| 1. |
- Bahnariu, Bogdan, et al.
(författare)
-
Border regimes and unfair conditions for Eastern European migrant workers in the Swedish construction sector, a labor process theory perspective
- 2022
-
Ingår i: 40th International Labour Process Conference: Labour Mobility and Mobilization of Workers. ; 40, s. 24-25
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper investigates border regimes, precarity, and employment conditions from a labour process theory perspective (Braverman 1974; Thompson and Smith, 2010; Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013). Our specific focus is on the studies investigating the working conditions, labour rights, and employment forms for Eastern European migrants in the Swedish construction sector. In particular, we ask: how does the border regime shape employ ment forms and work practices, and what are the new forms of resistance and organisation in the Swedish construction sector? The migrant workers are conditioned by Swedish and EU legal aspects, depending on the country they originally come from, and its re lation to the EU. The origin of the migrant workers in the Swedish construction sector has continuously shifted since the 1950s, with Eastern Europe being especially prominent since the 1990s. Along with this shift, the focus on organized crime and on “unf air conditions” considering both a national and protectionist gaze, has been increasing in Sweden, implying that the understanding of the “unfair conditions” is something external, atypical, and non Swedish. A critical perspective on these issues calls for a “methodological de nationalism” ( 2019). At the same time, the Swedish model system of high regulation and welfare protection is highly challenged (Mackenzie et al., 2010), led to the emergence of two labour markets. The first one, dominant and highly regulated, is represented by big companies and construction unions, and is characterized by collaboration, good work relations, equity, democracy, and welfare (Haakestad and Friberg, 2000); the second one, subordinated and quite unregulated, is embodied by small companies working partially in illegal conditions, and is not characteristic for the Swedish labour market (Koch and Sederblad, 2019). As such, this paper focuses on the ways the sector has adapted to migrant labour inequalities due to labour and migration law, and the organisation and resistance forms that have been adopted. Labour process theory allows us to expand our analytical frame on the way the work is organized in the Swedish construction sector, its variations, and the ways those re late to what we can basically understand as migrant workers’ rights. It means that we cannot separate labour, class, and the features of the border regimes, as we need to include a knowledge of a “total social organization of labour” (Gluckman 1995). Meth odologically, a systematic literature review is conducted on the precarious and unequal working conditions, as well as on labour and employment forms, for Eastern European migrant workers within the Swedish construction sector. Our methodological choice of focusing on that context aimed at accounting for its specific peculiarities. Our study shows that a labour process theory perspective and a “denationalizing” analytical framework can reveal factors that impactlabour processes connected to immigrant workers. Moreover, we draw attention to the way the criminalizing gaze may be national, but the value adding labour force is indeed international. Thus, this paper contributes with knowledge production regarding the implications of border regimes for international workers’ employment forms, and precarious work practices having become part of the construction sector.
|
|
| 2. |
- Bahnariu, Bogdan, et al.
(författare)
-
Little big transitions: electric construction machines in small sites
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Association of Researchers in Construction Management (ARCOM). - 9780995546363 ; , s. 542-551
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Apart from grand projects (e.g., bridges) with large material and diesel-related emissions, civil engineering mostly comprises small and medium-sized projects (e.g., roundabouts, parks), where climate impact must also be mitigated. Because equipment manufacturers have been slow in providing electric machines (e.g., +/-2,5 tonnes electric excavators, wheel-loaders, etc.), which supports the transition to emission-free sites, the following enquiry appeared: which are the relevant barriers, enablers, benefits, and perspectives. This paper adopts an interdisciplinary operation management framework for a Swedish urban park project, where an electric wheelloader was used (study includes interviews, observations, energy measurements and assessment electric vs. diesel equivalent machines). Main findings show operators being modest in their expectations, electric machines performing as diesel-driven ones, and the difference in emissions being relatively significant. The considerable idle time indicated that a meta-level project portfolio planning would have huge potential - e.g., through involving machine rental companies in a sharing economy setup.
|
|
| 3. |
- Buser, Martine, 1967, et al.
(författare)
-
Addressing minority discrimination in a master’s education program for construction management
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. - 2198-7254 .- 2198-7246. ; , s. 33-46
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Increasing minorities’ participation in high-tier and managerial positions in the construction sector, can compensate for the shortage of skilled workers faced by the industry even in Sweden. However, relevant initiatives seem to not have achieved substantial results yet. This is also evident in construction management education, which then creates implications for the industry. In this paper, we attest shortcomings in tackling the aforementioned issues, as well as present possible solutions. Theoretically, we adopt diversity management and critical diversity theory, and then conduct a literature review followed by an empirical focus on a master’s education program for construction management in a Swedish university. Our findings show that while methods and policies may exist, they are generally implemented inefficiently. Even more alarmingly, there can be a “diversity washing” through relevant low-budgeted programs, which may serve more as an extraction for underperforming managers rather than serious initiatives. As such, university-proposed solutions may fail, as the organizational structure does not support them, and the responsibility of implementation lies primarily with the teachers. We therefore propose broader initiatives with a strong reflection in praxis – such as following up on students’ behaviour in the classroom, and examining not only the way foreigners can be integrated, but also the way the majority is blindly maintaining and reproducing its privilege. Those could allow construction management education to contribute towards a diverse and equitable development of the Swedish construction sector. In that vein, this paper aims to contribute to SDGs 4, 5, 8, and 10.
|
|
| 4. |
- Buser, Martine, 1967, et al.
(författare)
-
Do what I say, not what I do: increasing the representation of minorities in the construction sector
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Association of Researchers in Construction Management (ARCOM). - 9780995546363 ; , s. 166-175
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The minorities are still underrepresented in the Swedish construction sector despite initiatives launched to answer a growing demand for workforce. Whereas many studies have focused on the minorities, we propose here to look at how the majorities maintain their dominance in the case of a civil engineering education. To do so, we build on the concept of privilege accounting for the dynamics which marginalize some while benefitting others. Drawing on a mixed method approach, the empirical material of this qualitative research includes the reviewing of 120 individual assignments of MSc students in construction management, 16 interviews of these students, and the authors’ teaching experience. The preliminary results show a blindness towards one’s own privilege, and an overfocus on the differences attributed to the minorities. The paper contributes to a wider understanding of the social dynamic of discrimination within sector.
|
|
| 5. |
- Calvetti, Diego, et al.
(författare)
-
Human-data interaction in incremental digital twin construction
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the European Conference on Computing in Construction.
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- An incremental approach to deploying Digital Twins (DT) can potentially highlight their gradual usability and practical development for the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Owner Operator industry. At the same time, a significant volume of multiple stakeholders’ digital data on virtual and physical assets may be transacted. Therefore, investigating Human-data Interaction (HDI) over DTs is crucial to refining data acquisition and use. This paper conceptualises a framework of incremental interaction between HDI and DTs. Through this, new levels of HDI are defined over DT increments, including HDI requirements, HDI linkages, HDI as-proposed, HDI connected, HDI training, HDI learning, and HDI independent.
|
|
| 6. |
- Dounas, Theodore, et al.
(författare)
-
Breaking the chain through blockchain : decentralization, autonomy, and labour process in the Architecture Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (archiDAO)
- 2023
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Labour process theory can potentially offer an understanding of how to counter aneotaylorist managerial control at the point of production by considering spaces of relative autonomy in the workplace regulation dynamics (Thompson 2010) – not least due to digitalization and new technologies (Briken et al. 2018) . On these grounds, our paper focuses on the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) sector and presents a novel labour model for the Architecture Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (archiDAO), an architecture studio run on smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. A widespread narrative on the AECO industry in several (inter)national contexts considers it as fragmented and trailing behind other industries in terms of the processes involving digitisation and productivity, esp. regarding the way digital technologies are managerially used (if used at all) for increasing productivity but breaking the labor process by separating between mental and manual labour. This fragmentation and limitation can even affect white-collar workers involved in AECO work – who could thus benefit from exploring spaces of autonomy by utilizing technologies potentially affording them with decentralization capabilities. Introducing blockchain technologies within AECO has the potential to re-shape the industry and the labour that goes into it by allowing for such autonomy through the form of peer-to-peer economies and bottom-up governance of construction project processes. Blockchains are distributed ledger technologies that employ crypto economics to secure the ledger. Moreover, one can run smart contracts on top of a blockchain, creating various token mechanisms that have project and economic utility. Smart contracts can be explained as the computing code equivalent of automated vending machines (Savelyev 2016). Smart contracts get deployed unto blockchain packaged into a transaction. The Byzantine-fault tolerance mechanisms of the blockchain ensure then that smart contracts cannot be tampered within the same manner that transactions are secured, allowing only validated accounts on the network to act on the smart contract. Deployed smart contracts act then as automatons, with the blockchain automatically executing their code when specific events trigger the computation. This creates then an infrastructure automation layer where public permission blockchains, such as Ethereum, can be used as global computing state machines. Within our paper, we analyse the affinity of labour process theory with the set of stigmergic principles which archiDAO has used to organise production. These stigmergic principles have been developed via a review of the Viable System Model of Stafford Beer, as applied in the Cybersyn project in Chile. The paper analyses the construction of the token mechanics in the design of the archiDAO infrastructure and presents concrete examples of the overlay of labour processes with token processes. This can be of particular interest to the labour process community as the ArchiDAO is governed via its member-workers directly using tokens, providing an alternative to the extractive gig economy or the top-down hierarchy of classic architecture firms which are routinely managed in a neo-taylorist way.
|
|
| 7. |
- Jaskula, Klaudia, et al.
(författare)
-
Blockchain-based decentralised Common Data Environment: user requirements and conceptual framework
- 2023
-
Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The ISO19650 standard proposed a common data environment (CDE) as a single source of truth for all project information that facilitates continuous collaboration between stakeholders. In practice, multiple CDEs are used simultaneously, leading to a lack of data integrity, traceability and transparency. Moreover, current centralised cloud-based CDEs are vulnerable to security risks such as data manipulation which magnifies the lack of trust among project stakeholders. Previous studies, proposing blockchain for information management focus on narrow use cases and do not encompass the whole lifecycle of a built asset. This work aims to develop a framework for decentralised information management in relation to all phases of the lifecycle. First, we identify the needs of the users for a CDE using desk research and an empirical approach including semi-structured interviews with industry experts. It is found that the top user requirement is integrating data scattered across multiple CDEs along the built asset's lifecycle in a single source of truth. A CDE should provide an accountable and transparent record of the entire project history integrating data from various tools utilised during the lifecycle. In the final step, we propose a conceptual framework for a blockchain-based CDE where transactions from various tools used along the entire lifecycle of a built asset are recorded on a blockchain linked with Inter-Planetary File Storage (IPFS) to increase the security of the files. Three illustrative use-case scenarios demonstrate the framework's applicability in design, construction, and operation phases. The utilisation of blockchain technology ensures an immutable, independent, and reliable record of all transactions, offering a comprehensive and tamperproof history. This approach not only addresses existing gaps in previous studies but also lays the foundation for establishing trustworthy Product and Material Passports.
|
|
| 8. |
- Jaskula, Klaudia, et al.
(författare)
-
Common data environments in construction: state-of-the-art and challenges for practical implementation
- 2024
-
Ingår i: Construction Innovation. - : Elsevier BV. - 1477-0857 .- 1471-4175.
-
Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose Information management workflow in building information modelling (BIM)-based collaboration is based on using a common data environment (CDE). The basic premise of a CDE is exposing all relevant data as a single source of truth and facilitating continuous collaboration between stakeholders. A multitude of tools can be used as a CDE, however, it is not clear how the tools are used or if they fulfil the users’ needs. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate current practices of using CDEs for information management during the whole built asset’s life cycle, through a state-of-the-art literature review and an empirical study. Design/methodology/approach Literature data is collected according to the PRISMA 2020 guideline for reporting systematic reviews. This paper includes 46 documents in the review and conduct a bibliometric and thematic analysis to identify the main challenges of digital information management. To understand the current practice and the views of the stakeholders using CDEs in their work, this paper used an empirical approach including semi-structured interviews with 15 BIM experts. Findings The results indicate that one of the major challenges of CDE adoption is project complexity and using multiple CDEs simultaneously leading to data accountability, transparency and reliability issues. To tackle those challenges, the use of novel technologies in CDE development such as blockchain could be further investigated. Originality/value The research explores the major challenges in the practical implementation of CDEs for information management. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study on this topic combining a systematic literature review and fieldwork.
|
|
| 9. |
- Kifokeris, Dimosthenis, 1988, et al.
(författare)
-
A conceptual digital business model for construction logistics consultants, featuring a sociomaterial blockchain solution for integrated economic, material and information flows
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Journal of Information Technology in Construction. - : International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction. - 1874-4753. ; 25, s. 500-521
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper, a new digital business model for independent construction logistics consultants, which features the conceptualization of a sociomaterial blockchain solution for integrated information, material and economic flows, is proposed.Theoretically, we offer an understanding of the economic flow, stress the optimization of construction logistics through flow integration, analyse current approaches to understanding blockchain, adopt sociomateriality to envision a suitable blockchain solution, and consider the way blockchain can constitute part of the value proposition of a related digital business model. Methodologically, we systematically reviewed the literature on blockchain-related construction research, and conducted empirical studies on independent logistics consultants in the Swedish context for more than a year. On the one hand, the literature review reveals that core blockchain properties can generate value for construction logistics (e.g. shared ledger structure and reduction of accounting rework) – however, apart from visions and prototypes, there currently exist no use cases, and potential implementational constraints and security issues are limitedly considered. One the other hand, the empirical findings show that independent construction logistics consultants in the sociomaterial Swedish context are suitable candidates for the proposed digital business model. By combining the literature and empirical insights, a permissioned private proof-of-authority blockchain solution integrating the supply chain flows in a generic sociomaterial setting is conceptualized. This solution is then embedded in the value proposition of a digital business model for an independent construction logistics consultant. The proposition includes, among others, improved process management and increased productivity, while the consultants’ competitive advantage through innovation is facilitated. Other business model segments, like key resources, are also updated via the blockchain solution, while some, like channels, are not significantly affected. To not hinder the realization of this digital business model, issues like the lack of blockchain awareness, and the existing power balances within sociomaterial constellations, have to be addressed.
|
|
| 10. |
- Kifokeris, Dimosthenis, 1988, et al.
(författare)
-
A conceptual framework for the assessment of bridge performance indicators through the integration of constructability, sustainability and risk analysis
- 2015
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Bridges, being complex and large infrastructure projects, can suffer from meager levels of performance and lukewarm users’ satisfaction. In order to avoid such undesirable results, it is essential not only to undertake a rigid feasibility study and establish an efficient contractual strategy, but also to optimize the relevant performance indicators (be it technical, sustainable or managerial) through the concepts of constructability and sustainability. Constructability, being a holistic lifecycle project edifice, relies heavily on the assessment and improvement of performance indicators (be it technical, sustainable or managerial), towards design and construction integration, close stakeholders’ cooperation and, ultimately, the attainment of the best possible overall project performance. Its interconnection with sustainability is close, since the latter is one of the most important dimensions of quality – one of the key project performance objectives – and extrapolates towards the rest, which are cost (of integration), time (of completion) and client satisfaction. Risk analysis, being used extensively in project management but not as of yet integrated deeply in the unified themes of constructability and sustainability, can provide the cognitive and mathematical basis for the establishment of a new methodology of assessing the performance indicators, thus helping in their improvement for the existing and ongoing projects and their documentation into lessons-learned databases for future projects. In this early work, a coarse conceptual framework for the integration of risk analysis in the combined notions of constructability and sustainability in order to assess performance indicators for bridges is defined, being an early step in an ongoing research effort towards the establishment of a holistic methodology.
|
|
