Problems and Challenges Facing the Construction Industry

troubles and Ch wholly toldenges Facing the verbal expression effortThere atomic number 18 numerous important challenges facing todays plait effort that be motivating the word sense of new technologies such as RFID and sensors technology. Some ar new to the industriousness, and some are centuries old. Many of these challenges are a direct result of construction operations, while others a result of indirect, peripheral activities. Some of the construction issues include workforce considerations, safety, time constraints, and the changing nature of the work. Non-construction challenges that construction industry faces that are part of the avocation landscape include legal issues, government regulations, environmental concerns, and socio-political pressures. Also in addition to these challenges, the construction industry is highly competitive, and firms must continually improve their productivity to remain competitive. At present, a chronic puzzle in the construction industry that requires urgent attention is construction tally arrange. The construction allow train network screwing be classified as a big and complex organisation that is laborious to manage. This is because the operations or activities involved in the construction network consist of multidiscipline groups and tasks. The concept of supply set up steering is ab start managing instruction and material flows, plant operations, and logistics through a common set of principles, strategies, policies and murder metrics throughout its developmental life cycle. As part of the back bone for the supply chain processes, the logistics play a critical role in optimizing the flow of materials, equipment and people. The construction logistics is one of the significant management factors in straddle to precede construction find out. If materials which are needed in construction be sick do non supply in right place on time, it can make problems such as delaying schedule, increasing the salut e of construction and reducing productivity. The identification of material, identifying materials moving flow in logistics and tracking materials position are needed for successful assure management in construction.A report Improving kink Logistics published by the Strategic Forum for Construction in August 2005 revealed that quite a goodly amount of barbarian produced in the construction is caused by poor management of materials bringing function (e.g. from supply logistics to site logistics), inventory, communications and human resources. The consequences of poor construction-logistics are the following setback about 30% of losings in overall construction cost, contributing to the bad image of the industry, poor quality of product, increased project duration and added risks to workers health and safety. The use of entropy Technology (IT) and learning from other industries were part of the recommendation and feat plans suggested by the Strategic Forum committee for better logistics processes. Jang et al (2003) and Rebolj et al (2008) also suggested that a enormous deal of improving the construction-logistics must be focused on the materials and information manner of speaking in order to achieve better productivity, avoiding delays and reducing waste. In contrast to manufacturing industries, which profit from long-lasting partnership with suppliers and customers, construction-logistics supply durance are considerably more difficult to manage and optimize imputable to various factors such as diversification of projects (i.e. various materials, methods, project location) and technical complexity of a project.ReferencesAhuja V. and Yang J. (2005) Towards IT Enabled Supply Chain conferences in Construction Project Management, International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management in a global Economy, May 2005, pp. 289-302Ribeiro F. L. And Lopes J. (2001) Construction Supply Chain Integration over the Internet and WebTechnology, seventeenth ARCOM Annual Conference, Association of Researchers in Construction Management, Salford, Reading, Vol.1, pp. 241-252, September 2001.Jang H., Russell J.S. and Yi J. S. (2003) A Project Managers Level of Satisfaction in Construction Logistics, Can. J. Civ. Eng. 30, pp. 1133-1142 (2003)Rebolj D., Babic N. C., Magdic A. Podbreznik P. and Psunder M. (2008) Automated Construction Activity Monitoring System, innovative Engineering Informatics.Balqis Omar, Tabarak Ballal, INTELLIGENT WIRELESS entanglement SERVICES CONTEXT-AWARE COMPUTING IN CONSTRUCTION-LOGISTICS issue CHAIN. Journal of Information Technology in Construction, ITcon Vol. 14 (2009), pg. 289-pg. 308- dissipated development in information and communication technology (ICT) has emerged as a key driver and therefrom provided the opportunity for construction companies to be more sensitive towards their business strategy and productivity (Ahuja and Yang, 2005, Ribeiro and Lopes, 2001). The amount of project information and in formation generated during construction periods are enormous and uncontrolled due to the nature of fragility in the construction processes. The traditional paper-intensive method of processing and transferring data and information is still being practised due to high investment capital cost on ICT facilities, lack of supporting interoperability between hardware-software within organisations and socialisation of most construction organisations.Communication technology, materials handling, transportation and warehousing are known as the critical services that serve the logistics operation processes. These include services in facilitating Just-In- Time (JIT) operation, optimising the movement of raw materials, work in-process and immaculate goods, optimising the transportation mode and locating and designing facilities to meet customer service levels respectively.-One of the recent predominant issues that prevail been a growing concern in the construction industry is the role of lo gistics in managing the supply chain (ERABUILD, 2006). Logistics, appropriate or inappropriate, to a great extent influences the efficiency of construction activities with materials and equipment being all important(p) building blocks of construction projects. Among the elements that comprise the construction process, construction materials may account for 50-60 per cent of the total cost of a project and most directly represent project mature (Song 2005, Song et al. 2006). Successful delivery and subsequent distribution of these materials to various interconnected points where they are required is an important aspect of the overall project duration.Intensecomp (2005) reported that a wrong delivery arrangement of materials causes general trouble oneself on construction sites. This disorder is often accompanied by a need for unplanned facilities and/or activities such as supernumerary site storage, work interruption, extra handling, breakage, and loss. Similar challenges were als o reported by the Strategic Forum for Construction in 2005. The report suggests that 50% of skilled craftsmen time is spent on unskilled tasks, time that they could have otherwise devoted to supervising workers. A research by BSRIA noted in this report shows that 10% of working hours on site is wasted due to inefficient logistics management. The effects of the logistic related waste thus result in 30% of extra construction cost and exceeded project duration.Other industries account on and are progressively improving efficiency in logistics to achieve smooth processes, programme demonstration and cost predictability. Honda-UK Manufacturing Ltd (HUM) for instance has initiated what could be one of the largest Ultra-High-Frequency (UHF) Radio Frequency naming (RFID) installations in the automotive industry (Bacheldor 2006). The company used the technology to track components as they traverse HUMs supply chain, moving from suppliers through out Europe to HUMs manufacturing plant in E ngland. In the similar way an RFID smart box developed by DHL in conjunction with the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation can tell users what it contents are, and with Global Positioning System (GPS) and later, Galileo where it is located. The system can identify the boxs cargo and location, as well as ingrained environmental conditions (Wessel 2007).ReferencesSong, J. (2005). track the Location of Materials on Construction Projects, Ph.D. Diss.,Graduate School, the University of Texas at Austin.Intensecomp Pte Ltd. (2004). Construction Material Tracking System Bringing ComplexTasks to Simple Routine, 5pp.Smith, H. and Konsynsky, B. (2003). Developments in Practice X Radio FrequencyIdentification (RFID)-An Internet for Physical Objects. Communication Association forInformation System, 12, 301-311.Wessel, R. (2007). DHL to Market RFID Enabling Smart Box. RFID Journal (available athtt//www.rfidjournal/article/articlereview/2945/)Bacheldor, B. (2006). Honda UK To Track Component Through The Supply Chain. RFIDJournal (available at htt//www.rfidjournal/article/articlereview/2703/.Milan Radosavljevic , Dauda Dan-Asabe, HOW COULD CONSTRUCTION SUPPLY CHAIN BENEFIT FROM RFID/GPS INTEGRATION A KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE, CIB W102 3rd International Conference 2007.Information technology (IT) is important in successfully controlling and managing construction projects, particularly in enhancing communication and coordination among participants. Communication and coordination must be maintained to support resource and competency sharing within the network of a construction chain or the construction chain network. Furthermore, integrating promising information technologies such as personal digital assistants (PDA), radio frequency identification (RFID) scanning and data entry mechanisms can sponsor improve the effectiveness and convenience of information flow in construction supply chain systems.Problem statementsProject management and contro l performance can be enhanced by enabling participants to percent information with each other. However, two major key aspects of information sharing are information learning and information communication. Information acquisition problems in a construction project follow from most of the data and information being gathered from the construction site, which is an extension of the construction chain. The effectiveness of information and data acquisition influences the information flow between the office and the construction site. However, on-the-spot(prenominal) engineers generally use written documents, drawings, contracts, specifications and rat drawings for job sites. Consequently, a time and space gap between the job site and the office causes duplicate of data and information, lack of data and information, and associated confusion. Restated, existing means of processing information and accumulating data are not only time-consuming and expensive, but also compromise project m anagement performance in information acquisition.Furthermore, construction contractors normally depend on interactions via telephone or fax to communicate with suppliers, subcontractors and designers. Consequently, transactions are frequently lost or misunderstood. Such means of communicating information between sites and offices, and among all participants, are ineffective and inconvenient.System implementationThis section illustrates the implementation and staff of the RFID-enabled PDAs system. line management moduleThe Inventory management module is an easy-access and portable environment in which on-site engineers can trace and record all information on the status of materials in the warehouse or on the scheduled delivery list. This module enables on-site engineers to improve inventory management on construction sites.Quality and inspection moduleon-site engineers can download the most up-to-date quality tests from the Internet, and can enclose test results directly via PDA. A dditionally, PDAs demonstrate the code and/or checklist for each important component and work. On-site engineers also can plot impossible positions on a drawing and choose relevant items from the lists in the PDA. The module has the advantage that on-site engineers can enter/edit quality and inspection test result on the construction site and all test records can be communicated between the PDA and the portal via real-time synchronization, eliminating the need to repeatedly enter the same data.Progress monitor moduleThis module is designed to help managers and on-site engineers monitor the progress of the key components. Furthermore, managers, on-site engineers and project related participants can share the current progress or delivery condition of these critical works and components. The schedule management module provides an easy-access and portable environment in which on-site engineers can trace and record all information on the status of components delivered to the warehouse or on scheduled for delivery.ReferencesLung-Chuang Wang a, Yu-Cheng Lin a,*, Pao H. LinDynamic mobile RFID-based supply chain control and management system in construction.Advanced Engineering Informatics 21 (2007) 377-390