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Adams, F K (2004) The management of risks in international infrastructural projects, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Business Studies, University of Edinburgh.
Ahiaga-Dagbui, D D (2014) Rethinking construction cost overruns: an artificial neural network approach to construction cost estimation, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
Al-Remal, A M (2013) Risk-based design of structures for fire, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Edinburgh.
Alsedairy, F S (2019) Dynamics of mega infrastructure decision-making in Saudi Arabia, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
Baker, A J (2019) ‘Suitable and sufficient’? UK regulation of post-construction fire safety, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Social & Political Science, University of Edinburgh.
Baker, H (2021) A multimethod approach to learning from text-based construction failure data, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Edinburgh.
- Type: Thesis
- Keywords: construction project; construction sector; injury; learning; performance; safety; failure; UK
- ISBN/ISSN:
- URL: https://doi.org/10.7488/era/1425
- Abstract:
To be sustainable, the construction industry must learn from, and avoid, repetitive failures. At present, there is heavy reliance on learning from case-studies of catastrophic events and a lack of attention to the more frequent, lower consequence and yet repetitive failures. These smaller failures can have huge cumulative impact. This is important as the construction sector is worth £113 billion per year to the UK economy (6% of UK GDP) and provides over 2.4 million jobs (7% UK jobs). This impressive contribution is undermined by a large number of construction projects which run over time and over cost. This undermining is all the more damaging for those high profile, often publicly funded, infrastructure programmes which attract severe negative publicity when they run overbudget. While other factors contribute to this overspend (for example, inaccurate tender estimates and scope or design change), previous research found that correcting quality mistakes can account for over 20% of a contract's value. Another failure of the construction industry is its safety performance. In the 2017/18 fiscal year, the fatal injury rate for those working in UK construction was four times the national average at 1.64 per 100,000 workers. Additionally, the Health and Safety Executive in its 2018 Annual Report estimated that safety injuries on site cost £490M to the UK economy. It is therefore both a moral and economic imperative that the industry is learning to avoid repetitive failure. There is a wealth of information contained within accounts of more frequent, lower consequence incidents and safety observation reports, which should be used. These reports are collected as part of the lifecycle of the project. However, to date, these data have been inaccessible to traditional analysis techniques due to physical accessibility issues and the format of unstructured text data, requiring time consuming manual analysis. This project harnessed the potential of modern data science methods, including natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), to produce automated methods and recommendations for analysing these data for the construction industry. A multi-method approach was applied. First, a qualitative investigation used semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis to explore failure in the construction industry, with particular attention to present `learning from failure' practice, human factors and biases. Second, the text-based construction site failure data was analysed using recent data science methods. This analysis relied upon the insights from the first investigation to inform methodological decisions. It was decided to transform the unstructured text data into structured attributes, using machine learning classification methods, for further analysis. Transforming the unstructured text descriptions in this way allows further analysis methods to be performed. Possible further analyses unlocked by this method include risk analysis, graphical analysis, learning, and finer trend analysis. Finally, qualitative information from the thematic analysis was used to assess usefulness and form recommendations for industrial application of the data analysis methods employed to develop techniques that allow the capture and analysis of data to measure and mitigate the cumulative impact of smaller failures.
Bartlett, A I (2018) Auto-extinction of engineered timber, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Edinburgh.
Campbell, J M (2008) Safety hazard and risk identification and management in infrastructure management, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
Dunlop, P G (2005) Investigation, modelling and planning of stochastic concrete placing operations, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
Eid, M E M (2004) Rethinking relationships in the construction industry: integrating sustainable development into project management processes, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Architecture, University of Edinburgh.
French, T R (2012) Evolutionary optimisation of network flow plans for emergency movement in the built environment, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Edinburgh.
Furber, A (2013) The social and cultural context of rural water and sanitation projects: case studies from Ghana, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
Glendinning, M (1991) 'Give the people homes!': Britain's multi-storey housing drive, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh.
Graham, D (2005) Stochastic modelling and analysis of construction processes, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
Hashim, R (2018) Green innovation adoption in the construction sector : the role of absorptive capacity and the effect of environmental requirements, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Business School, University of Edinburgh.
Hellowell, M S (2012) Fair return for risk? An examination of structure, competition and profitability in the market for private finance in the National Health Service, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh.
Hsiao, C C (2000) Constructing a sustainable impact assessment methodology : an evaluation of Taiwanese EIA of high-rise building, Unpublished PhD Thesis, College of Art, University of Edinburgh.
Jackson, D J (2020) Addressing the challenges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the construction industry: a multi-perspective approach, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Business School, University of Edinburgh.
Jiménez-Moreno, P (2020) Mass customisation for zero energy housing: the potential of Japanese manufacturing practices in the context of sustainable housebuilding in the United Kingdom, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Edinburgh.
Kanellopoulos, G (2022) External fire spread from timber lined compartments, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Edinburgh.
Kim, S (1998) Sustainable building practices: minimising the life-cycle environmental impact of high-rise apartments in Korea, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Architecture, University of Edinburgh.
Knebel, V (2006) Preserve and rebuild: the built environment, status transformations and identity construction in eastern Germany after reunification, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Edinburgh.
Koutsomarkos, V (2023) Developing a fire robustness index for the built environment, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Edinburgh.
Marquardt, G (2017) Economic analysis of contract choice, feelings of entitlement and contract enforcement in relationships governed by incomplete contracts, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
McArthur, J (2023) Enrolment, technical mediation, and the obligatory passage point: a socio-technical examination of the Canada Green Building Council, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Edinburgh.
McMeel, D (2009) The artistry of construction: an investigation into construction as a creative process and the influence of mobile phones within domestic scale construction projects, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Architecture, University of Edinburgh.
Oliver, A K (2020) Perceptions of sustainability and their influence in the design and delivery of Scottish housing, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
Oswald, D (2016) Investigating unsafe acts on a large multinational construction project, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
Raman, P G (1977) Information and architectural design: A study of certain theoretical aspects, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Edinburgh.
Rodger, R G (1976) Scottish urban housebuilding, 1870-1914, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Edinburgh.
Ronzani, M (2019) Designing for complexity: Data visualizations in megaproject management, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Edinburgh.
Saoud, E A B (1996) Expert systems for management training in the construction industry, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
Sidwell, N C (1957) A critical examination of new constructional techniques and their influence on productivity in the building industry with special reference to housing in south-east Scotland, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
Smith, S D (1994) Production estimation of earthmoving operations using a discrete-event simulation model, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Civil Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
Yang, S-A (1995) Kics: Representation of regulatory information and the use of case-based reasoning to support the relaxation process, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Edinburgh.