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Against the backdrop of the contribution of design to the occurrence of occupational injuries and illnesses in construction, design for occupational safety and health (DfOSH) is increasingly becoming prominent in the construction sector. To ensure that design interventions are safe for construction workers to build and maintain, design firms need to have the appropriate organisational capability in respect of DfOSH. However, empirical insight regarding the attributes that constitute DfOSH organisational capability is lacking. The purpose of this paper, which trailblases the subject of DfOSH organisational capability in construction, is to address two key questions: what organisational attributes determine DfOSH capability? What is the relative priority of the capability attributes?

The study employed three iterations of expert focus group discussion and a subsequent three-round Delphi technique accompanied by the application of voting analytic hierarchy process.

The study revealed 18 capability attributes nested within six categories, namely: competence (the competence of organisation’s design staff); strategy (the consideration of DfOSH in organisation’s vision as well as the top management commitment); corporate experience (organisation’s experience in implementing DfOSH on projects); systems (systems, processes and procedures required for implementing DfOSH); infrastructure (physical, and information and communication technology resources); and collaboration (inter- and intra-organisational collaboration to implement DfOSH on projects). Whilst these categories and their nested attributes carry varying weights of importance, collectively, the competence-related attributes are the most important, followed by strategy.

The findings should enable design firms and other key industry stakeholders (such as the clients who appoint them) to understand designers’ DfOSH capability better. Additionally, design firms should be able to prioritise efforts/investment to enhance their DfOSH capability.

The trend in computer‐based risk and reliability assessment is foreseen as moving away from current algorithmic methods, towards information systems built around human‐like reasoning processes. Here a trial Computer‐Aided Risk Evaluation system under development at Cranfield Institute of Technology is outlined. The system is being programmed using the logic programming language, PROLOG. The method of representing materials failure knowledge within the system is described, and problems associated with endowing the system with a measure of intelligence are discussed. Ideas for future development of such systems are presented.

For construction organisations to be effective at implementing an integrated safety, health and environmental (SHE) management system, they require the right level of organisational capability. This capability includes the policies, systems and resources of the organisation. However, within the academic literature, it is unclear which organisational attributes of construction companies are important for implementing integrated SHE management. This study aims to explore the organisational attributes that determine integrated SHE management capability and their relative priorities.

The study used a literature review supported by expert verification and a subsequent three-round expert Delphi technique accompanied by applying the voting analytical hierarchy process.

The study identified 20 attributes grouped under five main thematic categories. These are strategy (the organisation’s vision and top management commitment); process (the organisation’s procedures and processes for SHE management); people (organisation’s human resources, their competence, roles, responsibilities and involvement in SHE management); resources (organisation’s physical and financial resources for SHE management) and information (SHE related documents, data, records and their communication across an organisation). While these thematic categories and the attributes within carry different weights of importance, the strategy-related attributes are the most important, followed by the people-related attributes.

The results of this study should enable construction companies and key industry stakeholders to understand construction companies’ capability to successfully implement an integrated SHE management system. Furthermore, construction companies should be able to prioritise efforts or investments to enhance their SHE management capability.

This paper seeks to introduce a set of key practices that can be used to assess whether an organization has the ability to design, develop and manufacture reliable electronic products.

The ability to design, develop and manufacture reliable electronic products is defined in the paper in terms of a reliability capability maturity model, which is a measure of the practices within an organization that contribute to the reliability of the final product, and the effectiveness of these practices in meeting the reliability requirements of customers.

The paper presents a procedure for evaluating and benchmarking reliability capability. Criteria for assigning different capability maturity levels are presented. The paper also presents a case study corresponding to reliability capability benchmarking of an electronics company.

The paper provides a set of practices for evaluating and benchmarking reliability capability.

Reliability capability is a measure of the practices within an organization that contributes to the reliability of the final product and the effectiveness of these practices in meeting the reliability requirements of customers. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model for evaluating the reliability capability of electronics manufacturers.

A survey methodology and statistical methods based on multivariate correlational analysis were used to validate the model theoretically.

The result of the analysis is a list and ranking of tasks that are critical to the development of reliable electronics products.

The paper presents a generic model for evaluating both in‐house reliability practices and those of suppliers to identify areas for improvement and for evaluating improvements over time.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate maintenance performance of a gasification process unit by identifying reliability, failure and hazard rate. The prediction on the number of preventive maintenance (PM) activities and size of labour are being analysed.

The study collects maintenance data for 4,000 hours operation to perform Weibull analysis in order to determine two key factors which are beta shape factor, β and characteristic life, η.

The results for estimation of failure, reliability and hazard rate show that the pump was most likely contributed to the biggest failure. On the other hand, reaction chamber was able to maintain the longest operation among other components. It is estimated that the total PM activities should be within 20-50 activities per month for whole processing plant. Meanwhile, the estimation of size of labour should be within the range of 60-130 numbers of workers per month for all components.

The method of Weibull analysis for investigating current maintenance performance has been analysed using real case study data. The data collection is obtained from a typical gasification process unit.

Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a metric for estimating equipment effectiveness of the industrial systems. The purpose of this paper is to identify maintenance improvement potentials using an OEE assessment within the croissant production line.

The present work is carried out by analyzing the failure and repair data of the line. The failure data cover a period of 15 months. During this period the croissant production line usually operates over the entire day (24 h per day) in three 8-h shifts per day, and pauses at the weekends. Descriptive statistics of the failure and repair data for the line based on scheduled and unscheduled interruptions were carried. Moreover, the actual availability (A), performance efficiency (PE) and quality rate (Q) measures, together with the complete OEE for each working day for the croissant production line, were shown.

The main objectives are to understand the operation management of the croissant production line, and to measure the OEE characteristics in precise quantitative terms. OEE analysis can help the company to identify the primary problems concerning the A, PE and Q and acts immediately.

This paper presents a successful evaluation of OEE which will provide a useful guide to aspects of the production process, which identifies the critical points of the line that require further improvement through effective maintenance strategy (i.e. total productive maintenance). Moreover, the analysis provides a useful perspective and helps managers and engineers make better decisions on how to improve manufacturing productivity and quality.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the issues faced by managers of inland waterways in the Southeastern USA as a guide for improvements to spill management information systems.

A survey was administered to a group of over 300 professionals representing multiple organizations involved in water quality management and/or spill response in the Southeast region of the USA to query their perceptions on leading demands and issues faced in management of inland waterways both on a daily basis and during spill response efforts.

Survey results indicated that communication is often the “weak link” in both water management and spill response activities, and that enhanced spill management information tools could serve as a valuable resource in addressing this problem. Display of spatial/visual information was deemed to be especially important to spill response personnel and should be included in the next generation of spill response systems.

The scope is limited to the Southeastern USA, but similar results would be expected in other regions where management of surface water is of concern.

In these trying economic times, the survey results serve to rank order decision‐support priorities to which available resources should be allocated and indicate areas of interest for improved support in both water resource management and spill response.

The paper provides the first documentation of the demands and decision‐support priorities of inland waterway resource managers and spill response personnel.

Disaster risk reduction is prominent in the international policy agenda, and the year 2015 brought together three international policy frameworks that contribute to disaster risk reduction (i.e. the Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction, the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Change Agreement – COP21). However, there is a dearth of effort at identifying and aligning the specific educational needs of built environment professionals with the three policy frameworks. This is needed to facilitate the incorporation of the contents of the policy frameworks into built environment professionals’ training. Therefore, this study aims to map the educational needs of built environment professionals with the core areas of the three international policy frameworks.

This study utilized CADRE (Collaborative Action towards Disaster Resilience Education) research project outcomes alongside the earlier mentioned three international policy frameworks. A comprehensive desk review was done to map the educational needs identified in the CADRE project with the core priority areas of the three policy frameworks.

The study revealed the educational needs that are significant towards an effective implementation of the core priority areas of the three international policy frameworks.

This study would be beneficial to the built environment professionals involved in disaster risk reduction. They will be aware of the specific knowledge areas that would aid the successful implementation of the aforementioned three international policy frameworks.

The outcomes of the study would be beneficial to higher education providers in disaster risk reduction and sustainable development. It has identified the knowledge and competency gaps needed to be bridged in the curricula to meet the demands created by the international policy frameworks.

This paper aims to prioritize preventive maintenance actions on process equipment by evaluating the risk associated with failure modes using predictive maintenance data instead of maintenance history alone.

In process plants, maintenance task identification is based on the failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA). To eliminate or mitigate risk caused by failure modes, maintenance tasks need to be prioritized. Risk priority number (RPN) can be used to rank the risk. RPN is estimated invariably using maintenance history. However, maintenance history has deficiencies, like limited data, inconsistency etc. To overcome these deficiencies, the proposed approach uses the predictive maintenance data clubbed with expert domain knowledge. Unlike the traditional single step approach, RPN is estimated in two steps, i.e. Step 1 estimates the “Possibility of failure mode detection” and Step 2 estimates RPN using output of step 1. Fuzzy sets and approximate reasoning are used to handle the uncertainty/imprecision in data and subjectivity/vagueness of expert domain knowledge. Fuzzy inference system is developed using MATLAB® 6.5.

The proposed approach is applied to a large gearbox in an integrated steel plant. The gearbox is covered under a predictive maintenance program. RPN for each of the failure modes is estimated with the proposed approach and compared with the maintenance task schedule. The illustrative case study results show that the proposed approach helps in detection of failure modes more scientifically and prevents “Over maintenance” to ensure reliability.

This approach gives an opportunity to integrate the predictive maintenance data and subjective/qualitative domain expertise to evaluate the possibility of failure mode detection (POD) quantitatively, which is otherwise purely estimated using subjective judgments. The approach is generic and can be applied to a variety of process equipment to ensure reliability through prioritized maintenance scheduling.