Dilip A Patel

• PhD (Civil Engineering), LL.B., Lead Auditor(OHSMS)
• Professor (Full) at Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology Surat

Purpose The utilization of the new track construction (NTC) machine in the dedicated freight corridor (DFC) project in India proved to be counterproductive due to various uncertain and dynamic factors. This study aims to develop the model and simulate the productivity of the NTC machine considering system dynamic factors encountered during the cons...

Background Manual deconstruction—an alternative to mechanical demolition—is a crucial technique in the building industry that facilitates a circular economy for the built environment and achieves sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, the current body of literature lacks a thorough grasp of the OHS (occupational health and safety) hazards r...

The construction industry generates a lot of construction and demolition waste (CDW), which hinders the sustainable development goals (SDGs) targets. However, CDW materials have gained popularity in the construction sector to address the aggregate shortage. In this regard, the manufacturing of recycled paver blocks (RPB) and its usage in the constr...

In current practice, construction crew productivity (CCP) assessment solely relies on traditional methods like personal judgements or past published data. However, a systematic approach is required to measure and predict the CCP. Modelling with artificial neural networks (ANNs) can be useful for examining interrelationships between factors affectin...

The idea of heritage comprises tangible and intangible aspects of the built environment, culture, and social practices. The standardized ways of recognizing heritage structures often neglect the micro-context and histories of a place. The issue is more relevant in global south cities where urbanization is at its peak. This makes critical conservati...

The construction industry accounts for 24.20% of all accidents in India, resulting in almost 75 accidents daily. Every construction job involves certain risk levels, often resulting in losses such as fatalities, compensation costs, man-hour loss, work delays, and ergonomic disorders in workers. Poor site safety management and hesitation towards ado...

Purpose The work on bridge resilience assessment includes quantitative and qualitative approaches to compare the multiple bridges based on their resilience. But still, the bridge resilience obtained by these assessment approaches is inefficient when prioritising multiple bridges to improve their resilience. Therefore, this study aims to develop a m...

The resilience of a bridge is computed using different quantitative and qualitative assessment methodologies. However, the resilience score obtained by these assessment approaches is insufficient for the decision-makers for setting a priority level for bridges in need of resilience improvement. To address this issue, the present study develops a me...

The assessment of resilience for bridges draws ample attention from bridge engineering and management community in recent years. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are used to assess the resilience of the bridge. However, these approaches can be biased if they obtain bridge resilience scores without considering some essential variables su...

Maintaining public toilets in good condition is essential for public health. Lack of maintenance may render them inefficient and unusable. Overall knowledge of the condition of toilets and prioritising maintenance activities are crucial for optimal enhancement and maintenance. A condition index helps to evaluate the facilities in toilets and catego...

The Indian construction sector provides employment to approximately 51 million people. It is the second-largest employer after the agriculture sector. However, the construction sector is the most hazardous sector across the globe. On average, 38 fatal accidents are reported daily in Indian construction. The main reason behind such a high accident r...

Heritage is the identity of any society, and it should be conserved for the coming generations. Heritage monuments and buildings are seriously threatened by environmental agencies such as moisture, intense solar radiation, prevailing winds, and rain, changing their physical attributes. These environmental agencies cause various defects like spallin...

Heritage plays a fundamental role in maintaining the identity of the city. The character and historical significance of any city is portrayed through its built and cultural heritage. Heritage is the essence of society, and it should be conserved and preserved for future generations. The latest technologies in this digital era become a key governing...

India, owing to its vivid landscapes and cultural heritage attract a great deal of domestic tourists and international travellers. Shimla being a popular hill station, the city attracts a lot of tourists leading to its economic growth on one hand and deterioration of its transportation infrastructure on the other. This paper attempts in showcasing...

Heritage assets play a significant role in India's social, cultural, and economic progress. The heritage sector contributes to the country's economy by providing tourist attractions, maintaining and preserving heritage sites, commercial activities within heritage precincts, and research opportunities. These benefits have drawn considerable attentio...

Cities are the major centers for economic activities and have cultural heritage, reflecting the local community's unique identity. The identification, preservation, conservation, and management of built heritage are essential in the holistic development of an urban area. The history of Aurangabad dates back to the 2 nd century B.C. in proximity to...

The impact of digital technologies to the domain of cultural heritage has increased the speed and automation of the processes and practices that involve processing and presentation of digital heritage data. Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM) and Virtual Reality (VR) can play a key role towards the conservation, preservation, and managem...

Consensus exists on the importance of local identity and diversity in the sustainability discourse, including community resilience. As result, cultural policies are essential to enable sustainability goals. In the construction industry, digital technologies are playing a significant role in flattening the richness and distinctiveness of local conte...

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB, 2016) defines the construction and demolition waste (CDW) as ‘waste generated from the construction, repairing, remodelling or demolition of building etc. which include waste materials, soil, debris etc.’. The CPCB has estimated solid waste generation in India to be around 48 million tonnes per annum of wh...

Urban planners, government officials and business sectors’ vision of the future city have played a key role in shaping urban development. Several themes in urban development vision, policies and practices have recurred in different past and present cities, including growth of infrastructure. Recently, the new General Development Control Regulation...

Purpose Across the architecture, engineering and construction industry, the application of building information modelling (BIM) as a digital technology for architectural heritage is becoming increasingly relevant. However, scholarly research on the application of BIM for architectural heritage is still in its infancy stage and the research gaps and...

This study attempts to model service-headway distribution at manually-operated toll-plaza (MTC) under mixed traffic conditions. To identify the most suitable probability distribution among the selected candidate distributions, Kolmogorov–Smirnov, Anderson-Darling, and chi-squared tests were performed. It is established that Generalized Extreme Valu...

Ceramic tiling has been the most popular and versatile flooring, as well as finishing material for a long time in building construction. The tiles undergo excessive wear and tear with different loading scenarios, as most of the activities are carried out on tiles in a building. It affects the durability of tiles and the service life of tiling work....

Purpose Heritage is the latent part of a sustainable built environment. Conservation and preservation of heritage is one of the United Nations' (UN) sustainable development goals. Many social and natural factors seriously threaten heritage structures by deteriorating and damaging the original. Therefore, regular visual inspection of heritage struct...

Demolition is a dangerous and complex activity which requires sound knowledge. Demolition works involve highly hazardous activities which lead to high risk for workers and surroundings. Moreover, in order to implement of redevelopment policy, many old structures will be demolished in near future in India. Therefore, current demolition practices nee...

With the growing construction works over the world, the waste generated from construction and demolition is increasing at an enormous rate. In India, 50 million tons (MT) of construction and demolition waste (CDW) was generated in 2013. With the passage of time, several obsolete and structurally weak buildings in various cities will need to be demo...

In general, four properties of resilience robustness, rapidity, resourcefulness, and redundancy (4Rs) are associated with technical, organizational, social, and economical (TOSE) dimensions are widely regarded when evaluating the resilience of infrastructure. Currently, bridge resilience is assessed using the factors for the technical dimensions as...

Currently, heritage is challenged in the Indian city of Surat due to diverse pressures, including rapid urbanization, increasing housing demand, and socio-cultural and climate changes. Where rapid demographic growth of urban areas is happening, heritage is disappearing at an alarming rate. Despite some efforts from the local government, urban cultu...

The demand of maintenance management system for buildings and infrastructure is increasing day by day in order to meet the allotted budget. As the maintenance needs are outpacing the budget allocations for planned maintenance, it is essential for the maintenance manager to prioritize the maintenance activities to achieve value for money. Priority s...

The present study attempted to develop a methodology to quickly estimate the level of service (LOS) at manually operated tollbooths where approaching traffic volume is mixed in nature in the same lane. Videography data collected at five toll plazas located in northern and western part of country. The vehicle approaching at toll plaza were divided i...

Level-of-service (LOS) is a key index that reflects the operational condition of the toll-plaza. Although it has been observed that the developed countries have a very effective system at the toll plazas; but, the developing countries are still struggling to achieve the properly managed system that could improve the customer satisfaction at toll pl...

BIM and other digital technologies are increasingly applied to buildings under construction with limited attention to existing and heritage buildings. Recent studies, through a critique of the literature, have sought to analyse the application of BIM in heritage. However, excepting the limited number of these studies, attention is often given to a...

The greenness of a building is measured through green building assessment tools. These tools have limitations because they cannot be applied to all regions. The aim of this research was to develop a green building assessment tool that can rate the greenness of new buildings in India. For this, a study was conducted by adopting nine green building c...

Heterogeneous traffic conditions prevail in all countries across the world, but the degree of heterogeneity is different in developed and developing countries. In the United States, heavy vehicles (trucks and buses) are mixed with passenger cars, whereas more than seven different categories of vehicles in India are observed in the traffic stream. S...

Level of Service (LOS) is an important parameter that reflects the operational condition of the toll plaza. Gaining a better understanding of users’ perception of LOS at toll-plaza can be useful in developing policies for improving service quality. A sample of 1150 respondents has been collected at four toll plazas and analyzed, for users perceived...

Wall collapse is a common problem encountered in India leading to non-fatal and fatal injuries. The collapse could be observed in constructed walls as well as under construction walls, and thus the residents and construction workers both are liable to be injured. A comprehensive understanding of causal factors leading to wall collapse incidents is...

Now a day, preservation of Indian heritage buildings and monuments is a major challenge. Without proper understanding of the heritage sites, historical structures, specifications of materials and construction methods, the preservation of heritage structures becomes difficult and challenging. All relevant tangible and intangible information about he...

The present study attempts to develop service time prediction models for different vehicle categories on toll plazas in India under mixed traffic conditions. Here service time is defined as the time required by a vehicle to pay toll and clear the toll booth. Service time includes the time elapsed in transaction of toll tax and time required by a ve...

This paper presents a vehicle-type-specific headway distribution analysis at toll plazas under mixed traffic conditions. The aim of the paper is to provide headway distribution models that may be used for traffic flow analysis and traffic management at tollbooths. Seven classes of vehicle and a total of 49 combinations of leader–follower vehicles w...

In India, the construction industry is the second largest after agriculture, accounting for roughly 5-6% of the gross domestic product. Therefore, sustainable construction plays an effective role to maintain a sustainable environment. Green building rating system provides a functional framework for evaluating building environmental performance and...

Hazard evaluation is a critical task in safety management of construction projects because of their characteristics and dynamics. This study provides a framework to evaluate the project hazard index (PHI), which represents the hazard level of a construction project by using the possibility approach (fuzzy set theory). To achieve this objective, the...

The construction sector is very hazardous across the globe. However, in some countries there is an absence of standard recording and notifications system for construction accidents while in countries such as India, the systems exist but their implementation is an issue. In both cases, statistics on construction accidents are either unavailable or h...

The safety climate of an organization influences employees’ safe work behavior. It is essential for project management to be aware of any unsafe work behavior of their workers on a project and to take any necessary remedial measures to reduce the likelihood of accidents. This study aims to predict and evaluate the work behavior of employees on cons...

The safety climate of an organization influences employees’ safe work behavior. It is essential for project management to be aware of any unsafe work behavior of their workers on a project and to take any necessary remedial measures to reduce the likelihood of accidents. This study aims to predict and evaluate the work behavior of employees on cons...

The construction sector is known as one of the most hazardous work places worldwide. Hazard identification and its assessment are the most important tasks of safety management. Based on a review of the existing literature, this study identifies 10 hazardous trades and their 39 attributes to assess the project hazard level. Most of the existing stud...

Safety performance in construction projects is attributed to many determinants (factors) in a safety system. This study identifies various directly or indirectly related determinants and their effects on safety performance of construction projects. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), this study empirically examines the effect of safety climat...

Safety climate is a snapshot of the safety culture of any organization and it is dynamic in nature. It reflects the employees’ perceptions and attitude towards the existing safety practices in construction projects. The main goal of this paper is to evaluate and differentiate construction projects based on their safety climate and to determine the...

A model has been developed employing an artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the safe work behavior of employees using 10 safety climate constructs determined through literature review. The model utilizes safety climate constructs (determinants) as inputs and safe work behavior as an output. Two hundred twenty-two responses from several const...

Safety climate is one of the indicators of safety performance of a construction project. It is a "snapshot" of the safety culture of any organization, and it is dynamic in nature. It reflects the employees' perceptions and attitudes toward the existing safety condition at the construction sites. The important constructs for the safety climate are d...

Construction safety management in any country is highly influenced by its legislation. Construction safety management is not adequate in India. The objective of this paper is to study important legislation on safety in two countries: the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996 of Ind...

Construction projects in India do not have very high safety performances. The role of employer is very important in construction safety management in any country. It is highly influenced by its legislation. This has motivated the authors to study the construction safety legislation applicable in Indian construction industry and to study the role of...