Quantitative measures of transport disadvantage are reviewed in this paper from the perspective of their effectiveness to investigate social exclusion. The effectiveness is assessed using criteria derived through a review of the concepts of transport disadvantage and social exclusion and their operationalisation. The specified criteria are related to issues of spatial (e.g., urban accessibility, and public transport accessibility), temporal (e.g., public transport availability, and facility opening hours), and social attributes of travel and activity participation (e.g., personal mobility, and disability). Four groups of transport disadvantage measures are identified and evaluated. These include deprivation-based measures, mobility-based measures, accessibility-based measures, and activity-based measures. The review suggests that although the first three categories of measures have traditionally been used to identify transport disadvantage, they do not satisfy issues surrounding activity participation—the key outcome of social exclusion. The activity space concept is a way in which these issues can be incorporated, as it is a measure of the outcomes of activity participation and their associated travel to that activity. Participation in an activity means that an individual has overcome the spatial, temporal and social barriers of travel for that activity. The research using the activity space concept has, however, inadequately identified individual travel and activity participation. This has been due to a separate application of a range of different indicators to assess activity space size. These indicators are by their nature multidimensional—e.g., area visited, distance travelled, and number of activity sites visited. Although each indicator represents a specific qualitative/quantitative aspect of travel and activity participation, researchers have treated these indicators in an isolated manner to identify transport disadvantage and consequently transport-related social exclusion. This paper identifies the weaknesses and strengths associated with these measures; and methods are directed to overcome the limitations.

Site safety inspection is an essential task to ensure that construction operations are carried out in a safe manner, in accordance with relevant health and safety policies and standards of a particular jurisdiction. It is also critical to the smooth execution, monitoring, and controlling of construction activities. The evidence gathered from construction experts as well as from previous studies suggests that the efficiency and effectiveness of current inspection processes are less than satisfactory. This paper reports an Australian research project that develops an innovative safety inspection approach to incorporate mobile computing technologies into safety inspection processes in order to facilitate more effective data collection, processing, and control practices. The paper also discusses the interview results of safety practitioners about the proposed inspection approach. The approach was implemented through the development and test of a prototype mobile inspection tool. The feasibility and us...

To deliver tangible sustainability outcomes, the infrastructure sector of the construction industry needs to build capacities for the creation, application and management of ever increasing knowledge. This paper intends to establish the importance and key issues of promoting sustainability through knowledge management (KM). It presents a new conceptual framework for managing sustainability knowledge to raise the awareness and direct future research in the field of transport infrastructure, one of the fast growing sectors in Australia. A holistic KM approach is adopted in this research to consider the potential to “deliver the right information to the right person at the right time” in the context of sustainable development of infrastructure. A questionnaire survey among practitioners across the nation confirmed the necessity and identified priority issues of managing knowledge for sustainability. During infrastructure development, KM can help build much needed industry consensus, develop capacity, communicate decisions, and promote specific measures for the pursuit of sustainability. Six essential elements of the KM approach and their priority issues informed the establishment of a conceptual KM framework. The transport infrastructure sector has come to realise that development must not come at the expense of environmental and social objectives. In practice however, it is facing extensive challenges to deliver what has been promised in the sustainability agenda. This research demonstrates the importance of managing sustainability knowledge, integration of various stakeholders, facilitation of plans and actions and delivery of tangible benefits in real projects, as a positive step towards meeting these challenges.

This paper discusses a component of the research study conducted to provide construction organizations with a generic benchmarking framework to assess their extent of information communication technology (ICT) adoption for building project management processes. It defines benchmarking and discusses objectives of the required benchmarking framework and development of the framework. The study focused on ICT adoption by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the construction industry and with respect to SMEs it is important to understand processes, their indicators, and measures in the local context. Structure of the suggested benchmarking framework has been derived after extensive literature survey and a questionnaire survey conducted in the Indian construction industry. The suggested benchmarking process is an iterative process divided into four stages. It can be implemented at organization and industry levels for rating the construction organizations for ICT adoption and performance measurement. The frame...

Building project management requires effective communication between all project team members and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) constitute the majority of businesses in the building construction sector. A study was recently conducted with respect to SMEs to research their perceived barriers, associated enablers and benefits of effective adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT), in order to improve the management of building projects. A questionnaire survey was carried out in India to assess the importance of each identified perception. Data analysis shows that the industry and organization level barriers and associated enablers are perceived to be very important. Thus, the study identifies strategic actions to be taken by the managers at the industry and organization levels for increasing effective adoption of ICT for building project management. Analysis results have also been utilized for scenario building for ICT adoption within the building industry.