Browsing by Author "Deepak, D."

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A framework for enhancing construction safety through knowledge-based safety culture indicators
(Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2023) Deepak, D.; Mahesh, G.
Many studies have indicated that positive safety culture in workplace environment could reduce occurrence of accidents. Yet, there is a lack of consensus on indicators pertaining to good practices, methods, and improvement strategies related to safety culture. Therefore, this study aims to identify the current state and development needs of the level of safety culture and suggests improvement by benchmarking through knowledge-based safety culture indicators. In this study, a qualitative research approach was adopted using open-ended interview questions to professionals from reputed construction organizations. The collected data was analyzed to summarize these interview responses highlighting the key indicators required to formulate a knowledge-based improvement framework for construction organizations. Results of the interview are analyzed and an improvement framework of overall safety culture is suggested. This framework proposes a different approach by focusing on the development needs of proactive safety culture pertaining to key knowledge-based indicators relevant for construction organizations. Further, this framework could be the basis to provide a holistic understanding of measuring safety culture to assess the level of safety culture in organizations. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Assessing the life cycle performance of green building projects: a building performance score (BPS) model approach
(Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2023) Thanu, T.; C, C.; Deepak, D.
Construction industry is one of the major sectors contributing to the economic development of any country. Also, it acts as a major source of pollution towards the environment, and the impact of this is very severe. To overcome this, the concept of sustainability in the construction sector has emerged. In this regard, vital importance is given to the concept of sustainability along with various rating tools to measure green building performance. In the Indian context, existing assessment tools provide major importance to environmental impact rather than economic and social impacts. To address this issue, a Building Performance Score (BPS) model is developed based on the triple bottom priorities of sustainability which consists of environmental, economical, and social concepts. This model includes various indicators that play a major role in the sustainability assessment at various stages in life cycle of building. Different weights were ascertained for these indicators by experts and were further evaluated by Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to understand the importance of these indicators. Furthermore, the importance of BPS model is validated considering three certified green buildings. Additional indicators that form the major source of sustainability that are neglected in the existing assessment tools are also considered in the case studies. The BPS model developed is utilized in different case scenarios to evaluate the performance of buildings and the suggested BPS model is validated through the present study. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Demystifying the Recent Trends and Advances in Safety Culture Research: A Systematic Review
(Springer Singapore, 2022) Deepak, D.; Mahesh, G.
In the recent times, there has been a growing concern to improve safety management practices in the construction sector. In this regard, there is a need to improve “safety culture” as it plays a significant role in improving workplace safety conditions and is viewed as a comprehensive construct having possibilities of interventions at all levels of construction projects. However, the growing body of knowledge on safety culture research makes it difficult to have a systematic and comprehensive view of the subject. Towards addressing this issue, there is a need to systematize this body of knowledge with a comprehensive systematic literature review. The review is based on three-step methodology. First step aims at gathering suitable articles related to safety culture in construction sector. The second step presents the results of descriptive analysis on recent trends in safety culture research. Last step focuses on a detailed systematic review pertaining to definition, factors, and assessment tools that influence the level of safety culture practices. Results of this review help to uncover and provide a comprehensive overview of recent trends and advances governing safety culture research, and it can help academicians and practi-tioners identify fundamental influence from these published articles. Implications of the study emphasized that the study outcomes can assist researchers and practitioners to have consensus on industry-specific standards. Furthermore, this systematic liter-ature review has helped to conceptualize safety culture, thereby highlighting the impact of external events and stakeholders interests in construction sector. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023.
Developing a building performance score model for assessing the sustainability of buildings
(Emerald Publishing, 2022) Hp, T.; C, R.; Deepak, D.
Purpose: Construction industry is one of the leading causes of pollution generation in today's context. But the fact that the development of construction industry leads to the country's economic and social development cannot be unobserved. Hence, there is a need to develop a sustainable construction methodology, and while doing so, measures must be considered so as to not disturb the natural habitats. With the greater prominence shown toward the concept of green and sustainable construction developments, various tools have been developed in recent years in order to measure the performance of such sustainable and green buildings. In the Indian context, the assessment tools developed to measure the performance of the green building are found to be scanty in addressing various economic and social impacts. Design/methodology/approach: This study aims at developing a building performance score (BPS) model concerning the sustainability model built on the triple bottom priorities considering all the three vital components, viz. environmental, economic and social factors. In this study, the different phases involved in the complete life cycle of the project are recognized and then all the phases are assessed considering all the three major components mentioned in the BPS model. Findings: The outcome of this study specifies that various indicators, such as the topographical and climate change, health and safety of the construction workers, project management consultancy, risk management, security measures and solid waste management, form a chief source of a sustainable building, and these indicators are not being assessed in the existing assessment tools. Also, consideration of environmental, economic and social factors is also equally important in construction industry. Moreover, these indicators are also required to be assessed and included in the evaluation process while assessing the performance of the building. Originality/value: The BPS model developed in the study will assist to improve in assessing the building performance with respect to all indicators in the complete life cycle of the project. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.
Effect of the drag coefficient on the performance of vertical porous baffles in a sloshing tank
(Emerald Publishing, 2025) Bhandiwad, M.S.; Dodamani, B.M.; Deepak, D.
Purpose: The present work involves analytical and experimental investigation of sloshing in a two-dimensional rectangular tank including the effect of porous baffles to control and/or reduce the wave motion in the sloshing tank. The purpose of this study is to assess the analytical solutions of the drag coefficient effect on porous baffles performance to track free surface motion variation in the sloshing tank by comparison with experimental shake table tests under a range of sway excitation. Design/methodology/approach: The linear second-order ordinary differential equations for liquid sloshing in the rectangular tank were solved using Newmark’s beta method and obtained the analytical solutions for liquid sloshing with dual vertical porous baffles of full submergence depths in a sway-oscillated rectangular tank following the methodology similar to Warnitchai and Pinkaew (1998) and Tait (2008). Findings: The porous baffles significantly reduce wave elevation in the varying filled levels of the tank compared to the baffle-free tank under the range of excitation frequencies. It is observed that the Reynolds number-dependent drag coefficient for porous baffles in the tank can significantly reduce the sloshing elevations and is found to be effective to achieve higher damping compared to the porosity-dependent drag coefficient for porous baffles in the sloshing tank. The analytical model’s response to free surface elevation variations in the sloshing tank was compared with the experiment’s test results. The analytical results matched with shake table test results with a quantitative difference near the first resonant frequency. Research limitations/implications: The scope of the study is limited to porous baffles performance under range sway motion and three different filling levels in the tank. The porous baffle performance includes Reynolds number dependent drag coefficient to explore the damping effect in the sloshing tank. Originality/value: The porous baffles with low-level porosities in the sloshing tank have many engineering applications where the first resonant mode of sloshing in the tank is more important. The porous baffle drag coefficient is an important parameter to study the baffle’s damping effect in sloshing tanks. Hence, obtained analytical solution for liquid sloshing in the rectangular tank with Reynolds number as well as porosity-dependent drag coefficient (model 1) and porosity-dependent drag coefficient porous baffles (model 2) performance is discussed. The model’s test results were validated using a series of shake table sloshing experiments for three fill levels in the tank with sway motion at various excitation frequencies covering the first four sloshing resonant modes. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
Identifying the performance areas affecting the project performance for Indian construction projects
(Emerald Group Holdings Ltd., 2021) Ingle, P.V.; Mahesh, G.; Deepak, D.
Purpose: The construction industry is facing challenges because of performance shortfalls. Construction projects are highly complex, distinctive, fragmented and do not have well-established performance assessment models to evaluate their project success. The purpose of this paper is to assess the direction through determination of performance areas that would affect project performance in Indian construction projects. Design/methodology/approach: A survey instrument was developed to gather data on the perception of industry professionals on these identified areas. Purposive sampling method was used to select respondents for the survey. These performance areas are ranked using relative importance index to ascertain a level of importance among the group. Factor analysis (FA) was conducted to identify the significant performance areas project performance. Further to identify the most influence performance areas on Indian construction projects, multiple regression analysis was carried out. Findings: Findings indicated 28 significant performance areas. This shows the low level of adoption of good construction management practices in Indian construction projects. FA resulted in the areas being grouped to nine broad significant performance areas with 59.49% of the total variance, namely, quality, schedule, environment and stakeholder satisfactions, cost, productivity, safety, communication management, customer relations and finance. Multiple regression analysis revealed two pivotal factors “customer relations” and “schedule” that significantly influence project performance in Indian construction industry. Originality/value: The outcome of the study will guide project stakeholders, who desire to improve project performance on construction projects, to prioritize their efforts. It also highlights performance areas of project management which required more focussed research in the context of Indian construction projects. The findings can be extended to the developing countries. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.
Influence of knowledge-based safety culture in the construction industry: a stakeholder's perspective
(Emerald Group Holdings Ltd., 2021) Deepak, D.; Mahesh, G.
Purpose: Safety in construction projects is essential and requires more attention towards minimizing the accident rate. Problems concerning awareness of safety risks, procedures and practices still exist in the industry, which indicate a shortfall in diffusion of safety-related knowledge in construction industry. Also, there is dearth of studies on knowledge management strategies to prevent reoccurrence of accidents and thereby improve safety culture in construction industry. This study attempts to unveil aspects of knowledge management that are ignored in considering safety culture and discern the differences in the perception of key stakeholders of construction industry. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify and measure knowledge-based safety culture elements. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, the focus is on the application of a reliable, valid and sensitive knowledge-based safety culture assessment tool on key stakeholders operational in construction industry. Research method adopted is a questionnaire-based survey to seek responses from industry professionals. A total of 199 responses were obtained from 106 different companies operational in Indian construction industry. Statistical analyses including ranking analysis, t-test, correlation analysis, and ANOVA test are utilized for comparing and identifying the differences in view of stakeholder's perceptions concerning workplace safety. Findings: This study helps to identify and rank critical knowledge-based safety culture elements from the perspective of key stakeholders of construction industry. This contributes in identifying the most critical and neglected variables among the key stakeholders regarding aspects of safety culture. Also, the study shows the importance of knowledge dimension in developing overall safety culture in construction industry. Originality/value: Results of this study offer valuable insight in enabling key stakeholders of construction industry to examine and enhance their safety performance. The implications of this study contribute new knowledge in assessing conditions that will improve worker safety in the construction industry. The paper should be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the area of occupational health and safety management. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.
Knowledge Management Influence on Safety Management Practices: Evidence from Construction Industry
(IGI Global, 2021) Deepak, D.; Gangadhar, M.; Kumar, M.N.
Many studies have been conducted in relation with knowledge management (KM), indicating the benefit associated with KM; among which safety management (SM) improvement is one of them. So, the aim of this article is to assess the influence of KM on SM practices in construction industry. In this regard, various factors that affect KM and SM are identified through literature review. Then, a questionnaire survey was facilitated to collect data based on the identified factors. These factors are ranked using a relative importance index (RII) to ascertain the level of importance among its group. Further, correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis are carried out to test and measure the strength of the relationship between KM and SM factors. Results indicate that there exists a definite and significant relationship between the factors of KM and SM in construction industry. Overall, the results obtained from the study will assist practitioners and professionals to develop and upgrade KM and SM practices in construction industry. © 2022 by IGI Global. All rights reserved.