• Architectural research
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.63-73
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• 2020

This paper reports problems of current working environment on construction site in South Korea from a female laborers' point of view and proposes solutions to improve the environment. To investigate and analyze the problems, a questionnaire survey and a focus group interview were conducted with 341 engineers and 557 laborers. Among them female engineers and female laborers were 51 and 136 respectively. Findings are the facilities related with welfare facilities such as lavatories, shower rooms, lounges and changing room, etc. for women were not sufficient and even not installed only for women because all of the planners for the facilities were men and The Standard of Estimate does not consider gender distinction. The data on the trade and the number of female laborers were not recorded and this study confirmed the number and the proportion of female laborers according to construction progress i.e. the proportion of female laborers were 0% ~ 11% (average 6%) at 26 construction sites having 2% ~ 92 % construction progress. In order to solve these problems, gender education for the welfare facility planner is required and the current Standard of Estimate should be revised considering female laborers after collecting the site data for the number of female laborers according progress and the increase in the construction cost should be reflected in the contract amount accordingly. Conclusively temporary work planning related with welfare facilities should be established and conducted in terms of gender equality at construction sites. In addition, improving working environment on construction sites for female laborers will enhance the company's image and also helping solve the labor shortage problem by women laborers engaging in construction industry easily.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.200-201
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• 2015

As manpower shortage of national construction site is continuing, a manpower of foreign laborers are steadily increasing. The construction industry impacts the purpose for productivity of laborers as labor-intensive industry against different industry. Therefore, there is a need of analysis of foreign laborer's productivity. This study analyzes to use foreign labor's psychological productivity factors as a basic standard by comparing to Korean's. Construction foreign laborers seem to put bigger priority on "accomplishment of task," and "job satisfaction," than Korean workers, according to the response results in Likert 5-point Scale Measurement with 11 kinds of psychological causes in theories regarding productivity factors. Thus, this study expects to use as baseline data for productivity management of construction foreign laborers.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.88-96
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• 2014

Each year, it seems inevitable that major accidents will occur on construction sites. Industrial accidents, sometimes involving foreign laborers, have been constantly increasing. Construction laborers have higher hazard rates and higher work intensity than other industries, which means that they experience more job stress, as a result of the subcontracting structure. Therefore, this study performed an influence factor analysis on job stress and its relevance to industrial accidents involving Korean and foreign construction laborers, and proposed its effectiveness with the job stress and construction accident management measures based on the results of those. A questionnaire to measure job stress was performed targeting Korean and foreign laborers, and the results were analyzed. The results of this study can be utilized as important reference materials in efforts to reduce the job stress of foreign laborers on construction sites, and can be expected to contribute to preventing construction accidents related to job stress in the future.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.1114-1121
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• 2022

Construction laborers and crews play a critical role in achieving a safe and productive construction site. Many past research studies used top-down approaches/perspectives for studying the impact of laborers' performance on overall construction site outputs with limited flexibility in accounting for laborers' various characteristics. However, the recent reap in computational advances allowed applications of bottom-up architectures, which can potentially incorporate heterogeneous characteristics of laborers' individual behavioral and decision-making features effectively. Accordingly, agent-based modeling (ABM), as a tool to leverage a bottom-up methodological approach, has been widely adopted by recent research. Existing literature investigated the influence of changes in laborers' behaviors and interactions on either construction sites' safety performance or productivity performance individually, leaving the tradeoff between safety and productivity in this context relatively unexplored. Accordingly, this study aims to develop an agent-based framework to study the tradeoff between project safety and productivity performances resulting from changes in laborers' behaviors after attending safety trainings. Our findings via simulations indicate that proper safety trainings can improve safety performance without negatively impacting productivity performance.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.154-157
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• 2015

Construction industry still requires a lot of laborers to perform a project despite of advance in technologies, and improving labor productivity is an important strategy for successful project management. Since repetitive construction works exhibits learning effect, understanding laborers' learning phenomenon therefore allows managers to have improved labor productivity. In this context, previous research efforts quantified individual laborer's learning effect, though numerous construction works are performed in group. In other words, previous research about labor learning assumed that sum of individual's productivity is same as group productivity. Also, managers in construction sites need understanding about group learning behavior for dealing with labor performance problem. To address these issues, the authors investigate what variables affect laborers' group level learning process and develop conceptual model as a basic tool of productivity estimation regarding group learning. Based on the result of this research, it is possible to understand forming mechanism of learning within the group level. Further, this research may contribute to maximizing laborers' productivity in construction sites.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute Of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.255-258
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• 2006

Though the demand of foreign laborer in the labor market of domestic construction is increasing, systems for managing and supervising them are insufficient. The object of this study is to provide practical basic data to establish a system or a policy for efficient use of foreign laborers in the domestic construction industry. With the subjects of domestic laborers, who served in the domestic construction field, the actual state of using foreign laborers and the problems were investigated, and the existing employment system for foreign laborers and the recognition on plan for improving policy were analyzed

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2014.05a
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• pp.36-37
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• 2014

According to increase of foreign laborers in domestic, their safety accident is continuously increasing. The purpose of this paper is to draw improvement priority from factors of unsafe act of foreign laborers in domestic. Assessment on each data was performed by Importance-Performance Analysis(IPA) based on safety accident statistics of KOSHA. The result showed that there was required urgent improvement of five factors. The outcome of this study can be utilized in construction safety training and management.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.132-139
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• 2014

According to the increase of foreign laborers at domestic construction sites, it's necessary to research in terms of the unsafe acts of both Korean and foreign laborers in order to prevent construction disasters. The objective of this study is to clarify the characteristics and the improvement priority of the unsafe acts using IPA(Importance-Performance Analysis). The result of this study showed which items of unsafe acts are identify difference between Korean and foreign laborers. Moreover, the result of IPA also showed items of unsafe acts that needed the immediate improvement for each one. Especially there are two items, i.e. equipment malfunction and wrong handling of hand tools, which both Korean and foreign laborers think simultaneous those needs improvement. The results can be utilized to plan and to improve the safety management and education at a site considering the characteristics of foreign laborers.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.441-449
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• 2015

Recently, the number of accidents reported involving foreign laborers has risen, and the need to prevent accidents at construction sites has become more urgent. It has been found that 90 percent of construction accidents are caused by unsafe work practices, and various studies have been conducted on these practices with the aim of preventing accidents at construction sites. However, the tendency with previous studies was to average the results of survey responses, and as a result it is impossible to consider the potential risk of how many foreign laborers feel unsafe in relation with the unsafe practices. Therefore, in this study, importance-performance analysis (IPA) was improved in order to assess the potential risk of the unsafe practices of foreign laborers at construction sites in Korea. To verify the applicability of the improved IPA, a survey was carried out, and then the results were compared with those of the IPA. Through the use of the improved IPA, unsafe practices that were not found in the previous IPA but have potential risk were identified. The method proposed in this study is expected to contribute to the prevention of construction accidents of foreign workers by enabling a more efficient management.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.748-749
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• 2015

Recently Korean construction companies have started launching into the world beyond the Middle East to Southeast Asia. Launching into Central Africa has emerged as the blue chips; therefore, it is needed to study the local people and culture of Central Africa. However, launching Korean construction companies into Central Africa may cause some problems between Korean and African construction laborers' thinking. Therefore this comparative analysis of Korean and Central African construction laborers' job consciousness can provide to Korean companies a minimum understanding of these kinds of problems to expect while launching into Central Africa and so using this analysis as a basic data to supply them.