The 45th Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference: Global Challenges in a Disrupted World: Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Approaches in the Built Environment, Book of Abstracts, 23 - 25 November 2022

This is the book of abstract of the 45th Australasian Universities Building Education Association (AUBEA) conference, which will be hosted by Western Sydney University in November 2022. The conference is organised by the School of Engineering, Design, and Built Environment in collaboration with the Centre for Smart Modern Construction, Western Sydney University. This year’s conference theme is “Global Challenges in a Disrupted World: Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Approaches in the Built Environment”, and expects to publish over a hundred double-blind peer review papers under the proceedings

The 45th Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference: Global Challenges in a Disrupted World: Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Approaches in the Built Environment, Conference Proceedings, 23 - 25 November 2022, Western Sydney University, Kingswood Campus, Sydney, Australia

This is the proceedings of the 45th Australasian Universities Building Education Association (AUBEA) conference which will be hosted by Western Sydney University in November 2022. The conference is organised by the School of Engineering, Design, and Built Environment in collaboration with the Centre for Smart Modern Construction, Western Sydney University. This year’s conference theme is “Global Challenges in a Disrupted World: Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Approaches in the Built Environment”, and expects to publish over a hundred double-blind peer review papers under the proceedings

Liquid Waste Management in the Construction Projects

The construction industry is increasingly concerned with improving its environmental performance and reducing the environmental impact. Construction projects utilise water and generate wastewater. A considerable volume of water is used for washing and cleaning processes at construction sites which is often unmetered. At the same time, liquid waste/wastewater generated from construction projects is harmful to the environment and human health, pollutes the groundwater and the ground soil and therefore, it is important to manage liquid waste appropriately. This project investigated the current practice of liquid waste management (LWM) and treatment including the legal requirements related to LWM in construction projects. The sources of liquid waste, different methods used for managing liquid waste in construction sites and barriers for implementing sustainable LWM practices have been identified through semi-structured interviews with industry experts. Systems that improve current practice have been studied as comparators. The average of water consumed for tool washing and water-saving per square meter have been estimated for different types of buildings and compared against the use of sustainable LWM systems in construction projects. Moreover, this study compares the total volume of water consumed for tool washing between water mains and sustainable LWM systems. This research summarises the practice of LWM in construction projects through the analysis of expert user views while providing an account of legislation relent. It also summarises the water use and water saving potential when sustainable LWM practices are adopted. It has the potential to add new and under-measured factors to the current LWM systems for the Green Rating of buildings and produce a more sustainable construction industry

A risk analysis-best worst method based model for selection of the most appropriate contract strategy for onshore drilling projects in the Iranian petroleum industry

The pre-project planning phase has a significant impact on the achievement of project objectives because during this stage, major decisions including involving contract strategies are made with a high degree of uncertainty. Studies show that the contract type can play a unique role in the achievement of project success. On the other hand, drilling projects can be considered as one of the most critical types of projects in the petroleum industry. In this research, a novel risk based best-worst method (risk-BWM) is proposed for solving the issue of selecting the best contract strategy. A three level methodology was designed; firstly, the risk breakdown structure (RBS) of drilling projects was created in four levels including one heading in level 0, eight main areas of risk in level 1, 34 sub-areas of risk in level 2, and finally, 217 risk items in level 3. Secondly and on the basis of BWM, the weights of risk factors were determined as the selection criteria and consequently the best and the worst criteria were specified. Finally, using pair-wise comparisons between six types of drilling prevalent in contracts, the most appropriate contract type was proposed. The contribution of this study is the development of a generic RBS for drilling projects and application of the risk factors for the first time for the selection of contract type using the BWM method, which has the potential of being adapted for other types of underground projects

Potential application of blockchain technology for embodied carbon estimating in construction supply chains

Carbon emissions are categorised as Embodied Carbon (EC) occurring in the production phase and Operational Carbon (OC) occurring in the operational phase of buildings. The current focus on producing zero-carbon buildings, emphasises reducing OC and ignores the importance of reducing EC emissions. This study focuses on EC. Methods available in EC estimating currently produce estimates that often do not complement each other. This makes it important to develop a robust and accurate methodology for estimating EC. Blockchain is an emerging technology that has significant potential for transaction processing in supply chains. The construction industry being the second least digitalised industry, the adoption of innovative technologies is predominantly important. This paper explores the potential application of blockchain for accurate estimation of EC in construction supply chains. A detailed literature review and expert interviews revealed that, compared to traditional information systems, blockchain systems could eliminate issues in EC estimating highlighting its potential credible application for EC estimating. Scalability was identified as a feature that was lacking in a blockchain system, however, for EC estimating, its impact was identified as minimal. It will be difficult to generalise the findings of the study due to interview based qualitative methodology adopted in this study along with the fact that blockchain is an emerging and fairly new technology. However, a similar process could be followed by other studies to compare blockchain with traditional information systems, to evaluate the suitability of blockchain technology to develop prototype systems

Current trends and future directions in knowledge management in construction research using social network analysis

The growing interest in Knowledge Management (KM) has led to increased attention to Social Network Analysis (SNA) as a tool to map the relationships in networks. SNA can be used to evaluate knowledge flows between project teams, contributing to collaborative working and improved performance. Similarly, it has the potential to be used for construction projects and organisations. This paper aims at identifying current trends and future research directions related to using SNA for KM in construction. A systematic review and thematic analysis were used to critically review the existing studies and identify potential research areas in construction specifically related to research approaches and explore the possibilities for extension of SNA in KM. The findings revealed that there are knowledge gaps in research approaches with case study-based research involving external stakeholders, collaborations, development of communication protocols, which are priority areas identified for future research. SNA in KM related to construction could be extended to develop models that capture both formal and informal relationships as well as the KM process in pre-construction, construction, and post-construction stages to improve the performance of projects. Similarly, SNA can be integrated with methodological concepts, such as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), knowledge broker, and so forth, to improve KM processes in construction. This study identifies potential research areas that provide the basis for stakeholders and academia to resolve current issues in the use of SNA for KM in construction

Applicability-compatibility analysis of PMBOK seventh edition from the perspective of the construction industry distinctive peculiarities

Project management standards, like PMBOK, have had a considerable role in developing this field of knowledge and promoting it as a professional expertise in project-oriented industries, such as the construction industry. The latest version of PMBOK, seventh edition—2021, has been released with substantial changes, and the conventional process-based system has been converted to a performance-based approach. This study aimed to investigate the recent edition of PMBOK, to explore its application and adaptation regarding the specific characteristics of the construction industry. For this purpose, utilizing a hybrid methodology of text mining and survey method, at first, the content of the text was analyzed by software in combination with experts’ opinions. In a parallel survey, the distinctive attributes of the construction industry were investigated, and in the next step, the way that this sector can benefit from the emerging framework was examined. The results show the construction industry has special peculiarities in the form of four different project types with specific phases in typical lifecycle and reveal the potential applicability of performance domains in the construction projects and the compatibility of project management principles. This study is one of the first attempts to review the novel presented standard of PMBOK seventh edition and contributes to the present knowledge by analyzing the construction industry in relation to this issue

Review of supply chain based embodied carbon estimating method : a case study based analysis

Carbon estimating plays a vital role in the construction industry. The current focus on introducing zero-carbon construction projects reduces operational carbon, at the expense of Embodied Carbon (EC). However, it is important to reduce overall net carbon emissions. There are various methods to estimate carbon, but the accuracy of these estimates is questionable. This paper reviews a novel methodology, the Supply Chain based Embodied carbon Estimating Method (SCEEM), which was introduced recently to accurately estimate EC in construction supply chains. SCEEM is compared against existing EC estimating methods (Blackbook and eToolLCD) using a case study approach. It is also supplemented with a comprehensive literature review of existing EC methods. The EC values calculated using Blackbook and eToolLCD were mostly higher than SCEEM. Since SCEEM uses actual site data and considers first principles-based value addition method to estimate EC, it is considered accurate. The cross-case analysis revealed that SCEEM provided consistent results. Hence, SCEEM is recommended to accurately estimate EC of any type of project

A bid/mark-up decision support model in contractor's tender strategy development phase based on project complexity measurement in the downstream sector of petroleum industry

The tender process is an inseparable step of the contract award process in the public sector, and from the other point of view, it is one of the crucial elements of the core business of construction contractors. Reviewing previous research reveals a gap in the application of a project’s detailed features and historical data to support the bid/no-bid decision and to determine the cost and time contract mark-ups. In this study, a prescriptive project complexity-based model is proposed to support the bid decision in the tender strategy development phase of a contractor for the downstream sector of the petroleum industry in Iran. For this purpose, regression analysis of historical data is adopted to configure the model and to infer from previous actual trends by exploring relationships between the contractor’s bid decision and proposed mark-ups with the project’s inherent and surrounding complexity factors. Hence, using experts’ opinions and historical data from 139 previous contracts as training and test data, a model was developed to make a decision on a bid and mark-up problem. The results of the model validation show that the credibility of the model is 74.67% and 75.36% for time and cost, respectively, and the reliability of model outputs is approximately 90% overall in predicting the bid mark-ups in accordance with the project complexity index (PCI). The main contribution of this research to current knowledge has two aspects: utilizing the complexity concept for the tender problem in the form of a project complexity index (PCI) and considering both time and cost mark-ups (TMU–CMU) in the contractor’s bid simultaneously. In addition, the results show that the more complex the project is, the higher the bid rate is

Development of an offsite construction typology : a Delphi study

Offsite construction (OSC) delivers multiple products that vary in design and building complexity. Considering the growing prevalence of OSC, a systematic categorization of OSC types can offer operational and macroeconomic benefits to the construction industry. The purpose of this study is to develop an OSC typology through a systematic process, as existing studies do not present a rigorously evaluated typology that suits the modern OSC context. The research addresses the following research question: what are the distinct characteristics of unique OSC types that have emerged through the adoption of Industry 4.0-based technological advancements? Due to the rapid advancement of production and construction technologies, the existing OSC classifications are becoming outdated. As such, a detailed review of OSC technologies was conducted which enabled the identification of OSC categories: components, panels, pods, modules, complete buildings, and flat-pack (foldable structure). A series of case studies was then reviewed to explore and analyze the relevance of these OSC types in practice. It was then subjected to a Delphi-based multi-level expert forum to develop a modern and future-proof OSC typology. The rigorous process validated, defined, and delineated the boundaries between the OSC types. The research confirmed that OSC types can be broadly categorized as volumetric (pods, modules, complete buildings) and non-volumetric (components, panels, foldable structure). The results indicated that OSC skills vary with the complexity of OSC types, and that lightweight steel and timber are the most common materials