https://doi.org/10.24928/2020/0022

Construction Workers’ Situational Awareness – An Overlooked Perspective

Christopher Görsch¹, Olli Seppänen², Antti Peltokorpi³ & Rita Lavikka⁴

¹Doctoral Candidate, Department of Civil Engineering, Aalto University, Espoo Finland, +358 50 411 8924, [email protected], orcid.org/0000-0001-9632-4031
²Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Aalto University, Espoo Finland, +358 50 368 0412, [email protected], orcid.org/0000-0002-2008-5924
³Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Aalto University, Espoo Finland, +358 50 371 6613, [email protected], orcid.org/0000-0002-7939-6612
⁴Senior Scientist, D.Sc. (Tech.), Smart Energy and Built Environment, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo Finland, +358 50 384 1662, [email protected], orcid.org/0000-0003-1200-4773

Abstract

The construction industry is claimed to suffer from low productivity often caused by its complex, individualistic and unstructured nature. The construction workers’ situational awareness (SA) is an insufficiently investigated and overlooked perspective in current project and production management literature to increase productivity in construction projects. This paper discusses the role of construction workers in planning and control of production and the possible impact of SA for on-site processes integrating knowledge and expertise from construction workers. The paper reviews the literature concerning construction workers’ on-site situation, integration in production planning and control processes and the possibilities for empowering workers with SA. Providing real-time situational data can empower workers to make better decisions based on accurate, transparent, structured and trustworthy data. It is concluded that a better understanding and availability of the project information and progress can free up workers' workload, to focus their capacity on the task delivery. This will ultimately lead to a boost in productivity on-site. Furthermore, the paper opens avenue for further research and how to capture the current state of on-site SA of construction workers through a methodical approach including quantitative and qualitative methods.

Keywords

Workflow, lean construction, production planning, construction worker, situational awareness

Files

Reference

Görsch, C. , Seppänen, O. , Peltokorpi, A. & Lavikka, R. 2020. Construction Workers’ Situational Awareness – An Overlooked Perspective , Proc. 28th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) , 937-948. doi.org/10.24928/2020/0022

Download: BibTeX | RIS Format