Despite substantial efforts to improve construction safety training, the accident rate of migrant workers is still high. One of the primary factors contributing to the inefficacy of training includes information delivery gaps during training sessions (knowledge-transfer). In addition, there is insufficient evidence that these training programmes alone are effective enough to enable migrant workers to transfer their skills to the jobsite (training-transfer). This research attempts to identify and evaluate additional interventions to improve the transfer of acquired knowledge to the workplace. For this purpose, this study presents the first known experimental effort to assess the effect of interventions on migrant work groups in a multinational construction project in Qatar. Data analysis reveals that the adoption of training programmes with the inclusion of interventions significantly improves training-transfer. Construction safety experts can leverage the findings of this study to enhance training-transfer by increasing workers' safety performance and hazard identification ability.
Detecting intrusion in hazardous areas is one of the priorities and duties of safety enhancement. With the emergence of vision intelligence technology, hazardous-area-detection algorithms can support safety managers in predicting potential hazards and making decisions. However, because of the dynamic and complex nature of the jobsite, high-risk zones have a different geometry and can be changed following the schedule and workspace of activity. This leads to hazardous areas being annotated manually. Thus, this study proposes a computer vision and a 4D BIM-based approach for intrusion detection in hazardous areas, called IDC4D. IDC4D comprises three modules: (1) the 4D BIM-based safety planning (4BSP) module, which analyzes the hazardous area; (2) the hazardous area registration (HAR) module, which delivers the hazardous area from the BIM model to the camera’s first frame image; and (3) the hazardous-area-intrusion-detection module (HAID), which applies the computer vision algorithm to identify the correlation between workers and hazardous areas. The efficiency of the IDC4D approach is validated by testing a maintenance project on the construction site. IDC4D supports the planner in choosing the plan and detecting the event of workers entering hazardous areas while working. It showed an average precision of 93% and 94% in phase 1 and phase 2, respectively. These findings provide insight into how varying geometries of diverse hazard areas can be handled for enhancing intrusion detection.
Construction Progress monitoring noticed recent expansions by adopting vision and laser technologies. However, inspectors need to personally visit the job-site or wait for a time gap to process data captured from the construction site to use for inspection. Recent inspection methods lacks automation and real-time data exchange, therefore, it needs inspection manpower for each job-site, the health risk of physical interaction between workers and inspector, loss of energy, data loss, and time consumption. To address this issue, a near real-time construction work inspection system called iVR is proposed; this system integrates 3D scanning, extended reality, and visual programming to visualize interactive onsite inspection for indoor activities and provide numeric data. The iVR comprises five modules: iVR-location finder (finding laser scanner located in the construction site) iVR-scan (capture point cloud data of job-site indoor activity), iVR-prepare (processes and convert 3D scan data into a 3D model), iVR-inspect (conduct immersive visual reality inspection in construction office), and iVR-feedback (visualize inspection feedback from job-site using augmented reality). An experimental lab test is conducted to verify the applicability of iVR process; it successfully exchanges required information between construction job-site and office in a specific time. This system is expected to assist Engineers and workers in quality assessment, progress assessments, and decision-making which can realize a productive and practical communication platform, unlike conventional monitoring or data capturing, processing, and storage methods, which involve storage, compatibility and time-consumption issues.
Fires pose an enormous threat to human safety and many spectacular fires in under-construction buildings were reported over the past few years. Many construction sites only rely on fire extinguishers, as under-construction buildings do not contain a permanent fire protection system. Traditional safety planning lacks a justified approach for the firefighting equipment installation planning in the construction job site. Even though many government agencies made safety regulations for firefighting equipment installations, it is still a challenge to translate and execute these rules at the job site. Currently, the construction industry is devoted to discovering all the possible applications of Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology in the entire phases of the project life cycle. BIM technology enables the presentation of facilities in 3-D and offers rule-based modeling through visual programming tools. Therefore, this paper focuses on a visual language approach for rule translation and a multi-agent-based construction fire safety planning simulation in BIM. The proposed approach includes three core modules, namely: (a) Rule Extraction and Logic Development (RELD) Module, (b) Design for Construction Fire Safety (DCFS) Module, and (c) Con-fire Safety Plan Simulation (CSPS) Module. In addition, the DCFS module further includes three submodules, named as (1) Firefighting Equipment Installation (FEI) Module, (2) Bill of Quantities (BoQs) for firefighting Equipment (BFE) Module, and (3) Escape Route Plan (ERP) Module. The RELD module converts the OSHA fire safety rule into mathematical logic, and the DCFS module presents the development of the Con-fire Safety Planning approach by translating the rules from mathematical logic into computer-readable language. The three sub-modules of the DCFS module visualize the outputs of this research work. The CSPS module uses a multi-agent simulation to verify the safety rule compliance of the portable firefighting equipment installation plan the system in a BIM environment. A sample project case study has been implemented to validate the proof of concept. It is anticipated that the proposed approach has the potential to helps the designers through its effectiveness and convenience while it could be helpful in the field for practical use.
Construction safety requires real-time monitoring due to its hazardous nature. Existing vision-based monitoring systems classify each frame to identify safe or unsafe scenes, often triggering false alarms due to object misdetection or false detection, which reduces the overall monitoring system’s performance. To overcome this problem, this research introduces a safety monitoring system that leverages a novel temporal-analysis-based algorithm to reduce false alarms. The proposed system comprises three main modules: object detection, rule compliance, and temporal analysis. The system employs a coordination correlation technique to verify personal protective equipment (PPE), even with partially visible workers, overcoming a common monitoring challenge on job sites. The temporal-analysis module is the key component that evaluates multiple frames within a time window, triggering alarms when the hazard threshold is exceeded, thus reducing false alarms. The experimental results demonstrate 95% accuracy and an F1-score in scene classification, with a notable 2.03% average decrease in false alarms during real-time monitoring across five test videos. This study advances knowledge in safety monitoring by introducing and validating a temporal-analysis-based algorithm. This approach not only improves the reliability of safety-rule-compliance checks but also addresses challenges of misdetection and false alarms, thereby enhancing safety management protocols in hazardous environments.