development of inland regions by means of trickle-down economic growth from the coastal provinces and the improvement of urbanization. These development policies as well as the development of International Passageway provide a historic chance for the development of construction industry in Yunnan province.
However, it is also a challenge to the construction industry in Yunnan province to seize this opportunity of development. Generally, as Chen (1998) observed, the construction industry in China faces serious challenges and will require deeper reforms to address the remaining problem areas. He also indicated that construction management is still considered to be a serious problem in China. On the other hand, the government is keen to secure improvement in the performance of the construction industry through competitive bidding, management efficiency, training, increased labour productivity, quality control, advanced technology and great enterprise autonomy and accountability (Chen, 1998). That means the construction industry in Yunnan province has to deepen its reforms to achieve its goals under the government’s guide.
Effective motivation programs are considered as an approach to motivate employees toward organizational goals. On the other hand, unawareness of the motivation and performance of construction engineers will increase the difficulty of establishing effective motivation programs, which are based on understanding the behaviour of engineers. In other words, construction engineer motivation affects project productivity considerably so that researches on engineer motivation are required. However, in the construction industry, researchers commonly concentrate on the motivation of workers but ignore that of engineers.
Therefore, the study of engineer motivation is called for to facilitate the efficient use of engineers as project specialists. Especially, for project managers, the significant effect of engineers as team members deserves more consideration on “how to motivate them effectively” when project teamwork has become more and more important for construction productivity. Moreover, the study of engineer motivation might contribute to the effective motivation policies and programs which have been emphasized in China’s construction industry reforms.
Miss Dai Jiliang made a study to investigate the motivation of construction engineers in Yunnan province, China. Her three objectives were to: (1) explore construction engineers’ needs and their satisfaction on the corresponding needs; (2) determine the validity of the expectancy theory of engineer motivation, performance and satisfaction; and (3) address some recommendations for the methods applied to motivating construction engineers.
Conclusion
Below are the three important conclusions drawn from the findings of the study.
1. The exploration of construction engineer needs and their satisfaction on the corresponding needs not only illustrates the less satisfied engineers, but also facilitates more effective motivation policies such as the physiological needs and safety needs could be emphasized by the management to enhance satisfaction.
2. The validity of expectancy theory is not strongly supported by this study. But expectancy theory still provides a conceptual base for understanding the motivation of construction engineers in Yunnan province, China. The results of analysing the relationships predicted by expectancy theory imply that job clarify is useful to improve the expectancy of the engineers even though the expectancy has no strong relationship with effort and performance. Also, the results of analysis indicate that negative consequences of poor performance influence on effort more significantly than positive consequences for good performance do. The low motivation scores of the engineers suggest the present motivation policies might require improvement.
3. Job clarify could be achieved by the establishment and communication of clear performance goals. Negative consequence of poor performance might be considered by the management to influence effort expended by engineers. Important needs could be placed on the motivation agenda.
The result of this study implies that engineers’ general job satisfaction and intrinsic satisfaction are higher than satisfaction on the need factors. This means that engineers’ professions are attractive for them, but the outcome of work can not meet their needs successfully. The management might be in an external-internal embarrassment: decreasing profit margin caused by furious competition in the construction market and stagnant market-oriented reforms of the SOEs or myopia human resource management in the URCs and RCTs.
The Chinese government believes that the long-term development of the construction industry should still be centrally planned (Mayo et al, 1995). The goals of the official long-term plan include the performance of the Chinese construction industry’s output, productivity, construction quality, housing construction, employment, and international contracting (Zhong Guo, 1992).
Project-oriented organizations are encouraged by government so that the management of construction companies are inspired to adopt project-oriented work methods to achieve their goals in the construction market. Compared with traditional construction enterprises in China, project-based organizations allow project managers to make quicker and more responsible business decisions. Therefore, instead of being parent-government-unit-driven, project-based organizations are driven by market and more efficient.
Not only in the SOEs but also in the URCs and RCTs, project-oriented work methods will improve the competence of construction companies in terms of employees’ motivation. Firstly, in project-oriented organizations, motivation policies emphasize the direct relationship between project profit and individual income and welfare. The results of this study reveal that the physiological needs and safety needs were not met very well. Thus, the project-oriented compensation method will motivate engineers more effectively than other methods. Secondly, project-oriented motivation policies contribute to developing an effective workforce. The employees in smaller construction firms prefer a stable group to an ad-hoc one when they work as a team. Effective teamwork will attract engineers to cooperate with each other and maintain a solid group. On the other hand, in a manager’s view, training and development of workforce could be applied on this stable team-base. Hence, especially in the URCs and RCTs, the project-oriented human resource management could match the organizations’ long-term strategy exactly.
Her thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
Effective motivation programs are considered as an approach to motivate employees toward organizational goals. Construction engineers, as project specialists, influence construction productivity substantially. Therefore, it is necessary to explore their motivation. A survey was conducted in Yunnan province, China on the basis of expectancy theory of construction engineer motivation as well as their needs and satisfaction on the corresponding needs. The findings of their needs and satisfaction illustrated they were less satisfied; and the results based on expectancy theory indicated that the motivational climate is very poor. Considering the construction industry reform in China, the findings were discussed on the background of the characteristics of China’s construction industry to conform to its current status.
Yunnan province, as one of the above western provinces, has been developing at an amazing speed since 1980, especially during 1995~1998. Because Yunnan province shares a border of 4,060 km with Myanmar in the west, Laos in the south, and Vietnam in the southeast, accession to the World Trade Organization helped this province to draw considerable attention to its development of International Passageway connecting the South-Western China with South-Eastern Asia and South Asia.
After 2002, the government emphasized the development of inland regions by means of trickle-down economic growth from the coastal provinces and the improvement of urbanization. These development policies as well as the development of International Passageway provide a historic chance for the development of construction industry in Yunnan province.
However, it is also a challenge to the construction industry in Yunnan province to seize this opportunity of development. Generally, as Chen (1998) observed, the construction industry in China faces serious challenges and will require deeper reforms to address the remaining problem areas. He also indicated that construction management is still considered to be a serious problem in China. On the other hand, the government is keen to secure improvement in the performance of the construction industry through competitive bidding, management efficiency, training, increased labour productivity, quality control, advanced technology and great enterprise autonomy and accountability (Chen, 1998). That means the construction industry in Yunnan province has to deepen its reforms to achieve its goals under the government’s guide.
Effective motivation programs are considered as an approach to motivate employees toward organizational goals. On the other hand, unawareness of the motivation and performance of construction engineers will increase the difficulty of establishing effective motivation programs, which are based on understanding the behaviour of engineers. In other words, construction engineer motivation affects project productivity considerably so that researches on engineer motivation are required. However, in the construction industry, researchers commonly concentrate on the motivation of workers but ignore that of engineers.
Therefore, the study of engineer motivation is called for to facilitate the efficient use of engineers as project specialists. Especially, for project managers, the significant effect of engineers as team members deserves more consideration on “how to motivate them effectively” when project teamwork has become more and more important for construction productivity. Moreover, the study of engineer motivation might contribute to the effective motivation policies and programs which have been emphasized in China’s construction industry reforms.
Miss Dai Jiliang made a study to investigate the motivation of construction engineers in Yunnan province, China. Her three objectives were to: (1) explore construction engineers’ needs and their satisfaction on the corresponding needs; (2) determine the validity of the expectancy theory of engineer motivation, performance and satisfaction; and (3) address some recommendations for the methods applied to motivating construction engineers.
Conclusion
Below are the three important conclusions drawn from the findings of the study.
1. The exploration of construction engineer needs and their satisfaction on the corresponding needs not only illustrates the less satisfied engineers, but also facilitates more effective motivation policies such as the physiological needs and safety needs could be emphasized by the management to enhance satisfaction.
2. The validity of expectancy theory is not strongly supported by this study. But expectancy theory still provides a conceptual base for understanding the motivation of construction engineers in Yunnan province, China. The results of analysing the relationships predicted by expectancy theory imply that job clarify is useful to improve the expectancy of the engineers even though the expectancy has no strong relationship with effort and performance. Also, the results of analysis indicate that negative consequences of poor performance influence on effort more significantly than positive consequences for good performance do. The low motivation scores of the engineers suggest the present motivation policies might require improvement.
3. Job clarify could be achieved by the establishment and communication of clear performance goals. Negative consequence of poor performance might be considered by the management to influence effort expended by engineers. Important needs could be placed on the motivation agenda.
The result of this study implies that engineers’ general job satisfaction and intrinsic satisfaction are higher than satisfaction on the need factors. This means that engineers’ professions are attractive for them, but the outcome of work can not meet their needs successfully. The management might be in an external-internal embarrassment: decreasing profit margin caused by furious competition in the construction market and stagnant market-oriented reforms of the SOEs or myopia human resource management in the URCs and RCTs.
The Chinese government believes that the long-term development of the construction industry should still be centrally planned (Mayo et al, 1995). The goals of the official long-term plan include the performance of the Chinese construction industry’s output, productivity, construction quality, housing construction, employment, and international contracting (Zhong Guo, 1992).
Project-oriented organizations are encouraged by government so that the management of construction companies are inspired to adopt project-oriented work methods to achieve their goals in the construction market. Compared with traditional construction enterprises in China, project-based organizations allow project managers to make quicker and more responsible business decisions. Therefore, instead of being parent-government-unit-driven, project-based organizations are driven by market and more efficient.
Not only in the SOEs but also in the URCs and RCTs, project-oriented work methods will improve the competence of construction companies in terms of employees’ motivation. Firstly, in project-oriented organizations, motivation policies emphasize the direct relationship between project profit and individual income and welfare. The results of this study reveal that the physiological needs and safety needs were not met very well. Thus, the project-oriented compensation method will motivate engineers more effectively than other methods. Secondly, project-oriented motivation policies contribute to developing an effective workforce. The employees in smaller construction firms prefer a stable group to an ad-hoc one when they work as a team. Effective teamwork will attract engineers to cooperate with each other and maintain a solid group. On the other hand, in a manager’s view, training and development of workforce could be applied on this stable team-base. Hence, especially in the URCs and RCTs, the project-oriented human resource management could match the organizations’ long-term strategy exactly.
Her thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
Effective motivation programs are considered as an approach to motivate employees toward organizational goals. Construction engineers, as project specialists, influence construction productivity substantially. Therefore, it is necessary to explore their motivation. A survey was conducted in Yunnan province, China on the basis of expectancy theory of construction engineer motivation as well as their needs and satisfaction on the corresponding needs. The findings of their needs and satisfaction illustrated they were less satisfied; and the results based on expectancy theory indicated that the motivational climate is very poor. Considering the construction industry reform in China, the findings were discussed on the background of the characteristics of China’s construction industry to conform to its current status.
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