Engineering Commons^™

An Improved Earned Value Management Method Integrating Quality And Safety, Brian Briggs

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The construction industry invests significant time and money to improve quality and safety while reducing cost and schedule impacts. The industry has a sincere desire to improve construction project management methods to improve efficiency. Historically, quality and safety underperformances result from undermanaged quality control and safety activities. The cost and schedule impacts associated with poor quality work have always had an impact on construction operations. The unprecedented challenges and uncertainties of COVID-19 highlighted the need to improve the Earned Value Management (EVM) method within construction to reflect these quality and safety activities. The central goal of this dissertation is to …

Impact Of Personality Traits And Team Criteria On Construction Team Performance, Arlys Silva Payne

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigated how personality traits and team criteria influence team performance in real construction projects. Though personality influence on team performance has been significantly investigated in other business sectors, the literature revealed that the construction industry lacks investigations regarding personality influencing team performance. The existing literature revealed that the Big Five Factors (BFF) was the most popular assessment tool for personality. Thus, this dissertation adopted the 50-Item Personality questionnaire developed by Goldberg, which consited of extraversion, aggreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. The literature also revealed several common team criteria to evaluate team performance: team member satisfaction, shared …

Single-Family Residential Flood Loss Reduction Through Freeboard, Ehab Said Gnan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The lack of flood loss estimation methods conducted on a micro-scale level that consider the full loss‐exceedance probabilities curve poses a significant problem in flood risk assessment. Also, the lack of robust benefit-cost analysis (BCA) that quantifies benefits at the micro-scale level leads to sub-optimal results, and therefore sub-optimal decisions when determining the optimal freeboard. Further, flood loss assessments focus on owner-occupied housing and neglect rental housing. These loss assessment deficiencies underscore the need for a robust assessment that quantifies the life-cycle benefits for all stakeholders and provides actionable information to enable informed decisions.

This research presents a comprehensive methodology …

Fatigue Monitoring Through Wearable Sensors For Construction Workers, Srikanth Sagar Bangaru

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

About 40% of the US construction workforce experiences high-level fatigue, which leads to poor judgment, increased risk of injuries, a decrease in productivity, and a lower quality of work. Excessive fatigue from working in unpleasant working conditions, long working hours, or heavy workloads can aggravate fatigue's adverse effects, leading to work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) and productivity loss. Therefore, it is essential to monitor fatigue to reduce the adverse effects and preventing long-term health problems. However, since fatigue demonstrates itself in several complex processes, there is no single standard measurement method for fatigue detection. This research aims to develop a system …

Error Prevention In Sensors And Sensor Systems, Pedro J. Chacon Dominguez

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Achievements in all fields of engineering and fabrication methods have led towards optimization and integration of multiple sensing devices into a concise system. These advances have caused significant innovation in various commercial, industrial, and research efforts. Integrations of subsystems have important applications for sensor systems in particular. The need for reporting and real time awareness of a device’s condition and surroundings have led to sensor systems being implemented in a wide variety of fields. From environmental sensors for agriculture, to object characterization and biomedical sensing, the application for sensor systems has impacted all modern facets of innovation. With these innovations, …

Educational Theory-Embedded Training For Construction Industry Professionals, Hazem Jadallah

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Workforce training is needed throughout the construction industry to create and maintain competent workers; unfortunately, most construction training and education research focuses on university student education. The focus of this dissertation research is the current state of educational-theory embedded construction workforce training, how such trainings are effective, and how they may be further optimized based on established educational theory. This is accomplished through a review of construction training for current industry professionals, an evaluation of the assessment criteria used to measure effectiveness, followed by the creation of a framework for construction training.

There is a lack of recommendations for improvement …