Building sustainability assessment

Although the social, economic and cultural indicators are of substantial importance, the concept of sustainable building is usually related to environmental characteristics. Any building level assessment method is complex and involves contradictory aspects. Moreover emphasizing qualitative criteria only increases confusion. The R&D and standardization is thus concentrated to transparency and usability of the environmental methods. Other directions of research are aiming at performance-based design and methods to take regional and cultural aspects into account. In this paper, the perspectives of the sustainability assessment of a whole building are presented based on the state-of-the art, feasibility study on performance analysis and development of extended LCA for buildings. Based on the case studies of building sustainability assessment using various tools, the environmental indicators were shown to be often of lesser importance than the other, soft ones. At the end, will be presented and discussed the first steps in the development of a building sustainability assessment method for Portuguese residential buildings.(undefined

Achieving cost benefits in sustainable cooperative housing

The cooperative housing sector is directed at low and medium income residents who cannot afford to buy their homes in the regular private market. Due to social housing legislation, it is possible to build cooperative housing below regular market costs and use tax benefits, therefore providing affordable dwellings to their owners. Traditional cooperative housing used to provide less comfort and higher running costs in indoor and domestic hot water heating than in standard construction. However, cooperative housing has started to change its method of traditional construction towards sustainable construction, in order to benefit from the savings on energy consumption and domestic water as well as to provide an improvement as far as the comfort of its residents is concerned. Therefore, in this article, the savings in electricity and natural gas in different building settlements, calculated for Madalena building—sustainable construction—and for Azenha de Cima building—traditional construction—will be presented, according to two different criteria of calculation: efficiency of dwellings at a pre-determined standard level of indoor comfort opposed to real consumptions made by residents. For each building under analysis, an energy audit and further monitoring were brought in, in order to issue an energy evaluation according to the Portuguese energy agency rules. Results showed an expected decrease of the operational costs of natural gas and electricity, obtained by the use of efficient building systems and equipment, as well as a decrease of the payback period for each situation

BIM-based deconstruction tool: Towards essential functionalities

© 2017 The Gulf Organisation for Research and Development This study discusses the future directions of effective Design for Deconstruction (DfD) using BIM-based approach to design coordination. After a review of extant literatures on existing DfD practices and tools, it became evident that none of the tools is BIM compliant and that BIM implementation has been ignored for end-of-life activities. To understand how BIM could be employed for DfD and to identify essential functionalities for a BIM-based deconstruction tool, Focus Group Interviews (FGIs) were conducted with professionals who have utilised BIM on their projects. The interview transcripts of the FGIs were analysed using descriptive interpretive analysis to identify common themes based on the experiences of the participants. The themes highlight functionalities of BIM in driving effective DfD process, which include improved collaboration among stakeholders, visualisation of deconstruction process, identification of recoverable materials, deconstruction plan development, performance analysis and simulation of end-of-life alternatives, improved building lifecycle management, and interoperability with existing BIM software. The results provide the needed technological support for developing tools for BIM compliant DfD tools

A BIM-based theoretical framework for the integration of the asset End-of-Life phase

Due to the migration of industry from the use of traditional 2D CAD tools to Building Information Modelling (BIM) process, and the growing awareness of Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste issues, researchers are interested in compiling the use of BIM for C&D Waste issues. BIM is commonly used for the Design, Construction and Maintenance phases of an asset; however, the use of BIM for the End-of-Life management is still in its infancy. This paper proposes to reconsider the asset lifecycle by incorporating a sustainable End-of-Life, as a phase, in BIM context. Recommendations are given to push the BIM potential up to the asset End-of-Life management. Based on the results of a literature review assessing the current use of BIM for the asset End-of-Life, a conceptual framework was drawn. A set of eleven stakeholders, involved in the asset lifecycle, from inception to deconstruction were interviewed to improve the conceptual framework. The research reveals the impacts and barriers for the integration of the deconstruction phase into the asset lifecycle. Consequently, a theoretical framework for the asset lifecycle from inception to deconstruction in BIM environment is created to change the linear system to a circular economy.Peer reviewe

Intelligent Software for Ecological Building Design

Building design is a complex process because of the number of elements and issues involved and the number of relationships that exist among them. Adding sustainability issues to the list increases the complexity of design by an order of magnitude. There is a need for computer assistance to manage the increased complexity of design and to provide intelligent collaboration in formulating acceptable design solutions. Software development technology today offers opportunities to design and build an intelligent software system environment that can serve as a reliable intelligent partner to the human designer. In this paper the authors discuss the requirements for an intelligent software design environment, explain the major challenges in designing this environment, propose an architecture for an intelligent design support system for sustainable design and present the existing technologies that can be used to implement that architecture