Search results

Under-reporting of occupational accidents is a common problem in many countries. This is mainly because of the shortfalls in accident reporting and recording systems. Construction industry being a hazardous industry, the rate of accidents is higher compared with other industries and apparently a high rate of under-reporting. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the rate of under-reporting, significant reasons for under-reporting and identify the shortcomings in the existing accident reporting system in Sri Lanka in aiming to recommend efficient mechanisms for occupational accident recording and reporting to construction industry.

Both secondary and primary data were tapped to gather required data. The secondary data were extracted from the records available in year 2014-2015 at the office of the commissioner for workmen’s compensation and the industrial safety division of the Department of Labor (DoL) to analyze the rate of under-reporting. The primary data were obtained through expert interviews to explore the gaps in reporting system and to identify mechanisms to reduce under-reporting.

The findings revealed 80 per cent of construction accidents are under-reported. Eight gaps in the current accident recording and reporting system and key recommendations at organizational and national level for its improvements were identified.

The findings provide an insight of occupational safety and health (OSH) practices in construction industry and it can be used as an eye opening flash for safety law-makers and practitioners to revisit the existing regulations and practices.

The suggested work examines the latest developments such as the techniques employed for allocation of power, browser techniques, modern analysis and bandwidth efficiency of nonorthogonal multiple accesses (NOMA) in the network of 5G. Furthermore, the proposed work also illustrates the performance of NOMA when it is combined with various techniques of wireless communication namely network coding, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), space-time coding, collective communications, as well as many more. In the case of the MIMO system, the proposed research work specifically deals with a less complex recursive linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) multiuser detector along with NOMA (MIMO-NOMA); here the multiple-antenna base station (BS) and multiple single-antenna users interact with each other instantaneously. Although LMMSE is a linear detector with a low intricacy, it performs poorly in multiuser identification because of the incompatibility between LMMSE identification and multiuser decoding. Thus, to obtain a desirable iterative identification rate, the proposed research work presents matching constraints among the decoders and identifiers of MIMO-NOMA.

To improve the performance in 5G technologies as well as in cellular communication, the NOMA technique is employed and contemplated as one of the best methodologies for accessing radio. The above-stated technique offers several advantages such as enhanced spectrum performance in contrast to the high-capacity orthogonal multiple access (OMA) approach that is also known as orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). Code and power domain are some of the categories of the NOMA technique. The suggested research work mainly concentrates on the technique of NOMA, which is based on the power domain. This approach correspondingly makes use of superposition coding (SC) as well as successive interference cancellation (SIC) at source and recipient. For the fifth-generation applications, the network-level, as well as user-experienced data rate prerequisites, are successfully illustrated by various researchers.

The suggested combined methodology such as MIMO-NOMA demonstrates a synchronized iterative LMMSE system that can accomplish the optimized efficiency of symmetric MIMO NOMA with several users. To transmit the information from sender to the receiver, hybrid methodologies are confined to 2 × 2 as well as 4 × 4 antenna arrays, and thereby parameters such as PAPR, BER, SNR are analyzed and efficiency for various modulation strategies such as BPSK and QAM_j (j should vary from 8,16,32,64) are computed.

The proposed hybrid MIMO-NOMA methodologies are synchronized in terms of iterative process for optimization of LMMSE that can accomplish the optimized efficiency of symmetric for several users under different noisy conditions. From the obtained simulated results, it is found, there are 18%, 23% 16%, and 8% improvement in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER), Least Minimum Mean Squared Error (LMMSE), Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR), and capacity of channel respectively for Binary Phase Shift Key (BPSK) and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) modulation techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a practical framework to measure the safety performance of workers in the Indian construction industry. The key safety performance indicators are identified and ordered on the premise that the higher order assignment of an indicator implies a strong indication of an effective safety performance.

Various indicators of safety performance in the construction industry were identified from extant literature review combined with author's personal viewpoint. The identified variables were inquired for appropriateness for the Indian construction scenario by consultation with experts. Fuzzy Technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) technique was considered for the ranking of the indicators from most to least important.

The most important highlight of the study was the importance of the role of management by participating in informing workers about the safety rules and compliance toward safety measures. Proper and timely safety training to the workers and equipping them with sophisticated safety equipment for daily activities is perceived to be highly important in ensuring a safe and healthy workplace environment. Controlling the absenteeism rate reduces the burden of extra work on the employees, thereby, encouraging safe work-related behavior.

Senior management should make safety induction programs compulsory at the time of joining of the employees. The guidelines for safety practices, rules and information about the safety equipment should be properly documented and arranged in safety manuals. Periodical drills involving visual demonstration of the safety practices should be followed to ensure safety at workplace.

Management commitments (MCs) have a prominent effect to create a safe work environment in the industries. Though there have been various studies on the prevalence and associated factors of OHS in Ethiopian manufacturing industries, the role of MCs in improving workplace safety, however, has not been studied so far. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to investigate the role of MCs on improving OHS in iron, steel and metal manufacturing industries (ISMMI) in Addis Ababa.

This paper used a close-ended questionnaire to collect primary data from 89 ISMMI and fitted the data in structural equation modelling (SEM) techniques using SPSS and AMOS.

The major findings of the study showed that directly or indirectly there are good MCs in Ethiopian ISMMI. To some extent, MCs have also resulted in reducing risk and diseases causing factors, which subsequently reduced occupational risks and disease. However, the study showed that MCs are not strategically supported.

Due to the limited scope of data collection, the research results may not be equally implemented outside Addis Ababa and other sectors.

The findings of the research may help policymakers and managers to strictly control MCs and follow up implementation of OHS policies.

This paper is the first of its kind in developing the conceptual framework model and attempting to assess MCs using structural equation model towards improving OHS in ISMMI.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the development and testing of an innovative mobile application using design-based research.

This paper reports on the process of transformation of existing printed course material into digitized content through design-based research where design, research and practice were concurrently applied through several iterations of the mobile application. For this transformation, one session each from BSc in Nursing, Bachelor of Pharmacy and Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Sciences was selected. In the first phase of the design-based research, the main research question was formulated. In the second phase, a mobile learning application (OUSL MLearn) was designed and developed to address the research question. In the third phase, this application was evaluated by five groups of stakeholders: content experts to validate the content; educational technologists to check the alignment of technical and pedagogical features; novice users to check the overall effectiveness of the application; developer to develop the application, to check the ease of usage; and researchers to identify the impact of this innovation. These stakeholders were closely involved throughout the whole process which lasted over a period of four months. At the end of this development phase, the results were reflected upon and used for further enrichment.

It was observed that the developed mobile application was accessible, appealing and pedagogically constructive for users. However, optimization, development time, technical and organizational issues, workload of academics and production costs were identified as major challenges.

This study was based on the findings of a small sample of potential users.

The findings have implications for designing culturally adaptive interactive mobile applications.

This study will benefit practitioners to design culturally sensitive mobile learning courses and researchers to conduct design-based research.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors affecting learners' perception of e-learning during the Coronavirus-2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. Furthermore, it investigates mechanisms that enhance students' engagement in e-learning, especially under the constraints created by the pandemic.

Quantitative research approach was used, and data were collected using a structured questionnaire. The sample consisted of 163 undergraduates registered at the Faculty of Management Studies of the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL). The structured questionnaire was designed taking into consideration learners attached to different regional centers and study centers of the OUSL.

As per the findings, performance expectancy, social influence, effort expectancy and service quality are the factors which have significant effects on students' “intention to use” e-learning as a method of pursuing education. Furthermore, it was observed that 65.6% of the students had access to technology through mobile phones, while 53.4% of the students had engaged in e-learning for the first time. This was mainly due to restrictions that were imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The study will help in formulating policies and introducing procedures in relation to online teaching-learning models to be used by both teachers and learners, especially in similar pandemic situations in the future.

This study will assist to determine the effectiveness of the e-learning system used by the OUSL. The findings highlighted the importance of improving information technology (IT) facilities available at all the regional and study centers across Sri Lanka.

For construction organisations to be effective at implementing an integrated safety, health and environmental (SHE) management system, they require the right level of organisational capability. This capability includes the policies, systems and resources of the organisation. However, within the academic literature, it is unclear which organisational attributes of construction companies are important for implementing integrated SHE management. This study aims to explore the organisational attributes that determine integrated SHE management capability and their relative priorities.

The study used a literature review supported by expert verification and a subsequent three-round expert Delphi technique accompanied by applying the voting analytical hierarchy process.

The study identified 20 attributes grouped under five main thematic categories. These are strategy (the organisation’s vision and top management commitment); process (the organisation’s procedures and processes for SHE management); people (organisation’s human resources, their competence, roles, responsibilities and involvement in SHE management); resources (organisation’s physical and financial resources for SHE management) and information (SHE related documents, data, records and their communication across an organisation). While these thematic categories and the attributes within carry different weights of importance, the strategy-related attributes are the most important, followed by the people-related attributes.

The results of this study should enable construction companies and key industry stakeholders to understand construction companies’ capability to successfully implement an integrated SHE management system. Furthermore, construction companies should be able to prioritise efforts or investments to enhance their SHE management capability.

Project management generally covers many important areas such as cost, quality and time in different industrial settings, but it is deficient in relation to integration of health, safety and environmental risks. Poor knowledge of project managers about HSE management necessitates the studying on the mutual effects of HSE and project management. Hence, investigating the impact of project management on health monitoring programs, safety prevention monitoring, environmental monitoring plans and finally the effectiveness of professional health monitoring programs and determining their importance are main objectives of this research. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A model based on structural equations was designed and developed. The constructs of this model are project management, health monitoring and safety prevention monitoring program. Based on the conceptual model, some questionnaires were prepared and distributed among the experts of strategic project management.

The results of applied structural modeling suggest that project management focuses on each aspect of HSE management, including health monitoring programs, safety prevention monitoring programs, environmental monitoring plans and effectiveness of professional health monitoring programs. HSE management can also be strengthened by empowering project management. Checking fire protection systems, using appropriate techniques to identify contamination and disposal of waste and incorporating techniques for brainstorming or other ideas creation in the group are the most important tasks in HSE-enabled project management frameworks.

Since there is still no strategic alignment model that includes components of project management and HSE management, a model for achieving this goal is vital. This paper elaborates this alignment based on literature and using a field study.