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•This paper introduces the concept of Construction 4.0.•The digital transformation of the construction sector is presented and discussed.•Additive manufacturing is a driver for ...innovation in construction.•Additive manufacturing enables the fabrication of lightweight and functionally graded structures.
The digital and technological innovations that have been developing massively in recent years are often referred to as the 4th Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0. The construction industry seems ...to be somewhat on the sidelines. The big topic is BIM (Building Information Modelling), but this is only one component of the contemplated Construction 4.0. Other topics, if not completely neglected, are minimally neglected in the Czech Republic. Yet, and perhaps for this very reason, it is very important to address them.This article looks at the description of the different elements of the Construction 4.0 concept and their possible application in transport, through the overall digitisation of the railways.
Construction 4.0, derived from Industry 4.0, was introduced to the construction industry as a means of addressing current issues and enhancing industry productivity. Adoption of this concept has ...placed a significant demand on Construction 4.0 skills, as the industry is undergoing a transformation that calls for new strategies and specialized skill sets. While Construction 4.0 promises significant productivity gains, its widespread adoption often overlooks the crucial role of specialized skills, leading to a mismatch in expected outcomes. The often-underexplored theoretical dimensions of Construction 4.0 skills has the potential to bridge the gap between these skills and formulation of productivity goals and achieving them, highlighting the profound importance of understanding and integrating these skills in the context of Construction 4.0. While there has been a recent interest in Construction 4.0 skills across various national contexts, the theoretical dimensions of skills within the realm of Construction 4.0 remains unexplored. Therefore, this study examines the definitions, interpretations, and theories of skills within the context of Construction 4.0. Through a conceptual review of existing academic literature and policy documents, this research offers profound understanding of defintions and how the theories of Construction 4.0 intersect with skills development and thus impact the formulation of productivity goals. The definitions of Industry 4.0/Construction 4.0 formulated in various national frameworks are defined in accordance with their geographical, social, and cultural contexts and that have distinct production aims and scopes. The identified theoretical underpinnings of Construction 4.0 include digital building ecosystem, lean construction, circular economy, smart cities, and skills-related theories such as social learning theory, human capital theory, cognitive load theory, situated learning theory, and lifelong learning theory. The examination brings forth novel insights that promise to shape the future of Construction 4.0 skills development. By bridging the gap between theoretical constructs and productivity goals (labour efficiency, process efficiency, time efficiency, waste reduction, energy and water efficiency) within the context of Construction 4.0, this study offers a fresh perspective that integrates technology, sustainability, and collaboration to propel productivity goals. The research also emphasizes the varying prioritization of Construction 4.0 skill sets in different national contexts, and underscores the need for sector-specific frameworks for Construction 4.0 skills. Moreover, potential avenues for future research in the field of Construction 4.0 skills include perspectives of workers, real-world impacts on the industry, policy advancements, skills frameworks, ethical evaluations, and scenario planning.
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•A comprehensive review of prior academic and policy documents of Construction 4.0 skills.•Definitions vary of Industry 4.0 and Construction 4.0 by geographical, and cultural contexts.•Relevance of several skills-related theories, i.e., social learning and social capital theories.•Technology, skill, and collaboration are essential for construction industry productivity.•Construction 4.0 skills advance productivity with policy certainty and scenario planning.
Health and Safety (H&S) should be a significant concern in construction projects. The quantification of the work injury accidents started with work A. W. Heinrich (1931), passing per Frank E. Bird ...Jr. (1969) to a study by ConocoPhillips Marine (2003). These theories, also known as the Accident triangle, Heinrich's triangle, or Bird's triangle, are a base for industrial accident prevention applied in practice by the Dupont STOPTM methodology. Over this methodology, the number of unhealthy and unsafe behaviours is classified and accounted for to diagnose the potential workers' recordable injuries, lost workdays, and fatalities. The At-risk behaviours and the Near Misses are the most challenging safety measurement approach as they depend on the human-observation notes usually conducted in a safety audit. Electronic Performance Monitoring (EPM) concerns the use of innovative hardware and software to assess on-site safety and productivity. The electronic monitoring of construction workers can contribute to evaluating unsafe behaviours. At-risk behaviours could be measured based on location, trajectory, and motions. Also, with the monitoring of the equipment and vehicles, it is possible to measure Near Misses. The Information Technologies integration allows for collecting information about Recordable Injuries, Lost workdays, and Fatalities. This work discusses and presents a framework connecting EPM deployment to data acquisition of unhealthy and unsafe on-site behaviours. The contributions in the theoretical and practical fields concern the opportunities of using new technological assumptions to increase data acquisition and improve the accuracy and effectiveness of quantitative safety analysis.
Nowadays, the construction industry's digital transformation processes are challenging civil engineering education. In general, students and society underestimate the civil engineering field as an ...outdated and archaic knowledge area. Despite the defragmentation and heterogeneity of the sector, advances have been made on the path for Construction 4.0 and 5.0 scenarios. From this perspective, the CONSTRUCT-Gequaltec group of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto have been sponsoring research and technological development using hardware and software targeting construction management solutions. This paper presents the work in progress mainly connected to the curricular units regarding project management in the Construction Section of the Civil Engineering Department. It also targets assumptions of some expected results across the research and innovation priorities from ECTP Innovative Built Environment and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Two fundamental elements of the teaching practices are presented as the Construction Sites of the Future (Laboratory-Based Education initiative) and Digital products catalogue targeting Digital Twins in Construction (Project Based Learning initiative). The learning outcomes address increasing knowledge of innovative solutions, delivering skills to deploy 5.0 actions, and targeting human-centred and sustainable attitudes and values.
The operation of heavy equipment in the construction industry requires high-skilled workers: they must safely operate the equipment in an efficient manner to avoid project delays or damages, both to ...equipment and material as to their colleagues and themselves. Operator productivity and safety are therefore critical in the construction industry. The advancements in technologies such as digitization and automation are more and more applied in the industry, leading to more data and knowledge on the construction equipment and environment. This can be leveraged by a digital twin to provide value for the operator.
In this work, we present a digital twin architecture applied to an off highway vehicle, which provides real-time feedback to the operator while operating the vehicle. Monitoring the interactions between an off highway vehicle and workers will result in a safer and more productive environment. This work focuses on detection of the environment and monitoring the state of the vehicle. Images of a low cost camera are used to extract information of the vehicle implement as well as the environment. The motion and state of the machine can be realistically visualized in real-time in Unreal, using a 3D CAD (Computer-Aided Design) geometry model, enriched with additional relevant information and color schemes. A modular pub-sub architecture enables the communication between the sensors and camera, the data processing and the visualization of the digital twin.
This research explores the current state of Construction 4.0 and discusses a four-layer implementation of Construction 4.0 in the industry. The research methodology consists of an extensive ...literature review to gain insights about Construction 4.0 and frame the four-layer implementation plan. A case study is also presented to showcase the proposed implementation plan. Nine Construction 4.0 technologies were discussed, their integration throughout the project lifecycle was presented in a roadmap, their integration and connectivity with one another were outlined in an interaction roadmap, and the requirements necessary for achieving the 4.0 transformation were articulated. However, the proposed implementation plan is focused on nine Construction 4.0 technologies. The research presents a comprehensive plan for integrating Construction 4.0 technologies into the industry and serves as a guideline to help construction companies better understand the implications of Construction 4.0.
Construction 4.0: a survey of research trends Perrier, Nathalie; Bled, Aristide; Bourgault, Mario ...
Journal of information technology in construction,
9/2020, Volume:
25
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The fourth industrial revolution, called Industry 4.0, is transforming decision-making through the increasing use of information and digitization technologies. While Industry 4.0 is expanding rapidly ...in manufacturing industries, its induced transformations are gradually affecting other sectors, including the construction industry. In recent years, the use of 4.0 technologies in the construction industry, termed as ‘Construction 4.0’, has increased, mostly due to the immense potential of Industry 4.0 for improving the performance of construction projects and structuring their underlying management processes. This paper proposes a classification of existing literature on applications of Construction 4.0 technologies to allow for a better analysis of trends and gaps in the research. A total of nearly 200 research papers between 2009 and 2020 were reviewed and analyzed. Overall, the analysis shows that research on Construction 4.0 is closely aligned with the construction phase. Also, the most researched topics seem to be related to the management processes of quality, risk, and health and safety.
Unstructured texts dominate data in construction projects. With the achievements of natural language processing (NLP) techniques, mining unstructured text data for smart construction has become ...increasingly significant. To understand state-of-the-art NLP for smart construction, uncover related issues, and propose potential improvements, this paper presents a comprehensive review of bottom-level techniques and mainstream applications of NLP in the industry. In total, 124 journal articles published in the last two decades are reviewed. NLP involves five core steps supported by various techniques, e.g., syntactic parsing, heuristic rules, machine learning, and deep learning. NLP has been applied for information extraction and exchanging and many downstream applications to facilitate management and decision-making. The role of NLP in smart construction and current challenges for fully reaping its benefits are discussed, and four research directions are identified, i.e., improving relation extraction, realising knowledge base auto-development, integrating multi-modal information, and achieving an accuracy-efficiency trade-off by developing an NLP application framework. It is envisioned that outcomes of this paper can assist both researchers and industrial practitioners with appreciating the research and practice frontier of NLP for smart construction and soliciting the latest NLP techniques.
•An in-depth review of natural language processing (NLP) for smart construction is conducted.•124 journal articles published in 2000–2021 are manually reviewed.•Bottom-level NLP techniques are thoroughly introduced.•NLP is used to extract and exchange information and to support downstream applications.•The role of NLP in smart construction, current challenges, and future directions are provided.
The counterpart of Industry 4.0 in the AEC/FM industry is known as Construction 4.0. Its essence is the digitalization and automation of the AEC/FM industry. As robots and other technologies make ...their way into the different phases of the lifecycle of construction projects, the concern about the future of jobs and wages will increase. While the use of robotics has the potential to improve productivity and safety, it should not necessarily reduce total employment in the construction sector in the long run. It is expected that existing roles will evolve, and new roles will be created (e.g., in addition to designers there will be a need for employees with digital skills). Focusing on the construction phase of a robotically built concrete wall, the different roles were evaluated. From this study, it was found that there will be a time in which conventional construction and robotic technologies will coexist, leading to a higher job variability and new roles, both at the managerial and operations/execution levels. Although this study is not meant to be an exact representation of how the AEC/FM roles will change as a consequence of Construction 4.0, it opens the debate and research in this area.
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