Nailing Down the Price of New Nonresidential Building Construction: Expanding the PPI to Include Indexes by Region and Type of Contractor

[Excerpt] In the early 2000s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Producer Price Index (PPI) program began developing price indexes to cover the new nonresidential construction segment of the U.S. economy. This event was precipitated by feedback from industry analysts, economic agencies, and trade associations indicating that there was a lack of regularly available construction data based on a clearly defined methodology. In particular, the Bureau of Economic Analysis needed price indexes for the calculation of the nonresidential construction segment of the nominal gross domestic product. As a result, five new nonresidential building PPIs were created: • New warehouse building construction • New school building construction • New office building construction • New industrial building construction • New healthcare building construction The types of buildings mentioned in these indexes were selected because they covered a majority of the new, nonresidential building construction segment of the economy. The new nonresidential building construction indexes were introduced into publication piecemeal between 2005 and 2013. Although these indexes represented a significant accomplishment in terms of expanding PPI coverage, some data users were looking for more detailed price index information for the construction sector. In December 2016, in response to the requests for regional data, BLS created two additional index structures that reflected more detailed data: • New nonresidential building construction by contractor type and region (236400) • New nonresidential building construction by region (236500) This Beyond the Numbers article explains how these indexes are calculated, what their structures are like, and how analysts can use the data to better understand price movements in the nonresidential building construction sector of the U.S. economy

Key stakeholders’ perspectives towards UK new-build housing defects

Purpose: Research on housing defects has limited its enquiry to the classifications of defects, potential impact of defects, and their detection and remediation during construction and the builder’s liability period, without considering the warranty period. This paper aims to better understand which impacts of defects are perceived as important by the key stakeholders involved in their detection and remediation over the construction, builder’s liability and insurer’s warranty periods. Design/methodology/approach: The questionnaire survey approach was used. The questionnaire distribution list was drawn from the UK’s largest warranty provider and approved inspector’s records. The questionnaire was distributed to 2003 people, receiving 292 responses, a response rate of 15%. Findings: This research challenges the assertion that the house building industry (i.e. house builders, building inspectors and warranty providers) is predominantly cost focused and finds that the potential impact of defects on home occupants are their primary concern. In contrast, the home occupants’ appear solely focused on the disruption defects caused on their daily lives and perceive a lack customer focus in the house building industry. Originality/value: This study provides empirical evidence of the contrasting view of the house building industry and home occupants with respect to the prioritisation of the impacts of defects. Further, this research offers house builders an alternative approach to determine which defects should be targeted for reduction purposes which may lead to improved levels of customer satisfaction

Application of BIM in sustainability analysis

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the process of generating and managing building data during its life cycle. Typically it uses three-dimensional, real-time, dynamic building modeling software to increase productivity in building design and construction. The process produces the Building Information Model, which encompasses building geometry, spatial relationships, geographic information, quantities and properties of building components. On the other hand, Green Building Index (GBI) as the localized sustainability building rating system in Malaysia assesses the impact of building on environment based on energy efficiency, indoor environment quality, sustainable site & management, materials & resources, water efficiency and innovation. By integrating GBI assessment criteria with BIM technology, this research proposes a comparative case study analysis of Residential New Construction (RNC) and Non-Residential New Construction (NRNC) based on the Autodesk Ecotect Analysis software (a comprehensive, concept-to-detail sustainable design analysis tool that provides a wide range of simulation and analysis functionality through desktop and web-service platforms) and Autodesk Green Building Studio (A web-based energy analysis service which performs whole building analysis, optimizes energy efficiency, and works toward carbon neutrality earlier in the design process) to investigate the influence of construction material on energy consumption, lifecycle energy cost and carbon emission

Pressure equalisation as design strategy for watertightness

Due to rising energy prices and a higher ecological awareness there is a growing attention for energy efficiency and sustainability in building construction. New concepts and techniques for well insulated and airtight buildings require adapted construction methods for weathertightness. This research project aims at developing design guidelines for new building envelope systems concerning weathertightness. Most building envelope systems rely on pressure moderation to achieve a good weathertightness. By separating the airtightness plane from the water shedding surface a drained cavity can be pressure moderated to limit the amount of water that enters the construction. A better understanding of those phenomena makes way for more rapid evolution in energy efficient and sustainable building envelope design

Assessing the impact of amended building regulations on the operations of UK construction companies

The UK government continues to make regular amendments to building regulations. This is in order to keep these regulations relevant to today’s prevailing construction environment. More recently, UK building regulations have been amended to facilitate the introduction of the sustainability concepts in UK building design and delivery. This paper examines the impact that these amendments on the operations of UK Construction companies. To conduct the study, five major building practitioners were interviewed. We found from this preliminary study that changes to building regulations do have a considerable impact on the operations of UK Construction companies. It is however important to highlight that a full assessment of the impact of these changes in building regulations is still not fully assessed due to the limitations with the sample size

Embodied Energy Analysis: A Sustainable Construction Design Assessment Tool

Embodied energy analysis can be used as a construction design assessment tool in a sustainable matrix for a building. Its implementation however remains challenging mainly because of data measurement errors. A comparison between the deterministic embodied energy (EE) of a building and the stochastic EE of the same building undertaken using Monte Carlo simulation showed a wide variation in results. It is recommended that the specification of EE intensity of building materials in the construction industry can assist in producing accurate and more credible EE values of building

Examining Trends in the Nonresidential Building Construction Producer Price Indexes (PPIs)

In 2004, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) unveiled the Producer Price Index (PPI) nonresidential building construction initiative with the publication of an index for new warehouse building construction. PPI has since added nonresidential building construction indexes for schools, offices, industrial buildings, and health care buildings. This construction sector initiative is noteworthy as it expanded coverage into an important sector of the U.S. economy not previously measured by the PPI, and allowed the examination of different drivers of building construction inflation. According to Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) data, in the first quarter of 2005, the value of private fixed investment in structures totaled $1.137 trillion, representing about 8.9 percent of total gross domestic product (GDP). Of private fixed investment in structures, nonresidential structures alone represented$330.8 billion, or about 2.6 percent of total GDP. By the fourth quarter of 2013, nonresidential structures investments grew to $473.4 billion, or 2.8 percent of total GDP

Building stock dynamics and its impacts on materials and energy demand in China

China hosts a large amount of building stocks, which is nearly 50 billion square meters. Moreover, annual new construction is growing fast, representing half of the world's total. The trend is expected to continue through the year 2050. Impressive demand for new residential and commercial construction, relative shorter average building lifetime, and higher material intensities have driven massive domestic production of energy intensive building materials such as cement and steel. This paper developed a bottom-up building stock turnover model to project the growths, retrofits and retirements of China's residential and commercial building floor space from 2010 to 2050. It also applied typical material intensities and energy intensities to estimate building materials demand and energy consumed to produce these building materials. By conducting scenario analyses of building lifetime, it identified significant potentials of building materials and energy demand conservation. This study underscored the importance of addressing building material efficiency, improving building lifetime and quality, and promoting compact urban development to reduce energy and environment consequences in China

A study on schedule management for BIM projects in the construction industry

There is an advance modelling tool that currently been pushed by the industry is BIM. BIM as known as Building Modelling Information is a computerized process that is used to design, understand and establish the key physical and functional characteristic of a building on a ‘virtual’ computerized model basis at its most basic level [4]. Basically the resulting model is a digital representation of the building which the data can be extracted and analyzed to generate information that can be used for decision making and enhance the process of delivering the building and the entire life cycle use of the building [4]. BIM implementation can help to improve the quality of project especially the schedule management. By implementing BIM into construction project, it can provides schedule visualization which can make the construction planning more efficient. Besides that, through the BIM model clash detection can be detected in the preconstruction phase which save a lot of time on rework during construction phase