This essay is part of a project between Södertörn University College and Stockholm Academic Forum. The focus of the project is gender equality in small- and medium sized companies. I have worked with a construction company called Activa . The majority of the employees at the company were male and I was interested in the consequences of gender construction in such an environment. I think that the basic condition for equality work is an understanding of gender and the male norm.

Background: The construction industry is Sweden?s single most important industry branch with a significant influence on Sweden?s wealth. The political restrictions that once controlled the industry are today almost gone. This combined with an unbalanced supply and demand situation on the Swedish constructions market, caused by urbanisation, has led to increased pressure on the Swedish construction companies who now are forced to find new methods in their struggle to contain or increase their competitive advantage. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to survey: which strategic variables are of great importance in today?s Swedish construction industry with focus on the four main actors, JM, NCC, PEAB and Skanska.

In Sweden there is no legal regulation for the obligations and responsibilities between the contracting parties within the construction, civil engineering and installation sector. To clarify uncertainties regarding the liability, actors from theses sectors have agreed upon a voluntary regulation, called the General Conditions of Contract.When insurance companies want to enter the Swedish construction insurance market, they face a regulatory framework that not only regulates the construction market, it also imposes requirements on terms and conditions that must be included in the construction insurance. These terms are perceived as ambiguities and create difficulties and inhibit the ability for these insurance companies to offer competitive insurances. One of the terms that create these difficulties is the guarantee period, which is period of time starting from handing over the construction project to the employer, during this period the contractor still has the responsibility for the construction project. The guarantee period regulated by the General Condition of Contracts differs from the international use of the term both in length and in content.

AbstractThe importance of good construction planning affects the final costs of the production and the timing of the project. Planning for building projects has been studied with the aim of identifying how three week planning appears in the construction industry today.A case study has been conducted in Navisworks Simulate to assess whether the software is suitable to connect the task schedule with the BIM model to create a 4D model. 4D models are used for performing 4D construction simulation to visualize the project. In order to use the benefits of the model, investment in equipment and software is required. This means higher costs for the companies.

Injuries and sick-leave is a common feature for reinforcement workers today. This is mainlydue to the fact that reinforcement work is done in an exposed environment with many stressfactors and highly repetitive work. These operations are often carried out in unsuitableworking positions, these positions creates a major burden on the bones and joints and causesmicro- damages on muscles. With repetitive work these injuries are not given time to healproperly and will gradually become worse.The body will not be able to handle the stress of working in a work environment such as thisand musculoskeletal disorders can be a result of this. The injury will make itself known aspain in the musculoskeletal system and causes reduced movability; the injured worker willtherefore not be able to perform the same work tasks as before.

AbstractThe importance of good construction planning affects the final costs of the production and the timing of the project. Planning for building projects has been studied with the aim of identifying how three week planning appears in the construction industry today.A case study has been conducted in Navisworks Simulate to assess whether the software is suitable to connect the task schedule with the BIM model to create a 4D model. 4D models are used for performing 4D construction simulation to visualize the project. In order to use the benefits of the model, investment in equipment and software is required. This means higher costs for the companies.

AbstractSkanska Sweden has decided to split the organization that earlier handled both large and small projects into two different subsidiaries. A consequence of this is that all construction service handling will from now on be enforced under the name Skanska Direkt AB. The management of Skanska sees this as an opportunity to develop the organization and in the long term achieve higher earnings.   The task which Skanska in connection with the reorganization wanted to be investigated was a proposal on how the organization of work with the insurance work in the future should look like.The organization that is handled is from production manager to professional workers and includes damage handling that has been obtained from insurance companies in the southern and northern parts of Värmland. The purpose with this work is to present a different kind of view to the problem with developing this branch of the company. The main target was to work out a proposal of an organizational plan for the damage handling in Skanska Direkt AB that is possible to apply, less sensitive for dismissals, results in higher earnings, obtains higher customer satisfaction and also a staff stab that develops their skills at their own.The report and work progressed as following:Opening theory study of strategies to obtain the objectives set.Restructuring of existing organization with theories as support.Interviews with the actors involved to verify feasibility of the developed organization plan  Organization chart, the result of work means that some workers at each location shall be responsible for a small group of workers and work independently. They shall manage the process of invoicing and calculate costs at the same time as they work out on the workplace.

The construction business is one of the most accident prone businesses in Sweden. In order to make it safer it?s vital that all employees of a company report all accidents and incidents that occur. This report intends through qualitative interviews, to analyze the knowledge and attitude towards incident reporting among the employees of the Swedish construction contractor JM.The goal of the thesis work is to hopefully contribute to an increase of employees? awareness on those issues.

This bachelor thesis addresses the problem of appeals against house building in Gothenburg. The thesis investigates whether there is a statistically significant relationship between demographic factors and the occurrence of approved, appealed and revoked permits for new construction of residential buildings in the ten districts of Gothenburg. This is done with a correlation analysis. The report also investigates whether there is a statistically significant regression in the same demographic factors and how these individually affect the average processing time for appeals in the districts. This study is done with a multiple regression analysis.

This report compares two different types of insulation with regards to fire and moisture. The materials were tested for the company Fiskarhedenvillan AB, for a wall and a roof construction that the company currently uses in the establishment of Sweden's first certified passive house for international standards.Their current material, Rockwool, is compared to a relatively new material on the Swedish market called SEALECTION Agribalance sold by the company ISO Green AB. The material is a type of polyurethane insulation. This insulation material would result in a more efficient execution of the construction as it provides waterproofing and is applied more easily than Rockwool. From a fire standpoint, literature studies and discussions with fire experts led to results.

Every year more than 6000 thefts, to a value of 1.5 billion SEK, are reportedwithin the Swedish building trade. Plus all the indirect costs of having theconstruction site standing still.SafeTool is a newly started company that will try to prevent this problem witha modern technology solution.The key to SafeTool?s solution is RFID ? Radio Frequency Identification ? andthe solution looks like this;All tools are stored in a container on the construction site. Every tool isequipped with a RFID-tag that uniquely identifies the tool. With antennas in thecontainer it is possible to detect when a tool is leaving the container and whenit comes back.

The aim of this thesis is to define digital library, and to investigate a relation between the construction of a digital library and user needs. The main questions to be answered are: 1 What criteria was used when constructing a digital library, particularly concerning issues like purpose, function, design, supply, services, resources and future development of the digital library? 2 How do the digital library system designers and system builders criteria correspond with those of postgraduate researchers? And what factors affect the use? A digital library is an enterprise that gives access to information stored digitally and directly available on the net. The crucial is that the enterprise has a control over collection of information and responsibility to make it available to a defined group of users. In order to investigate the relation between the construction of the digital library and user needs, I have interviewed five key people involved with the work with the digital library and twenty postgraduate researchers from the Gothenburg University.

The aim of this study was to give an insight of the construction of girls in their relationships with friends and lovers in the Swedish magazine Julia. The magazine turns to girls of age nine to fourteen. The research questions were 1) What is the construction of the girls in their relationships with friends and lovers about in Julia? 2) How are girls constructed in their relationships with friends and lovers? Three issues of the magazine from the winter of 2014 were selected as material for the study. Critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992, 2010) was the point of departure in the analysis.

This report's aim is that by field measurements determine the function of Aprobo soundproofing material dB2 for reducing impact sounds, the measurements is done in ?the school for fine art? in Umeå also known as ?konstnärligt campus building nine?. The construction technique is used in areas sensitive to impact sound between different floors in the building. The measurement?s is also to do a function control of the buildings sound quality compared to Swedish and European standard when it comes to air sound, impact sound and reverberation time .

The construction industry has demands on energy use in permanent buildings. How much energy that is permitted to use during the time the building is produced has no requirements. The purpose with this study is to learn how far Skanska has come with the work of making the building site more energy efficient.A literature study has been performed in the beginning of the study to survey what energy efficient arrangements that can be applied and how they operate. Using site visits and interviews the situations on the building sites have been studied as well as the energy efficient measure that are in use.Skanska has come a long way with the work of energy efficient building sites and they keep improving. They have improved half of their cabins so they use 50 % less energy.