Yihai Fang

• Ph.D.
• Senior Lecturer at Monash University (Australia)

Accurate progress measurement in concrete pouring is essential to prevent project delays and material waste. This paper introduces a knowledge graph (KG)-enhanced computer vision (CV) method to improve the accuracy and generalizability of traditional methods used in concrete pouring monitoring, which often struggle to integrate contextual data. By...

Activity levels are crucial in thermal comfort (TC) studies, and specific activities determine the choice of visuals in building design for users. This research presents a pilot study for the experimental design to assess comparability between visual scenarios and TC in controlled settings under different activity intensities for an immersive virtu...

The role of social media in construction site management is not thoroughly understood, particularly in its capacity to influence team dynamics and performance. This study investigates the impact of social media use (SMU) on team feedback (TF), knowledge sharing (KS), and member support (MS) within construction site teams in Australia. Drawing from...

The rising importance of cranes in modern construction has led to the need for more efficient crane monitoring and operational management. Previous studies have focused on acquiring crane monitoring data through Internet of Things (IoT) devices. However, they offer limited data reasoning capacity and only understand a few particular construction ac...

The application of the Electroencephalogram (EEG) technology shows promises in uncovering workers' cognitive processes affecting safety performance in construction. Despite the increasing interest in research, it is yet challenging to ensure coherence and mitigate biases when interpreting safety cognition from EEG data. This paper presents a compre...

Crane-related accidents often occur due to failure in timely and accurate hazard identification. Virtual Reality (VR) technology facilitates immersive environments for improving hazard identification without real-world consequences. However, the impact of simulation fidelity on hazard identification performance, particularly for novice crane operat...

The construction industry faces significant supply chain risks, necessitating effective management strategies. This paper presents a novel approach using transformer-based models for Named Entity Recognition (NER) to identify risk-related entities within construction supply chain management (SCRM) from news articles. It specifically explores the ef...

This study investigates the critical role of supply chain risk management (SCRM) as a factor for growth and competitive advantage in project management. While there is extensive literature on risk management, there is a notable gap in the development of a comprehensive risk taxonomy tailored to project management supply chains. Through a systematic...

Thermal comfort is a complex issue in the built environment due to the physiological and psychological differences of each individual in a building. There is a growing worry over the environmental implications of energy use as a result of the warming of the global climate and the growth in the number of instances of extreme weather events. Many rev...

Risk management in construction projects requires effective construction supply chain risk management (CSCRM). To gain insights into CSCRM research, this paper conducts a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis covering the period from 1999 to 2023. The findings of this comprehensive analysis shed light on various aspects, including...

Remote building inspections are expected to reduce the time and travel needs required by traditional in-person inspections while maintaining (or enhancing) the integrity and rigor of the inspection process and outcome. However, the effectiveness and suitability of technologies for remote building inspections are not fully understood and rigorously...

Purpose In the realm of construction education, the investigation of immersive learning and extended reality (XR) technologies has experienced a surge in recent times. Nevertheless, there remains a notable lack of comprehension surrounding the most efficient ways to integrate these technologies into tailored teaching approaches for vocational const...

This systematic literature review examines the effects of social media use (SMU) and practices (SMPs) on team feedback (TF) and performance (TP) within the context of construction project management. It explores the complex interactions between SMU and SMPs and their impact on communication, collaboration, and stakeholder involvement in constructio...

In the Australian construction industry, effective supply chain risk management (SCRM) is critical due to its complex networks and susceptibility to various risks. This study explores the application of transformer models like BERT, RoBERTa, DistilBERT, ALBERT, and ELECTRA for Named Entity Recognition (NER) in this context. Utilizing these models,...

This systematic literature review explores the impact of social media use (SMU) and practices (SMPs) on team feedback (TF) and performance (TP) in construction project management. The study delves into the intricate dynamics between SMU and SMPs and their influence on communication, collaboration, and stakeholder engagement within construction proj...

In the animal kingdom, a mutually-beneficial ecosystemic coexistence and partnership in predation between wolves and ravens, known as the wolf-bird relationship, is observed in various cultures. The Wolf-Bird Optimizer (WBO), a novel metaheuristic algorithm inspired by this natural zoological relationship, is proposed. This method is developed base...

The construction industry in Australia is characterized by its intricate supply chains and vulnerability to myriad risks. As such, effective supply chain risk management (SCRM) becomes imperative. This paper employs different transformer models, and train for Named Entity Recognition (NER) in the context of Australian construction SCRM. Utilizing N...

The critical path coordinates and supports construction planning and execution, and defines the prioritisation and interdependence of tasks. The resulting build program establishes a timeline, informed by the production modes, plans and management practices. New building production systems and planning arrangements have only partially resulted in a...

Emerging remote inspection technologies are addressing the challenges of conventional building work inspections by reducing time, cost, and safety risks for inspectors, while also improving overall effectiveness. These technologies involve data collection, information extraction, and compliance checks, highlighting the need for a comprehensive unde...

Considering the widespread use of social media throughout many business operations, social media use is a growing field of interest. Studies of professional networks highlight the use of social media for member support, profile and relationship building enabling new dimensions of reach and transparency.Typicial limitating highlights are the threat...

Purpose The construction industry has actively attempted to tackle the low-productivity issues arising from inefficient construction planning. It is imperative to understand how construction practitioners perceive technology integration in construction planning in light of emerging technologies. This study intended to uncover unique experimental fi...

The construction industry is one of the world's largest industries, with an annual budget of $10 trillion globally. Despite its size, the efficiency and growth in labour productivity in the construction industry have been relatively low compared to other sectors, such as manufacturing and agriculture. To this extent, many studies have recognised th...

Reciprocal frame (RF) structures were developed in this work using pultruded glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) members and the formulation of mathematical model for geometric forming and capacity design of such structures were presented. Firstly, governing geometric relationships are identified for the height, span and slope of the RF structure...

The construction industry has actively attempted to tackle the low-productivity issues arising from inefficient construction planning. With new emerging technologies, there is a need to comprehend how construction practitioners perceive the functionality of technology integration in construction planning. This study intended to uncover unique exper...

Tower cranes play an essential role in the execution of most construction projects. Unfortunately, they are also a major source of fatalities and injuries in the industry, owing to their great mass and large footprint on the site. Aiming to proactively identify and mitigate safety hazards in the design and planning stage, Prevention through Design...

Predictive maintenance (PdM) is a technique that employs data-driven analysis to detect anomalous working conditions and predict future failure risks of assets. Despite wide applications in the manufacturing and oil and gas industries, the application of PdM in infrastructure facilities, such as wastewater treatment plants, is scarce. Recent advent...

Lifting operations of mobile cranes are one of the commonly-seen and most important activities for prefabrication housing production (PHP) on sites. However, relevant operations are normally based on the experience of operators or project managers, this often leads to low efficiency as well as high accident rate due to dynamic and complex construct...

Safe and efficient crane operations play a significant role in successful delivery of construction projects, and thus meticulous planning of crane lifts becomes increasingly critical. Crane lift planning involves a series of complex decisions to be made, while satisfying a wide range of criteria and constraints. Conventionally, making these decisio...

Accurate and timely information about construction processes is essential to provide greater visibility and understanding of project progress and therefore deliver the projects on time and on budget. This project has made significant advances in the knowledge and practice of acquiring and managing real-time operation data. More specific objectives...

Safe and efficient operations of cranes in complex construction environments require thorough planning of lift paths. As the scales of construction projects expand, path planning becomes excessively sophisticated and laborious using conventional practices where lift paths are verified manually. This study proposes a novel practicality and safety-aw...

Recent years have seen growing interests in developing and applying computer vision technologies to solve safety problems in the construction industry. Despite the technological advancements, there is no research that exams the theoretical links between computer vision technology and safety science and management. Thus, the objectives of this paper...

The assembly of modular construction requires a series of thoroughly-considered decisions for crane lifting including the crane model selection, crane location planning, and lift path planning. Traditionally, this decision-making process is empirical and time-consuming, requiring significant human inputs. Recently, research efforts have been dedica...

The construction of buildings and infrastructure systems increasingly rely on the extensive use of cranes to transport and erect large and heavy components and modules. Although modern cranes are equipped with various sensors and on-board computers to detect overloading and overturning, crane operators primarily rely on their own experience and kno...

Mobile cranes are widely applied in the construction industry all over the world. As a central component performing lifting operations and maneuvering heavy loads over long spans, mobile cranes account for a large number of accidents on construction sites. One of the main reasons behind these accidents is due to the operator’s lack of visibility of...

Building Information Modeling (BIM) generates accurate information in an explicit way and allows project stakeholders to easily access information of various types, greatly promoting information transparency during the lifecycle of a facility. Information transparency brings a number of benefits but potentially influences contractors' interests by...

Modular construction has gained increasing popularity, to various extents, in both building and infrastructure projects with the merits of accelerated schedules, improved quality, and reduced cost and waste. The successful delivery of modular projects heavily relies on safe and efficient on-site assembly of prefabricated modules, and this job is pr...

Crane lift operations are human-centric tasks where lift safety heavily relies on the operator's awareness of potential spatial constraints and associated safety risks. Blind lifts on congested offshore platform (OP) environments, therefore, are inherently dangerous because of substantial presence of spatial conflicts in the crane workspace and the...

Unmanned aerial/ground vehicles (UAV/UGV) can be a useful means of obtaining 3D geographic data of complex construction sites because of their superior advantages of site accessibility and remote controllability. However, both technologies have individual disadvantages caused by their limited field of view. Especially, the accuracy of vertical elem...

Crane lift operations are human-centric tasks where lift safety heavily relies on the operator’s awareness of potential spatial constraints and associated safety risks. Blind lifts on congested offshore platform (OP) environments, therefore, are inherently dangerous because of the substantial presence of spatial conflicts in the crane workspace and...

Construction is considered one of the most hazardous industry sectors due to the high accident rates encountered. Mobile cranes, as an essential component in many construction projects, are associated with a large number of injuries and fatalities. Although numerous safety measures have been undertaken and stricter safety regulations have come into...

Various ways of improving mobile crane safety on construction sites have been introduced and adopted, such as visualisation of mobile crane operations, algorithm-based lift planning and spatial conflict identification. However, these focus only on either planning or monitoring aspects – there is no effective method for planning and monitoring mobil...

Mobile cranes, as an integral component in lifting operations, are widely used in the construction industry all over the world. Unfortunately, mobile cranes are also associated with a large proportion of construction fatalities. Despite the complexity and dynamic nature of crane operations, a clear understanding of crane failure modes and their con...

Most decision making in construction projects is accomplished by human beings based on manually collected information. This process is labor-intensive, error-prone, and heavily reliant on the knowledge and experience of the decision makers as well as the quality and reliability of the available information. Cyber-physical systems (CPS) offer the po...

3D object recognition from field-acquired point cloud data is important for modelling, manipulation, visualization and other post-processing tasks in the construction domain. However, building semantically-rich models from raw point cloud data is a difficult task due to the high volume of unstructured information as well as confounding factors such...

Equipment operators play an integral role in the safe and efficient operation of heavy equipment. They observe the environment, understand the situation, and make decisions and actions accordingly. Compared with other types of equipment, operating a crane is more sophisticated and mentally demanding, and thus crane operators are more vulnerable to...

Crane operators often face poor visibility and collision hazards during lifting operations. Dynamic 3D modeling of the crane workspace helps to alleviate this by identifying potential collision hazards and offering visual assistance and feedback in real-time to the operator. This research proposes a real-time 3D crane modeling and updating framewor...

Forming semantically-rich 3D models of buildings from point clouds conveys vital as-built information that support applications such as construction quality assessment and control, construction progress tracking and infrastructure asset management. Conventional scan-to-BIM techniques rely on registration of scanned data with as-designed BIM objects...

In the construction domain, previous efforts in utilizing Virtual Reality (VR) mainly focused on training and education, pre-planning, and simulation. The understanding of their benefits in real-time applications during the construction phase is scarce. This research presents an approach to leverage VR for real-time sensor data visualization for th...

Operating a crane is a sophisticated job that not only requires extensive skills and experience, but more importantly a comprehensive understanding of the conditions of the crane and its surrounding environment throughout the operation. To enhance lift safety, various real-time assistance systems have been introduced to provide operators with criti...

Recognizing construction assets (e.g., materials, equipment, labors) from point cloud data of construction environments provides essential information for engineering and management applications including progress monitoring, safety management, supply-chain management, and quality control. This study introduces a novel Principal Axes Descriptor (PA...

Despite many safety considerations addressed in lift pre-planning, the ability to provide real-time safety assistance to crane operators and to mitigate human errors during the lifting operation is missing. This research developed a framework for real-time pro-active safety assistance for mobile crane lifting operations. First, crane poses are reco...

Modeling as-is site condition and tracking the three-dimensional (3D) location of mobile assets (e.g., worker, equipment, material) are essential for various construction applications such as progress monitoring, quality control and safety management. Many efforts have been dedicated to vision-based technologies due to their merits in cost-effectiv...

Many crane accidents occur due to a lack of understanding of potential constraints present on lift sites, especially the spatial conflicts with inadequate clearance to surrounding obstructions. Even the most thorough lift plans can be compromised by changes in lift sites such as a newly-erected frame in the crane workspace or a sudden presence of a...

Recognizing construction assets from as-is point cloud data of construction environment provides essential information for engineering and management applications including progress monitoring, safety management, supply-chain management, and quality control. This study proposes a fast and automated processing pipeline for construction target assets...

With the rapid advancement of sensing and computing technology and the wide adoption of mobile computing, the construction industry has faced a rise in the amount of information and data generated during the lifecycle of the construction project. To deal with a large variety of project data and information to support efficient and effective decisio...

In the field of construction, indoor localization of mobile construction resources remains a universal challenge. Although discussions have focused on the tracking accuracy and affordability of indoor localization technologies, few efforts have focused on practical criteria such as ease of use, latency, and data visualization and remote sharing. To...

High injury and fatality rates remain a serious problem in the construction industry. Many construction injuries and fatalities can be prevented if workers can recognize potential hazards and take actions in time. Many efforts have been devoted in improving workers’ ability of hazard recognition through various safety training and education methods...

Crane operation is one of the most essential activities on construction sites. However, operating a crane is a sophisticated job which requires the operator to have extensive skills and experience, and most importantly a comprehensive understanding of crane motions. Besides typical crane motions such as boom slew, hoist, and extension, monitoring a...

As one of the most expensive and frequently used resources, cranes play an essential role in the operation of activities on construction sites. They require certified operators whose knowledge of codes and regulations is essential for safe and productive lift tasks. Blind spots pose a significant issue for crane operators as they limit the crane op...

Although hands-on practices are considered the most effective training method for crane operators, they are always expensive and dangerous to be performed at the actual worksite. As an alternative, virtual reality and simulator technology provide a close-to-reality experience in lifting operation while minimizing costs and hazards. However, the vir...

Most construction worker education and training environments apply traditional teaching methods to educate workers about hazards and productivity in the workplace. Many rely on using conventional teacher–student classroom settings, but there are few effective interactive methods applied which can objectively engage trainer and trainees and assess t...