Abdullah Alsharef

• Ph.D.
• Assistant Professor at King Saud University

Construction activities in Saudi Arabia have surged due to Vision 2030 programs, driving a widespread transformation. However, the pile construction sector still faces significant time and cost overruns, negatively impacting all stakeholders. Few studies have assessed the risks of pile installation by linking qualitative data on the time and cost o...

Construction meetings are essential for bringing together project participants to coordinate efforts, identify problems, and make decisions. Previous studies on meeting analysis relied on manual approaches to identify isolated pieces of information but struggled with providing a high-level overview that targeted real-time problem identification...

Image classification is increasingly being utilized on construction sites to automate project monitoring, driven by advancements in reality-capture technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). Deploying real-time applications remains a challenge due to the limited computing resources available on-site, particularly on remote construction sites th...

Sleep deprivation is a critical issue that affects workers in numerous industries, including construction. It adversely affects workers and can lead to significant concerns regarding their health, safety, and overall job performance. Several studies have investigated the effects of sleep deprivation on safety and productivity. Although the impact o...

The purpose of the investigation was to evaluate the utility of ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art language model developed by Open AI, in the context of civil engineering education. To achieve this objective, 44 civil engineering students from a large state university in the United States were recruited and asked to respond to three questions pertaining...

Transportation projects are notorious, among both the public and transportation professionals, for missing their intended cost and schedule targets as a result of project complexity and uncertainties. The significant discrepancy between cost estimates and final project costs remains a major concern for state Departments of Transportation (DOTs). Se...

The maintainability of sewer infrastructure systems is vital for public health, environmental protection, and the overall well-being of communities. However, maintenance and repair activities for sewer pipelines are often constrained, leading to challenges in effectively managing such infrastructures. To address these challenges, this study assesse...

Pile construction projects cause significant time and expense overruns. The pile installation activity is the primary reason for project underperformance and uncertainties. Additionally, the risks associated with pile installation are mostly considered independent in the overall risk management process, leading to inadequate risk assessment and res...

Proper hazard recognition is fundamental to effective safety management in construction workplaces. Nevertheless, poor hazard recognition levels are a widespread and persistent problem in the construction industry. For example, recent investigations have demonstrated that a significant number of workplace hazards often remain unrecognized in constr...

Construction workers sustain a large number of work-related injuries. These injuries sometimes result in irreversible damage, life-long disability, and even the loss of life. Therefore, strategic initiatives to reduce work-related injuries are necessary. To help achieve this goal, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently in...

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the largest global crisis in recent decades. Apart from the countless deaths and health emergencies, the pandemic has disrupted several industries—including construction. For example, a significant number of construction projects have been interrupted, delayed, and even abandoned. In such emergencies, information gath...

Driver license examiners serve as the “gatekeepers” to the world of driving. These examiners administer driving tests and issue driver licenses to prospective drivers that demonstrate driving competency. Unfortunately, this community of workers is vulnerable to experiencing safety incidents as they test prospective drivers with limited driving prof...

Poor hazard recognition is a significant safety issue in the construction industry. Past research efforts have focused on assessing, developing, and improving the hazard recognition skill of construction workers. However, much of this useful information is fragmented and dispersed across the broader literature. The current article focuses on summar...

Driver license examiners serve as the first line of defense against unsafe drivers and driving practices. Nonetheless, these examiners themselves are exposed to high levels of safety risk as they test new drivers – with limited driving proficiency and experience. A deeper understanding of the safety incidents that driver license examiners experienc...

Valuable lessons learned and best practices gleaned from construction projects often do not transfer to future generations because of the lack of a formalized process. This ongoing issue gives rise to the need to impart fresh training to new North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) employees once the aging workforce retires or in the eve...

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the largest global health crisis in decades. Apart from the unprecedented number of deaths and hospitalizations, the pandemic has resulted in economic slowdowns, widespread business disruptions, and significant hardships. This study focused on investigating the early impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the U.S. constr...

Construction workers fail to recognize a large number of safety hazards. These unrecognized safety hazards can lead to unintended hazard exposure and tragic safety incidents. Unfortunately, traditional hazard recognition interventions (e.g., job hazard analyses and safety training) have been unable to tackle the industry-wide problem of poor hazard...

Environmental regulations can greatly affect the operation of new and existing infrastructure projects. In fact, the economic performance of infrastructure projects is closely related to environmental regulations whose landscape is extremely dynamic. To assist infrastructure project sectors in better coping with environmental regulatory changes, th...

This paper presents a case study of a proposed regulatory future-proofing framework for the construction industry. The update to the crystalline silica standard by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was selected and reviewed. The standard applies uniformly to the entire construction industry and experienced typical areas of re...

Infrastructure projects experience different regulatory impacts during permitting, operations, and decommissioning. However, no framework is in place to provide a foundation for infrastructure operators and administrators to take advantage of the opportunities (e.g., gain competitive advantage) and cope with the risks (e.g., risk of noncompliance)...

Much of the construction safety research has focused on designing, developing, and delivering training interventions. However, desirable levels of safety performance have not been achieved; and poor safety performance continues to be a global issue in the construction industry. In fact, evidence suggests that the bulk of training investments do not...

Changes to the regulatory environment in which capital projects are planned, executed, and operated have led to uncertainty, delayed decisions, and costly disruptions. The objective of this study is to help construction industry organizations better deal with regulatory impacts throughout their capital projects. To this end, various data, informati...

Project personnel working in construction sites fail to transfer invaluable experiences gained mostly due to the absence of a formalized process to record such information. Construction projects are seldom repetitive in nature and this highlights the need for organizations to have in place robust data repositories to facilitate knowledge sharing. T...

Valuable lessons and best practices learned from construction projects often fail to get transferred to future generations due to the lack of a formalized process. This perpetual problem gives rise to the need of imparting fresh training to new inductees once the aging workforce retires or in the event of turnover in an organization. This paper aim...

Regulations, regulatory changes, and uncertainty can have profound effects on capital facilities during h new and existing capital projects are vulnerable to newly imposed, existing or revised regulations. Regulatory compliance can cause a significant amount of disruption to capital facilities and thus its impact should be evaluated. This paper ass...

North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) projects with construction costs of $50 million or more, known as mega projects, make up more than 50% of their total construction expenditures while representing less than 10% of the total project count. The estimated let dates and construction expenditures for these projects can vary significant...

North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) projects with construction costs of $50 million or more, known as mega projects, make up more than 50% of their total construction expenditures while representing less than 10% of the total project count. The estimated let dates and construction expenditures for these projects can vary significant...