An integrated ergonomics framework for evaluation and design of construction operations

Labor is one of the most critical resources in the construction industry due to its impact on the productivity, safety, quality, and cost of a construction project. Ergonomic assessment, as a tool and method for analyzing human activities and their interactions with the surrounding environment, is thus crucial for designing operations and workplaces that achieve both high productivity and safety. In construction, however, the constantly changing work environments and laborious tasks cause traditional approaches to ergonomic analysis, such as manual observations and measurements, to require substantial time and effort to yield reliable results. Therefore, to simplify and automate the assessment processes, this study explores the adaptation and integration of various existing methods for data collection, analysis, and output representation potentially available for comprehensive ergonomic analysis. The proposed framework integrates sensing for data collection, action recognition and simulation modeling for productivity and ergonomic analysis, and point cloud model generation and human motion animation for output visualization. The proposed framework is demonstrated through a case study using data from an off-site construction job site. The results indicate that integrating the various techniques can facilitate the assessment of manual operations and thereby enhance the implementation of ergonomic practices during a construction project by reducing the time, effort, and complexity required to apply the techniques.