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This study attempts to identify a simple and efficient framework to be implemented in the Sri Lankan construction industry to inculcate a “safe and healthy” working environment for its workforce.

The occupational safety and health (OSH) management strategies that could be implemented in the construction sites were identified through a comprehensive literature survey and a pilot survey. A questionnaire survey was carried out among the safety and health (S&H) experts to explore the most effective OSH management strategies and thereafter to derive OSH mechanisms to promote the safer and healthy environment in the construction sites. Success of these mechanisms in the local industry was analyzed and was subsequently used to develop the OSH management framework.

A total of 35 significant OSH management strategies, unsafe and unhealthy factors as risk factors for fatal and non‐fatal situations were identified. A further ten OSH management mechanisms were established as adequate safety supervision, site environment, controlling the workers' safe and healthy behaviour, centralized OSH management unit, resources and insurance policies, management commitment, supportive devices, OSH documentation, OSH education and awareness, and OSH committee. Further, these ten mechanisms were used to establish the OSH framework to be implemented in Sri Lankan construction sites.

OSH management in the Sri Lankan construction industry can be enhanced by implementing the proposed OSH management framework.

A growing number of foreign consulting firms have been engaged in the Chinese construction market where the supervision system, as a kind of engineering consultant service has been widely implemented. However, the performance of supervision system varies significantly across regions. Therefore, foreign consulting firms are in desperate need of related performance benchmarking statistics to determine the niche market. A major issue is lack of a quantitative method to objectively evaluate regional supervision systems’ performance. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A new regional construction supervision system benchmarking model was developed via the principal component analysis method. This model is based on key performance indicators drawn from annual official statistics. This list of key indicators was refined by means of a focus group with selected experts. Consequently the performances of all 31 regional supervision systems were calculated and ranked.

Results indicate a general gap between coastal and inland regions. The various development trends of top 10 regions are analyzed and the underlying reasons are explored. Furthermore, the regions deserving more attention or currently lacking in development are identified. The supervision industry in China is shifting from a labor-intensive industry to a knowledge-intensive industry.

The proposed model provides a single quantitative parameter to conveniently benchmark the performance of various regions. The findings are vital for the benchmarking and clarification of future endeavor of the regional supervision systems and for foreign enterprises that are planning to enter the real-estate market in China.

Although there are several established frameworks for health and safety in construction, there are inadequate health and safety conditions at informal construction sites, and no framework has been designed to address this problem. The purpose of this paper is to develop a validated framework for health and safety risk management (HSRM) in informal construction sites with the aim of supporting Sustainable Development Goals 3, 8 and 11 of the 2030 Agenda, which are to ensure everyone enjoys a healthy life and to create inclusive, secure, robust and sustainable cities and human settlements, respectively.

The study is based on HSRM questionnaire survey and interviews with construction workers working on informal construction sites in Tanzania. A total of 13 health and safety specialists in construction were specifically chosen to validate the proposed framework for HSRM in informal construction to determine its applicability, efficacy and adaptation.

The validation results demonstrated that all of the suggested metrics within the framework for HSRM in informal construction scored higher than the test value, proving the framework’s feasibility

This research adds to the body of knowledge on the issue in a never-before-seen setting. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical study in Tanzania to develop and validate a framework for HSRM in informal construction.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between management’s commitment and effective occupational safety and health committees (OSHCs), which are a form of representative employee involvement in Malaysia.

Using data from a survey of 231 manufacturing companies in Malaysia, the study empirically examines both passive and active management commitment and its relationships with the perceived effectiveness of OSHCs.

Respondents to the survey, who were members of OSHCs, felt that both passive and active management commitments had significant, positive relationships with OSHCs’ perceived effectiveness, with active management commitment having a stronger relationship with the dependent variable – the effectiveness of OSHCs. All three variables were perceived to be at the medium level, with active management commitment recording the lowest mean value.

The research is limited by the fact that it is cross-sectional. However, this allows its findings to be placed in the context of past research, underpinned by Malaysia’s manufacturing sector and legislative framework.

This paper provides suggestions for how the perceived effectiveness of OSHCs can be improved in the Malaysian context.

This study conceptualises management’s commitment in terms of passive and active commitment, given the context of the current legislative framework, and it addresses the relationships between both types of management commitment and the effectiveness of OSHCs, in the heretofore-unexamined Malaysian manufacturing context.

The construction business is widely recognised for its inherent complexity and dynamic nature, which stems from the nature of the job involved. The industry is often regarded as one of the most challenging industries globally in terms of implementing environmental, health and safety (EHS) practices. However, in the absence of EHS, the construction industry cannot be considered sustainable. Therefore, this study aims to identify the trends, knowledge gaps and implications of EHS research to enhance construction activities and knowledge.

The study adopted a science mapping approach involving bibliometric and scientometric analysis of 407 construction EHS publications from the Scopus database with the VOSviewer software. The study is based on journal articles from the Scopus database without restriction to any time range.

The main focus of construction EHS research identified in the study includes sustainability-related studies, risk-related, environmental issues, EHS management, integrated management systems studies, health and safety related and EHS in the construction process. Some emerging areas also identified include productivity, design, culture, social sustainability and machine learning. The most influential and productive publication sources, countries/regions and EHS publications with the highest impact were also determined.

Documents published in the Scopus database were considered for analysis because of the wider coverage of the database. Journal articles written in English language represent the inclusion criteria, whereas other documents were excluded from the analysis. The study also limited the search to articles with the engineering subject area.

The research findings will enlighten stakeholders and practitioners on the focal knowledge areas in the EHS research domain, which are vital for enhancing EHS in the industry.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this review-based study is the first attempt to internationally conduct a science mapping on extant literature in the EHS research domain through bibliometric and scientometric assessments.

Despite “decent work” being pertinent, as situated in the International Labour Organisation's “Decent Work Agenda”, one of its substantive elements on the need for safe work environments remains a concern for semi-skilled construction workers. Evidently, sustainability learning objectives within this element must be identified and implemented as a remedy. Therefore, the aim of the reported study was to reveal sustainability learning objectives that are significant towards attaining safe work environments, through also assessing statistically significant differences due to demographic variables.

The design of this research followed a quantitative questionnaire survey strategy to obtain insights from semi-skilled workers and site/project managers in Zimbabwe.

Knowledge of relevant prevention strategies to foster positive physical and mental well-being in the workplace was considered the most critical sustainability learning objective. Semi-skilled workers revealed the most interest in objectives that affected their socio-economic beings while site/project managers preferred those that had more economic value to the organisations they work for. Educational levels are also critical when instituting any training interventions.

The absence of a database for semi-skilled workers was a limitation towards achieving the practical significance of the findings. Due to semi-skilled workers significantly contributing to unsafe work environments, structured on-the-job training schemes that are sufficiently planned, monitored and controlled are recommended.

The determination of sustainability learning objectives for construction semi-skilled workers, through on-the-job training schemes, will contribute to the improvement of safe work environments.

The purpose of this research is to provide the necessarily and resourceful information regarding range sensors to select the best fit sensor for robust autonomous navigation. Autonomous navigation is an emerging segment in the field of mobile robot in which the mobile robot navigates in the environment with high level of autonomy by lacking human interactions. Sensor-based perception is a prevailing aspect in the autonomous navigation of mobile robot along with localization and path planning. Various range sensors are used to get the efficient perception of the environment, but selecting the best-fit sensor to solve the navigation problem is still a vital assignment.

Autonomous navigation relies on the sensory information of various sensors, and each sensor relies on various operational parameters/characteristic for the reliable functioning. A simple strategy shown in this proposed study to select the best-fit sensor based on various parameters such as environment, 2 D/3D navigation, accuracy, speed, environmental conditions, etc. for the reliable autonomous navigation of a mobile robot.

This paper provides a comparative analysis for the diverse range sensors used in mobile robotics with respect to various aspects such as accuracy, computational load, 2D/3D navigation, environmental conditions, etc. to opt the best-fit sensors for achieving robust navigation of autonomous mobile robot.

This paper provides a straightforward platform for the researchers to select the best range sensor for the diverse robotics application.

As an important product characteristic, maintainability is recognized as a highly significant factor in the economic success of engineering systems and products. Based on virtual reality technology, this paper aims to create an intuitive, immersive and interactive environment for product maintenance. In order to analyze and evaluate the product maintainability in a virtual maintenance environment, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation is used. At the early design stage, maintainability influencing factors are analyzed and the whole maintainability evaluation of the product is given by using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method in virtual maintenance environment.

The paper provides a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method for product maintainability evaluation in virtual environment.

Fuzzy comprehensive evaluation is used to evaluate product maintainability in virtual environment, and the application of virtual maintainability system is expanded.

According to maintainability requirement, the maintainability index set is built in this paper, and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is used to evaluate product maintainability in virtual maintenance environment at stage of early design.

Maintainability is a critical design characteristic that shows how well a product can be maintained; maintenance time is a comprehensive parameter of product maintainability design. This paper aims to provide an integrated methodology for complex product maintainability verification and maintenance time prediction using virtual prototypes and humans in a virtual dynamic simulation of the maintenance process.

An integrated platform for maintainability verification and maintenance time prediction is designed. Decomposition of maintenance tasks, corrective measurement time method, and an impact matrix of maintenance therbligs and time are presented.

The proposed methodology can efficiently conduct complex product maintainability verification and maintenance time prediction.

Early and effective verification and prediction of the maintainability and maintenance time program can significantly improve the maintainability and availability of a complex product.

A universally applicable method for product maintainability verification and maintenance time prediction is presented.