Daylight simulation in architectural practice: shading design for hospitals in London

To achieve precision and satisfy the standards in daylight design, incorporation of computer based simulation tools during design development and decision making process could be useful. In addition to environmental factors several issues, such as construction and aesthetic, need to be considered concurrently during building projects which sometimes difficult to judge by simulation program in early stage of architectural design. To optimise time and achieve sensible design solutions this paper presents a case of therapeutic daylight shading design for an imaginary hospital in-patient room window configurations, located at London, where simulation guided results and other practical factors such as solar control criteria, line of vision, aesthetics and intuitive judgements of the authors were considered to meet the design goals. Though the simulation study is based on London climate, the principle of developing shading devices presented in this paper is also applicable for other types of building windows

Causes Leading to Poor site Coordination in Building Projects

It is a common practice for the main contractors of Hong Kong building projects to sublet most of the works to subcontractors. However, most of the subcontractors complain that they are unable to perform to their full capacity due to poor coordination of temporary works and access road to work places etc. Eighteen common site coordination problems and sixteen essential causes to the problems were identified from literature and advices from experienced industrial practitioners. The causes were grouped into three categories: staffing related causes; technical related causes; and management system related causes. The contribution, frequency of occurrence and aggregated importance of the causes on the quality of main contractors’ coordination during the construction stage were ranked through a questionnaire survey. Unclear job duties was found to be the most important cause. The results of the survey established that the most important causes were mainly associated with management systems, especially communications, rather than staffing or technical related factors

Architect and contractor attitudes to waste minimisation

Around 420 million t of materials are used each year in the construction industry in the UK; however, only 360 million t are incorporated into products. Additionally, construction and demolition activities in the UK generated more than 150 million t of waste in 1998 comprising 40% from the manufacture of products and 60% from site-based activities, including an estimated 13 million t of unused materials. Research has been undertaken to assess UK architects’ and contractors’ attitudes towards waste minimisation, by investigating the integration of waste minimisation strategies into current design processes, examining contractors’ existing waste management practices and establishing responsibilities for, and barriers to, managing waste minimisation. A questionnaire survey based on specific and interrelated organisational waste minimisation issues was conducted with architects and contractors and revealed that very few attempts are made to reduce waste during the design process. On the other hand, the results show that contractors are pursuing a more proactive approach to manage on-site waste production through the development of environmental and waste management policies. The results reveal that poorly defined responsibilities are leading to confusion regarding who should control and monitor waste management. Both architects and contractors are constrained by internal and external factors, such as ‘waste accepted as inevitable’ and lack of interest from clients

Essential Causes Of The Critical Site Coordination Problems In Building Projects: A Hong Kong Study

In Hong Kong, main contractors of building projects tend to subcontract most of their work. However, many of the subcontractors complain that they are unable to perform to their full capacity due main contractors’ poor site coordination of temporary works and interfacing works and plant supports etc. Six critical site coordination problems caused by main contractors that had adversely influence to the performance of subcontractors were identified in previous study. Twelve essential causes to the problems were identified from literatures and previous studies. A questionnaire survey was conducted to establish a model that explain how the essential causes contributed to the occurrence of the critical site coordination problems which subsequently affected the performance of subcontractors. The survey results were validated by neural network analysis. Backward elimination method was adopted to identify the ‘most essential’ causes that enable main contractors to formulate measures to eliminate the critical site coordination problems. The survey findings show that ‘design of the temporary work provided by main contractor cannot meet the requirements requested by the subcontractors’ is the ‘most essential’ causes of four out of the six critical site coordination problems

Conceptualizing stakeholder engagement in the context of sustainability and its assessment

Stakeholder engagement in construction projects can be conceptualized in different ways. It can be seen from a strategic management perspective aimed at capturing knowledge, increasing ownership of the project by users, reducing conflict, encouraging innovation and facilitating spin-off partnerships. From an ethical perspective, meaningful stakeholder engagement can be seen to enhance inclusive decision making, promote equity, enhance local decision making and build social capital. The benefits from both of these perspectives are vital for sustainability; however, stakeholder engagement can also be seen from the perspective of an opportunity for social learning—a social process where diverse stakeholders share a common forum, learn about each other's values, reflect upon their own values and create a shared vision and shared objectives. Dialogue is also useful in increasing awareness, changing attitudes and affecting behaviours. Existing practices view stakeholder engagement: mostly from a management perspective; sometimes from an ethical perspective; less often as a combination of the two; and rarely have any element of the social learning perspective. There is a need for an approach that combines all the three perspectives if sustainability is to be pursued. A dialogue-oriented approach to integrated sustainability assessment could provide an ideal means to do so

Natural personalised ventilation for hospital wards: experimental validation

Personalised ventilation (PV) systems are useful in protecting vulnerable hospitalised patients from airborne infection due to localised delivery of clean air. A natural personalised ventilation (NPV) system has previously been shown to be a feasible, natural and low-energy alternative to mechanised PV systems. The original NPV system was investigated using three conceptual designs which used dynamic thermal modelling and steady-state computational fluid dynamics to simulate a single-bed hospital ward. Findings from these designs led to optimisation of the NPV system components (stack and ducts) which also serve as the basis for this experimental validation. The objective of this research is to validate the flow characteristics of the optimised NPV system using scaled model experiments in addition to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies. Water-bath modelling (WBM) was carried out in a large Perspex tank and a scaled version of the single-bed ward was also constructed in Perspex. Results improve our understanding of the proposed NPV strategy, in particular showing that different locations of heat sources within the model leads to considerably different internal temperatures at steady state. Close similarities between CFD and WBM simulations were also observed

Hospital resilience to natural hazards: classification and performance of utilities

This article was published in the journal Disaster Prevention and Management [© Emerald Group Publishing Ltd]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/DPM-03-2013-0057. Research data for this paper is available on request from Nebil Achour [[email protected]].Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to: explore major and potential challenges facing healthcare facilities operation specifically those related to utility supplies; and quantify the impact of utility supplies interruption on the operation of healthcare facilities through the development of an estimation model. Design/methodology/approach – A pluralistic qualitative and quantitative research approach benefiting from an online computer program that applies the discriminant function analysis approach. Information was collected from 66 hospitals following three major earthquakes that struck northeast Japan in 2003. Findings – Analysis demonstrated that healthcare utilities face three major challenges: vulnerability of infrastructure to natural hazards; low performance of alternative sources; and lack of consideration of healthcare utility supplies in resilience codes and legislations. The study also proposed a method to estimate the impact of utility interruption of healthcare facilities. A model has been developed for the case study hospitals in Northern Japan following three major earthquakes in 2003. Practical implications – The findings are expected to raise the awareness of the critical role utilities play for the operation of healthcare facilities which will potentially lead to upgrading resilience codes and legislations. The findings are also expected to pool the literature with more information about the resilience of healthcare utility publications. Originality/value – The topic and issues discussed in this research are original based on authors’ investigations following three major earthquakes that took place in northeast Japan. The study followed a statistical approach in addressing the inter-relationship between the utility systems post disasters to develop an innovative unique index to predict the impact of utility shortage on healthcare

Engendering trust in the construction supply chain

Project success is dependent upon the effective management of people and at the heart of this process is trust. It is often claimed that the construction industry has low levels of trust and numerous reports globally have challenged the industry to address its poor performance on people management and cultural issues. The industry has a long-standing reputation for being adversarial, demonstrated by poor relationships between the client, main contractor and subcontractors, which in turn leads to numerous problems including poor project performance, cost control and poor long-term relationships between the parties involved. These problems are attributed primarily to a lack of harmonisation between contracting parties. This paper investigates the perceptions of trust within the supply chains of partnering projects. It explores the contextual issues surrounding the projects, focusing on the relationship between the partnering method of procurement and the levels of trust that exist within supply chains. This qualitative case study based research provides insights into the multifaceted nature of trust, the difficulty of defining the concept and its evolution through the duration of the project. The paper concludes that trust is an essential element for effective supply chain relationships and can be engendered through teamwork, leadership and the ultimate empowerment of the supply chain. It would appear on the basis of this research that trust can be realised within construction supply chains where partnering principles are a priority

Synthesising emerging issues within key futures study reports in construction

Most futures studies aim to help people to better prepare for their future by identifying and examining emerging future issues relevant to them. In the last decade, there have been a range of futures studies published by individuals and organisations within the construction sector and wider afield. Despite this, little has been done on synthesising and classifying the emerging issues and analysing the substantive content of these studies. A thorough search of futures study reports in construction has been conducted from which key reports were selected to be examined in detail. Content analysis was employed to identify emerging future issues which were then used to populate a matrix showing the relationship between the reports and the issues identified. This yielded 337 emerging issues, both internal and external to the construction industry which were classified under six major themes, namely ‘technological’, ‘environmental’, ‘social’, ‘economic’, ‘governance’ and ‘construction industry’. Each is then discussed. The key characteristics of these issues, including the possible inter-connectivities among them are subsequently explained. The paper is concluded with a brief discourse on our future research work in this area and the possible associated methodologies to be employed