Tao, Y; Hu, H; Xu, F and Zhang, Z (2025) Ergonomic risk mitigation through workforce planning for construction projects. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 151(4): 04025012, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Construction workers are facing significant ergonomic risks, which negatively affect their health, safety, and productivity, and therefore it is essential to develop effective and applicable risk control measures. In addition to instrument-based risk control methods, which have received the most attention, another easy-to-implement strategy is to consider ergonomic risks in workforce planning to balance physical stress and rest allowance. This study was aimed at mitigating ergonomic risks through workforce planning for construction projects. First, the ergonomic risk can be measured by considering task-specific and personalized features together with processing time. On this basis, a multiobjective mixed-integer programming model with ergonomic considerations was developed. Specifically, ergonomic constraints limit the cumulative ergonomic risk for each worker, and the objective is to minimize overall ergonomic risks across all workers. Small-scale basic examples were used to compare the different strategies for how to take ergonomic risks into account. Then a real-world case was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed method. Compared with the default plan proposed by the onsite superintendents, a 5% decrease in total ergonomic risks and a 41% decrease in max individual cumulative risk was achieved. The method is easy to adopt compared with instrument-based intervention systems, and is flexible to be adjusted according to real-life situations, contributing to sustainable workforce development in the construction sector.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction projects; ergonomic risk; scheduling optimization; work-related musculoskeletal disorders; workforce development |
| Index terms: | workforce development, construction project, risk mitigation, construction sector, scheduling, default, strategy, effectiveness, workforce planning, integer programming, construction worker, onsite, control method, productivity |
| Subjects: | building construction, algorithms, production management, financial risk, operations research, practitioner, industry analysis, management, performance management, monitoring and control, professional development, dispute resolution |
| Topics: | Roles and Professions, Construction Technology, Cost Management, Business Strategy, Research Practice, Time Control, Digital Applications, Human Resources, Project Management, Education, Legal Issues, Quality Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here