Keywords: deconstruction, safety, enabling events, triggering events, fuzzy logic, statistics, software program.

Deconstruction is a process of removing the fundamental elements in a building in an organized manner such that they can be reused and/or recycled. It can also be defined as the reverse of the construction process as the last constructed component of the building is the first component removed. This mandates a plan that needs to be followed while deconstructing buildings. Included in this plan is the evaluation of the safety of workers, the building that is to be deconstructed, and the adjacent buildings.

The most common projects which are deconstructed are those which contain steel or wood members as the basic element of the building. Steel and wood have a huge economic and environmental benefit if recycled. In some cases they are directly used in other projects without further processing if the dimension and strength of the member removed and that required coincide. Although the safety aspect is an important issue in the completion of any construction project, in the case of deconstruction projects, it is still in the development stage. The aim of this project is to identify and evaluate the safety of deconstruction projects as well as the safety awareness of the workers involved.

This paper concentrates on the safety of workers involved in the actual process of deconstruction. This work is an extension of our earlier study, which identified eighteen safety factors for use in the evaluation of safety and categorized these factors into enabling and triggering causes [1]. The authors have modified those factors based on a survey conducted among construction personnel who at one stage were involved with deconstruction/demolition or LEED certified projects. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a program by the United States Green Buildings Council (USGBC) that certifies buildings that are committed to environmental sustainability through high performance standards [2]. The safety factors identified in this paper reflect the survey input. The survey also involves evaluating the factors identified previously based on the experience of the person completing the survey. A statistical analysis was done on their input and a "default" set of values for the factors were added to the program developed in [1]. This would enable the user to use these default values if the deconstruction project is in the reconnaissance stage and it is difficult to identify the exact nature of the safety concerns involved. A linguistic comparison table that expresses the safety of the site in linguistic terms was included in the program to conclude that the level of safety based on the safety factor value. The safety factor value was evaluated using fuzzy a pair-wise comparison matrix and fuzzy composition.

The authors intend to take a live deconstruction project and use the software program to verify the results of the program and compare it with the safety level that is being maintained at the site. This needs to be followed by a sensitivity analysis to determine the accuracy of the program.

1

Manohar, M., Duane, J.W., Hadipriono, F.C., and Schafer, D.W., "Evaluating Worker Safety during Deconstruction using Fuzzy Logic", Journal of Computers and Structures, (submitted) 2005.

2

LEED Certification Program by USGBC, http://www.usgbc.org/leed

purchase the full-text of this paper (price £20)

go to the previous paper
go to the next paper
return to the table of contents
return to the book description
purchase this book (price £135 +P&P)