Students’ awareness and perception of the value of BIM and 4D for site health and safety management

Abstract

Purpose The education sector is at the forefront of developing tomorrow’s construction professionals. It is therefore important that with the current rate of change in the construction industry, education curriculum should be seen to be relevant. An area that is revolutionising the construction industry is the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM), including its potential for improving H&S on construction sites. This paper aims to focus on the perception of higher education (HE) students on the potential impact of 4D modelling on the management of site health and safety on construction sites. Design/methodology/approach A quasi-experimental approach was adopted to determine student’s perception of the extent to which 4D modelling and simulation can impact H&S management. Pre-test and post-test students’ perceptions of the value of 4D to management of health and safety were compared. Findings The influence of education was examined by using two main students groups, one group studying BIM modules within their course while the other group did not. Although minimal perception differences regarding key impacts of 4D were highlighted, the awareness differences were significant. The study demonstrated the perception of benefits regarding 4D for H&S being in the planning of site logistics, visualisation, programme accuracy and risk reduction. The study highlights the importance of relevant education, to increase awareness of 4D for Health and Safety. Originality/value While most of the studies reported in academic literature on education and training related to university/tertiary education, this study focused on the higher education level students. It considered this as an equally important cohort as the graduates will also contribute to health and safety management on construction sites. The study also demonstrated the value of including technology based H&S training to mirror developments in the construction industry.

Digital Technologies in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry—A Bibliometric—Qualitative Literature Review of Research Activities

“…In addition, the integration of DTs with safety management was explored in previous studies [ 184 , 185 ]. In developed countries such as Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom, BIM has already been introduced in the area of construction safety management [ 186 ].…”

Reverse Engineering Based on Digital Data Capture In Situ as a Methodology for the Study of Space Labor Risk in Construction Works and Its Applicability in BIM

“…Although much of the research on occupational health and safety is focused on methodologies related to the design phase [26], other works focus the study on an approach to the use of 4D-BIM, that is, on planning and communication [26][27][28].…”

A bibliometric analysis of digital technologies use in construction health and safety

“…Projects that use BIM for visualization save costs while determining the accuracy of their data (Datta et al, 2020). Pham et al (2020), and Swallow and Zulu (2020) BIM for the site and worker safety. In addition, there is a hybrid use of BIM in conjunction with several technologies such as cloud technology (Bennett and Mahdjoubi, 2013), point cloud data and rule checking , Visual Programming Language (VPL) (Khan et al, 2019), Real-Time Location System (RTLS) (Kim et al, 2016), Indoor Positioning System (IPS)-Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) (Liu et al, 2020), QR-Code (Lorenzo et al, 2014), BLE Mobile Tracking Sensors (Park et al, 2017), UAV (Alizadehsalehi et al, 2020), safety checking system (Hossain and Ahmed, 2019;Mihić et al, 2018) in the literature.…”