Zeeshan Aziz

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at University of Salford

Due to increase in IoT devices, the data produced every day are also increasing rapidly. The growth in data means more processing and more computations are required without delay. This introduced us to a new horizon of the computing infrastructure, i.e., edge computing. Edge computing gained prominence as a solution to the problem of delayed transm...

Purpose This paper aims to develop a crisis readiness framework for road traffic crisis response for law enforcement agencies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Design/methodology/approach A Delphi method was used that combined questionnaire-based survey and the analytical hierarchy process to collect quantitative and qualitative data from an expe...

In parallel with China's growing construction market, there has been an influx of foreign architectural and engineering design firms into the Chinese construction market. Those firms generally form partnerships with local Chinese firms or institutions to overcome various complications in the country. Adding to the complexity, relatively recent tech...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the current challenges and drivers for data mining in the AEC sector. Design/methodology/approach Following a comprehensive literature review, the data mining concept was investigated through a workshop with industry experts and academics. Findings The results showed that the key drivers for using d...

Implementation and integration of sustainable development within a management framework is the main problem of urban regeneration projects. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a sustainable heritage-led urban regeneration planning framework, which will act as an urban regeneration project life cycle model and aid sustainable planning and decision...

Urbanisation is transforming human societies in many ways. Besides bringing benefits to people in cities, it also has negative impacts such as food security. One way to meet the challenge is urban agriculture; however, traditional agricultural practices are not suitable within urban areas due to limited availability of land. Therefore, the alternat...

The interest in lean thinking in the UK’s civil construction industry is on the rise. The research presented in the paper evaluates the adoption of lean thinking in the highways construction sector by investigating 7 motivation factors, 20 lean techniques and 16 barriers through in-depth interviews with 20 sector managers and a questionnaire survey...

The aim of this study is to identify the parameters defining how Lean Construction (LC) is being implemented (current condition) and how LC can be further promoted (future direction) from a Small-Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) perspective. Although SMEs constitute the largest group in construction supply chains, LC, as an emerging phenomenon in ci...

Lean construction and construction automation are two of the important efforts to improve the performance of the construction industry. However, apart from a small number of scholarly articles and implementation prototypes, the lean and digital construction movements seem to be largely running independent of each other. This paper aims at exploring...

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the current condition of the Big Data concept with its related barriers, drivers, opportunities and perceptions in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry with an emphasis on facilities management (FM). Design/methodology/approach – Following a comprehensive literature review, the Big Data...

Purpose Effective management of highways requires management of diverse data sets including traffic volume data, roadway, and road edge and road-side data. Like all major infrastructure clients, highways administration authorities are under pressure to use such platforms for better management of data that, in addition to creating other opportuniti...

Lean Construction (LC) is under the spotlight to improve the overall performance of civil construction projects in England. A strategic target of public clients is to effectively extend the current LC efforts, which have been mainly led by large companies to date, across small-medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper presents a summary of the in...

Purpose The Highways Infrastructure is one of the most valuable asset owned by the public sector. Efficient operations of Highways have the success of national and local economies as well as quality of life of the general public, dependent on it. Ensuring smooth traffic operations requires maintenance and improvements of the highest standard. This...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current visual management (VM) practices in highways construction projects in England. Design/methodology/approach – Following a comprehensive literature review, the research topic was investigated by using five case studies and focus groups. Findings – The main findings are the current impl...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the benefits of visual management (VM) systems in transportation construction projects in England. Design/methodology/approach – Following a comprehensive literature review, the benefits of VM were investigated through action and case study research executed within two construction projects in Engla...

This chapter reviews evolution and key drivers of mobile computing within construction. The need for integration between various project stakeholders is highlighted, to ensure smooth flow of information between project participants. Relevant research in the area and case studies on how various construction production management activities are suppo...

An efficient maintenance of the UK's transportation network is of critical importance to the country's economy and among the top priorities of the government and public agencies (e.g. Network Rail, Highways England). The public transportation agencies have huge data sets related to asset management and maintenance. However, those data sets are usua...

Purpose The impacts and costs of natural disasters on people, properties and environment are often severe when these occur on a large scale and with no warning system in place. The lack of deployment of an early warning system (EWS), low risk and hazard knowledge and impact of natural hazard experienced by some communities in the UAE have emphasis...

Lean construction has recently gained momentum in England's highways construction supply chain. The literature indicates that the current view to Visual Management (VM) within those lean implementations is limited to some VM tools. This paper explores the condition of VM, which is a fundamental sensory information management strategy in the lean pr...

This paper explores the benefits of Visual Management (VM), a fundamental sensory information management strategy in the lean production system, in the transportation sector in England. Lean construction and VM have recently gained momentum in England's transportation construction supply chain with high efficiency targets. VM in construction is a s...

In parallel with China’s growing construction market, there has been an influx of foreign architectural and engineering design firms into the Chinese construction market. Those firms generally form partnerships with local Chinese firms or institutions to overcome various complications in the country. Adding to the complexity, relatively recent tech...

This report presents a collaborative research effort between the University of Salford and Highways England on the implementation of the Visual Management (VM) concept, a fundamental element of lean construction, in the highways construction supply chain. After 10 visits to 5 different highways construction sites to identify VM implementation oppor...

Lack of primary empirical data within the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry has in the past hindered developments of academic research in the field of performance measurement in construction. This paper presents quantitative analysis of construction production data captured through mobile information systems and provides empirical...

Disputes are common problems in the construction industry. The unclear contract underlines in most practiced procurement systems lead to various disputes among stakeholders. In order to minimise the problem, it is interesting to identify the disputes and conflict arises in the industry. This paper explore the pattern of construction disputes occurr...

Disputes are common problems in the construction industry. The unclear contract underlines in most practiced procurement systems lead to various disputes among stakeholders. In order to minimise the problem, it is interesting to identify the disputes and conflict arises in the industry. This paper explore the pattern of construction disputes occurr...

In the UAE, there are deficiencies in the use of technology in the exchange of information and reliance on the National Centre for Meteorology and Seismology Monitoring and Warning (NCMS). The new centre is affiliated to the Ministry of Presidential Affairs and it is established in coordination with concerned authorities. It is networked with simil...

Visual Management (VM) is a fundamental element of the lean production system that relies on the effectiveness of sensory communication to realise the lean production/construc- tion goals. VM can be implemented by following certain frameworks in an incremental fash- ion. Visual controls are one of the main tools of VM that are used to limit and gui...

Earthwork processes are influenced by a wide range of factors, including varying soil and weather conditions, machine related factors, traffic conditions, local site constraints and other human related factors. Dumpers and bulldozers are heavy duty equipment and there is need to optimise their operational efficiencies. Given dynamic nature of site...

This research was designed to assess the significance of using Building Information Modeling BIM standards to enhance efficiency in the Qatari construction industry. The need for more efficient processes arose in part from the Qatari government's increased level of investment in infrastructure and the accompanying desire to secure the country's 203...

First responders, including structural engineers and firefighters, inspect buildings and identify the structural integrity of buildings within a disaster affected area. The performance of their inspection and dissemination of the assessment information are critical to Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) operations. This paper presents an innovative appr...

This chapter discusses the integrated use of mobile communication technologies and the Semantic Web to provide context-aware information and services within the construction sector. Emerging technologies such as Wi-Fi, IEEE 802.11, 4G, Web Services and the Semantic Web have the potential to overcome the shortcomings of conventional information and...

Recent advances in the use of virtual building prototypes as a tool to support various site-based production processes coupled with improvements in context-aware mobile computing offer significant potential of improving decision making during construction phase of a building by providing relevant and timely access to design and process information....

This paper presents a mobile workstation chariot (MWC) that enables first responders and civil engineers to undertake initial disaster reconnaissance and damage assessment operations by quickly traversing hazardous terrain and through provisioning of a necessary computing infrastructure to support real time communication with the command center. Th...

Purpose Construction activities, particularly related to transportation, have a considerable impact on the environment and air quality. This paper aims to present a geographic information systems (GIS) and computer‐aided design (CAD)‐based approach for visualizing, communicating and analysing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from constructi...

The complicated nature of interior construction works makes the detailed progress monitoring challenging. Current interior construction progress monitoring methods involve submission of periodic reports and are constrained by their reliance on manually intensive processes and limited support for recording visual information. Recent advances in imag...

Well-depicted baseline, systematic data collection, rigorous comparison of the as-planned and as-built progress and effective presentation of measured deviations are key ingredients for effective project control. Existing construction progress monitoring techniques are constrained by their reliance on ad-hoc approaches. This chapter presents advanc...

Excessive amount of human-made Green House Gas (GHG) emission in recent years has caused a major global warming problem; yet in the past two decades or so, their adversarial effects are better sensed and reported. The construction industry and its related activities are major producers of these emissions. Despite their contribution, there have been...

This paper presents an information-technology-based collaboration framework that facilitates disaster response operations. The collaboration framework incorporates a web collaboration service, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, a building blackbox system (BBS), a geo-database, and a geographic information system (GIS). Through the integrat...

This paper discusses how recent developments in context-awareness and wireless computing can be used to support teaching and learning in built environment. It starts with a brief overview of context-aware computing and presents a system architecture that facilitates context capture, context integration, and delivery of context-relevant teaching and...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on improving mobile computing support for professionals involved in a disaster response and recovery operation to facilitate better assessment of the damage caused to buildings and to make this assessment information available to personnel within the disaster response arena so as to expedite a safe, eff...

IntroductionContext-aware computingUsing web services in a context-aware environmentContext-aware service delivery frameworkThe framework implementationTowards context-aware virtual prototypingConclusions References

Purpose This paper aims to discuss how a high level of situation awareness (SA) has the potential to enhance first responders' performance and manage work demand resulting from distributed, dynamic, and chaotic situations resulting from a disaster in modern urban environments. It also aims to present a theoretical framework to address needs of an e...

Construction projects are information-intensive in nature and require site personnel to have continuous on-demand access to information such as project plans, drawings, schedules, and budgets. Awareness of a user's context (such as user profile, role, preferences, task, and existing project conditions) can enhance the construction project delivery...

During disaster response and recovery operations, civil engineers can be assigned a multitude of tasks including triage of building search priorities, identification and evaluation of structural hazards, as well as the development of appropriate structural hazard mitigation techniques and monitoring of hazards, while coordinating and reporting this...

The vision of intelligent wireless web services, as discussed in this paper centres on the need to provide mobile construction workers highly specific data and services on an as-needed basis, with flexibility of use for the user. With the emergence of high speed wireless networks, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G, and parallel advancements in Intern...

The importance of context-aware information and services delivery is becoming increasingly recognised. Delivering information and services to AEC/FM (architecture, engineering and construction/facilities management) personnel, based on their context (e.g. location, time, profile etc) has tremendous potential to improve working practices, particular...

The need for effective collaboration systems in the AEC/FM sector has long been understood. However existing applications have a number of limitations. In particular, they rely primarily on a static mode of information delivery and do not take into account the end-user's changing context and changing project conditions. This means that the need, in...

A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University. The potential of mobile Information Technology (IT) applications to support the information needs of mobile construction workers has long been understood. However, existing mobile IT applications in the construct...

Current disaster management procedures rely primarily on heuristics which result in their strategies being very cautious and sub-optimum in terms of saving life, minimising damage and returning the building to its normal function. Also effective disaster management demands decentralized, dynamic, flexible, short term and across domain resource shar...

This paper presents an inclusive state-of-the-art review of various emerging technologies to support urban disaster response and recovery. This review was undertaken as a part of the CP2R project (Collaboration Framework for Preparedness against, Respond to and Recovery from eXtreme Events (XEs) involving critical physical infrastructure) which has...

The information intensive nature of construction projects requires project team members to have on-demand access to project information. However, existing mobile communication deployments in the construction industry rely on static modes of information delivery and do not take into account the worker's changing context and dynamic project condition...

This conference paper is also freely available online from the ICONDA®CIBlibrary at http://www.irb.fraunhofer.de/CIBlibrary/about.html The use of programme management systems by construction programme managers is critical nowadays. The increasing complexity of multiple construction projects require information and service delivery systems that are...