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The discrepancy in the construction industry of Malaysia: one of the most contributing industries in Malaysia’s economy and the highest contributor of the fatal accidents
Abstract and Figures
Malaysian construction industry is considered as substantial power for the economy of the country. The value of construction work is increasing year per year. Malaysia’s economy experienced a commendable growth the recent years; basically, the construction industry is statistically significant with economic development and has strong linkages with other industry sectors. However, the Malaysian construction industry is facing many challenges especially the fatal accidents. These last came first on top of the construction sector compared all other industries. This article describes the importance of the construction sector for Malaysia’s economy and its efficient contribution across all states of Malaysia. Furthermore, detailed statistics and analysis were carried out to describe the severity of fatal accidents occurred in construction industry of Malaysia. Besides, recommendations were listed in order to better manage the construction industry without involving in fatal accidents. By taking into account the significant influence of the construction industry on Malaysian economy, full attention should be given to the construction field by the Malaysian government and improve further the construction management in general and the construction safety in particular.
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... The construction industry is one of the substantial powers for the economy of several countries. This sector is a complex combination of several processes, significant number of specialists, organizations, and a large variety of raw materials and unique products (Zid et al., 2020). Therefore, it affects many sustainability aspects, including the economic, social, and environmental attributes. ...
The construction and demolition waste generation is increasingly evolving with the rapid urbanization, with more than a quarter of the produced waste being landfilled without further treatment or recycling strategy. Hence, sustainable management and valorization methods such as recycling in construction materials is becoming increasingly essential to tackle the economic and environmental burdens of landfilling waste. Construction and demolition waste recycling has been intensively studied. However, the present study proposes a promising solution for recycling construction and demolition wastes (CDWs) from the precast concrete waste sludge and ashes from paper mill sludge and biomass. Artificial lightweight aggregates were designed and produced by alkali activating a mixture of 50–90 wt% of dried and milled CDW with 3–25 wt% of ash and 5–35 wt% of blast furnace slag. The properties of the produced aggregates were assessed via density, water absorption, porosity, and crushing tests, in addition to microstructural characterizations using XRD and scanning electron microscopy SEM analysis. The optimum NaOH concentration was 8M with the highest mechanical properties and lowest efflorescence. The produced aggregates revealed a high crushing force of 82 N at 28 days with 50 wt% CDW, 15 wt% biomass ash, and 25 wt% blast furnace slag presenting a possible recycling pathway for such side-stream materials.
... In the Malaysian economy, a commendable growth was observed in recent years due to an annual increase in the construction work. Not only providing economic growth, but the construction industry in Malaysia is also linked with other industries [44]. In the first quarter of 2018, construction work of RM 37.1 billion was done in Malaysia, indicating the contribution of the construction industry in the country's GDP [45]. ...
Labours in construction are one of the main pillars in the construction industry of Malaysia for projects execution. Construction labours not only contributes to the development of the construction industry but also impacts the Malaysian economy. Consideration of labour wages is made in the initial phase of the project budget, however, wages are getting changed over time. The inflation rate is one of the key factors which affect labours wages. Regrettably, the inflation rate is being ignored while computing labour wages for projects budget development, resulting in cost overrun of construction projects. In this regard, the correlation coefficient test was used to determine the impact of the inflation rate on labour wages gathered from the year 2013 to 2019. The results showed that a significant acceptable relationship exists among the inflation rate and several categories of labour wages. Most of the labour wages showed a negative relationship with the inflation rate, indicating the deviation in the wages, thus, result in cost overrun. To steer the cost overrun effect, it is recommended to adopt automation system and introduce the Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0 in construction projects as a replacer of labours.
Reliable estimates of construction costs and schedules presented by contemporary construction companies, their consultants and suppliers at the time of project approval are important for justifying a project on economic ground and for planning the means of financing it. The economic impact of a construction cost overrun is the possible loss of the economic justification for the project. A cost overrun can also be critical for creating policies within sustainable development on the basis of economic costs. The financial impact of a cost overrun results also in demand for construction investments credits. The paper presents a case of construction cost analysis for wooden energy efficient house that meets sustainable aspects. Analyzed object is characterized by high costs of the construction investment, that result from specific characteristics of the construction output (energy efficient wooden house). In the result of analysis of the construction investment costs for the efficient wooden house and its comparison with the costs of traditional construction investment on maintenance costs, it can be stated that additional cost resulting from the energy efficient house building is higher than costs of traditional construction investment (about 10%) and it can be treated as the investment in the energy efficient house solutions since it brings savings for home expenditures (5% annually).
Malaysian economy has to perform efficiently and to play effective role in making true the dream of developed nation status. This study examines the role and performance of construction sector of Malaysia during the last two decades of Vision 2020 i.e. 1991 to 2010. The time series data over the period 1991-2010 for construction sector and economic growth of Malaysia is obtained from statistic department Government of Malaysia. The results exhibit that there is a strong correlation between construction sector and economic growth of Malaysia. The construction sector has been playing a significant role in aggregate economy of the country in term of its contribution to revenue generation, capital formation and employment creation which ultimately support the gross domestic product (GDP) and the socio-economic development of Malaysia. Considering the substantial role of construction sector in economic development of Malaysia, it is necessary for Malaysia government to give due attention and focus on construction sector for qualifying the title of developed nation.
Previous research and applications in construction resource optimization have focused on tracking the location of material and equipment. There is a lack of studies on remote monitoring for improving safety and health of the construction workforce. This paper presents a new approach for monitoring ergonomically safe and unsafe behavior of construction workers. The study relies on a methodology that utilizes fusion of data from continuous remote monitoring of construction workers' location and physiological status. To monitor construction workers activities, the authors deployed nonintrusive real-time worker location sensing (RTLS) and physiological status monitoring (PSM) technology. This paper presents the background and need for a data fusion approach, the framework, the test bed environment, and results to some case studies that were used to automatically identify unhealthy work behavior. Results of this study suggest a new approach for automating remote monitoring of construction workers safety performance by fusing data on their location and physical strain. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CP.1943-5487.0000222. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
Knowledge management (KM) has received considerable attention in recent years. Some consider knowledge the most strategically important resource, and learning the most strategically important capability for business organizations. Major UK construction organizations have recognized the benefits that KM can offer and have thus invested in KM. This paper reports on a survey of these companies. The purpose of the survey was: (1) to examine the importance of KM to UK construction organizations; (2) to investigate the resources used to implement KM strategies; and (3) to identify the main barriers to implementing KM strategies. The survey found that the main reasons for implementing a KM strategy was the need to share the tacit knowledge of key employees and to disseminate best practice. Also, significant resources in terms of staff time and money were being invested in KM, but the main barrier to implementing a KM strategy was the lack of standard work processes.
Despite improvements in safety performance over the past 30 years, the construction industry still accounts for an injury-and-illness rate that is approximately five times greater than the all-industry average. This disproportionate injury-and-illness rate has been attributed, in part, to the complex, dynamic, and transient nature of construction projects. To address these challenges, construction organizations must be able to adapt to change by effectively identifying, capturing, storing, and transferring safety knowledge. To investigate how safety-knowledge management strategies are employed in the construction industry, 11 case studies were conducted with a geographically dispersed sample of American general contractors. The sample was stratified by experience modification rate (EMR), a relative measure of safety performance. The results of the case studies indicate that construction organizations tend to acquire safety knowledge from a variety of internal and external sources, but have ineffective knowledge storage and transfer systems, which impede the ability of the workforce to obtain critical knowledge to solve urgent safety-related problems. High-performing organizations were distinguished by their ability to manage tacit safety knowledge with formal processes such as data-entry systems that capture reactions to safety situations from experienced workers and safety mentoring. Other innovative strategies include acquiring tacit safety knowledge during safety stand-downs through interviews with workers and storing safety knowledge in proprietary training videos.
When constructing and updating the built environment, ensuring the safety of all parties involved is of utmost importance. Traditionally, safety has been measured and managed reactively, where actions are taken in response to adverse trends in injuries. Alternatively, safety-related practices can be measured during the construction phase to trigger positive responses before an injury occurs. Despite the potential benefits of such strategies, few have been identified in the literature and there has yet to be an organized effort to codify and investigate these methods. A mixed-methods research approach was used to (1)clearly identify and define elements of the safety management process that can be measured and monitored during the construction phase, (2)describe resource requirements for measurement, monitoring, and response, and (3)describe specific management actions required when any indicator fails to satisfy a desired value. To produce internally and externally valid and reliable results, data were triangulated from case studies, content analysis of award-winning projects, and focused discussions among construction safety experts. In total, over 50 proactive metrics were identified, 13 of which were selected as top priority by expert professionals. Use of these indicators has been connected to exceptional safety performance in industry-leading organizations. The implication of the findings is that very strong safety outcomes can be expected if contractors build upon a robust safety management foundation with the use of these methods of project safety control.
For construction safety and health, continuous monitoring of unsafe conditions and action is essential in order to eliminate potential hazards in a timely manner. As a robust and automated means of field observation, computer vision techniques have been applied for the extraction of safety related information from site images and videos, and regarded as effective solutions complementary to current time-consuming and unreliable manual observational practices. Although some research efforts have been directed toward computer vision-based safety and health monitoring, its application in real practice remains premature due to a number of technical issues and research challenges in terms of reliability, accuracy, and applicability. This paper thus reviews previous attempts in construction applications from both technical and practical perspectives in order to understand the current status of computer vision techniques, which in turn suggests the direction of future research in the field of computer vision-based safety and health monitoring. Specifically, this paper categorizes previous studies into three groups—object detection, object tracking, and action recognition—based on types of information required to evaluate unsafe conditions and acts. The results demonstrate that major research challenges include comprehensive scene understanding, varying tracking accuracy by camera position, and action recognition of multiple equipment and workers. In addition, we identified several practical issues including a lack of task-specific and quantifiable metrics to evaluate the extracted information in safety context, technical obstacles due to dynamic conditions at construction sites and privacy issues. These challenges indicate a need for further research in these areas. Accordingly, this paper provides researchers insights into advancing knowledge and techniques for computer vision-based safety and health monitoring, and offers fresh opportunities and considerations to practitioners in understanding and adopting the techniques.
The effectiveness of safety training practices is an important part of safety management on a construction site. Safety professionals’ perceptions of the effectiveness of training practices in safety training sessions were sought in a survey administered to the top 400 contractors in the U.S. The study shows that contractors are sensitive to organizational, feedback, content, process, and worker issues. Whenever they encounter language problems, they use visual aids, and provide translators and safety guidelines written in workers’ own language. Very few statistically significant differences are observed when the findings are analyzed from the point of view of the demographic characteristics of the respondents. The contribution of this study is that it conveys the views of safety personnel about how safety learning can be achieved, sustained and improved by addressing organizational, feedback, content, process, and worker issues in training sessions. It provides project managers with best practices in safety training sessions.
