Tesis doctoral de Marta Gangolells Solanellas
Most common challenges and obstacles encountered by construction organizations during the implementation process and use of integrated environmental and health and safety management systems are related to the inherent peculiarities of the construction sector. According to several research authors, one of the issues involving a higher level of uncertainty is the integration of planning and control instruments, including elements for identifying and assessing environmental impacts and health and safety risks and implementing subsequent necessary control measures. this dissertation contributes to the implementation of environmental and health and safety management systems in construction companies by proposing a process-oriented approach and using risk as an integrating factor. At a project level, this research proposes a quantitative methodology for dealing with potential adverse environmental impacts and health and safety risks during the pre-construction stages of residential buildings and other similar typologies. The strength of this methodology lies in the fact that it helps designers to explicitly consider on-site environmental impacts and construction worker safety during the design process. Designers can compare several design alternatives during the design phase and determine corresponding overall environmental impact level and overall safety risk level of a construction project without their creative talents being restricted. The methodology is especially worthwhile for those less-experienced designers who lack the skills and knowledge required to recognize environmental aspects and safety hazards, developing optimal designs. The methodology also serves as an assessment tool for construction companies to measure the environmental and health and safety performance of construction projects and its subsequent construction activities, providing a consistent basis for comparisons, future labelling and environmental and safety benchmarking among construction projects and construction companies. The suggested methodology also allows construction companies to optimize its on-site performance in the environmental and the health and safety domains during the planning and preparation stages. the developed methodology not only provides designers with a risk-analysis-based way of evaluating the environmental and safety-related performance of their residential construction designs, but also helps construction companies improve their on-site environmental and safety performance. Once a final design is reached, the methodology highlights the significant remaining environmental impacts and health and safety risks. Improved levels of environmental impacts and safety risks identification undoubtedly lead to successful on-site environmental and safety management. A range of measures can then be implemented at the construction site to eliminate the remaining impacts and risks or reduce them to an acceptable level. In order to promote the integrated operational control of on-site environmental impacts and health and safety risks, this research proposes an ontology-based approach. Understanding relationships between environmental impacts, health and safety risks, construction processes and work instructions provides an integrated approach to help contractors managing and controlling environmental impacts and health and safety risks related to the construction process. in order to increase the usability of this research, the developed methodology has been implemented in a web-based information-and knowledge-management system. On one hand, this application allows significantly reducing the time devoted to the assessment of each construction project. On the other hand, formalizing and visualizing the developed ontology-based approach offers guidance to contractors on the integrated management of many of the environmental and health and safety incidences at the construction site. finally, this dissertation documents the verification and validation of the developed methodology and corresponding web-based implementation tool. The dissertation concludes by outlining the main contributions of this research. Those subjects that exceed this dissertation scope are commented and proposed as future work.
Datos académicos de la tesis doctoral «Contributions to the implementation of integrated environmental and health and safety management systems in construction companies«
- Título de la tesis: Contributions to the implementation of integrated environmental and health and safety management systems in construction companies
- Autor: Marta Gangolells Solanellas
- Universidad: Politécnica de catalunya
- Fecha de lectura de la tesis: 08/01/2010
Dirección y tribunal
- Director de la tesis
- Miquel Casals Casanova
- Tribunal
- Presidente del tribunal: gonzalo Ramos scheider
- andy Van den dobbelsteen (vocal)
- francesc xavier Cahis carola (vocal)
- angelo luigi Camillo ciribini (vocal)