Handbook of Construction Safety, Health and Well-being in the Industry 4.0 Era

This Handbook seeks to examine and advance current understanding of the confluence of construction health, safety and well-being and the broad range of Industry 4.0 technologies in use in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry.

Globally, the construction sector accounts for more than 100,000 occupational fatalities annually. In many countries, reports of work-related accidents, injuries and illnesses are commonplace, and there is an urgent need to improve the occupational safety and health (OSH) outlook of the construction sector. The fourth industrial revolution presents opportunities to leverage modern technologies (e.g., big data, artificial intelligence, automation, sensors, AR, VR and robotics) to improve the poor OSH performance of the construction industry. However, embracing such technologies could also induce unintended adverse consequences for the safety, health and well-being of construction workers. Therefore, the realisation of the opportunities as well as the mitigation of potentially adverse consequences requires research-informed holistic insights around the union of Industry 4.0 and construction occupational safety and health management.

This cutting-edge volume addresses a significant gap in literature by bringing together experienced academics and researchers to highlight the drivers, opportunities and drawbacks of the merging of Industry 4.0 with construction health, safety and well-being. After a detailed introductory section which highlights key issues and challenges, section one covers the application of a broad range of digital technologies; then section two discusses the application of industrial production and cyber physical systems in the context of construction safety and health management.

Readers from a broad range of AEC backgrounds as well as safety professionals and technologists will come to understand how the technologies are applied and the resulting OSH benefits as well as potential drawbacks.

Patrick Manu is Reader in Project Management at the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE), University of Manchester. He is a research-active academic with an international reputation for construction safety and health research, which has underpinned exceptional contribution to knowledge transfer and external engagement in the construction industry, both in the United Kingdom and internationally. He has been involved as a principal investigator (PI) and co-investigator in research projects (valued at over £1.8 million) funded by several organisations. He led (as PI) an international consortium in an EPSRC-funded research to develop the first web-based application for assessing design for safety organisational capability, which won an innovation award from HS2 Ltd. He has over 110 publications to his credit.

Shang Gao is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne. Dr Gao has expertise in construction management, with a focus on lean construction, safety management, modern methods of construction and digital construction. He has produced over 40 publications, including the book Lean Construction Management – the Toyota Way, which is the first book ever published to address the Toyota Way practices in the construction industry to achieve lean construction management. He has also served as a consultant to many large construction firms in China and Singapore.

Paulo Jorge Da Silva Bartolo is Professor at Nanyang Technology University (NTU), Singapore, where he is the Executive Director of the Singapore Centre for 3D Printing and Programme Director of the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Cluster (NAMIC) Hub. He is also Professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE), University of Manchester (UK), Honorary Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (China) and Collaborator Professor at the Advanced Manufacturing Group at the Tecnologico de Monterrey (Mexico). Bartolo is Fellow of The International Academy of Production Engineering (CIRP), the world's leading organisation in production engineering research. He has published more than 600 publications (journal papers, book chapters and conference proceedings), co-edited 22 books and holds 16 patents. Throughout his career, Bartolo secured more than S$90 million in external funding as PI and Co-I. Elsevier-Stanford University ranked him among the top 2% researchers in the world as most highly cited researchers.

Valerie Francis is Professor in Construction Management and Chair in Construction within the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. Educated as a civil engineer, she has over ten years’ experience in commercial, industrial and domestic construction as a senior structural engineer and project manager. Francis's research has investigated issues affecting construction productivity, procurement, technology adoption, employee satisfaction, construction education, work–life balance and gender equity. Her research has resulted in the publication of a wide number of industry reports and papers in top-tier international journals as well as local Australian journals. She is a recognised expert in the field of work–life balance in the construction. Her study on professional women’s career progression is the largest study of its nature worldwide and resulted in the development of a career typology for professional women.

Anil Sawhney is the Global Lead for the Construction Sector at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). He is a construction and infrastructure sector expert, an educator, a researcher and a ConstructionTech enthusiast. In his role at the RICS, he is involved in producing the construction and infrastructure sector’s body of knowledge, standards, guidance, practice statements, education and training. He is also an adjunct faculty at Columbia University, USA, Liverpool John Moores University, UK, and the University of Southern California, USA. Sawhney has a rich mix of academic, research, industry and consulting experience gathered in the United States, India, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2020, he co-authored a book entitled Construction 4.0-Innovation Platform for the Built Environment. He is currently the co-editor of the Construction Innovation Journal. Dr Sawhney serves on the international editorial board of the ICE Infrastructure Asset Management journal and the Journal of Information Technology in Construction.