Visualisation development for building demolition planning

Demolition has recently been more concerned with the potential damage to the environment by its generated wastes. Waste exchange is apparently the main means by which the problem is currently dealt with. There is little or no consideration on wastes during the planning or designing stage. By utilising a knowledge system and visualisation technologies, a waste management plan can be integrated into the 4D model so as to effectively promote the interactions between demolition waste demanders and the demolition designer. As a result, the 4D visualisation provides not only the graphical schedule for the demolition process, but also the waste handling plan and waste production schedule. This research aims to analysis the integration technology of a waste management plan and the 4D visualisation model for a demolition project and to discuss the related technical and management issues. The integrated demolition visualisation enables to facilitate waste handling during the demolition processes thus to achieve environmentally friendly demolition.<br /

Information system strategy for promoting demolition project management

Building demolition has been undergoing evolutionary development in its technologies for several decades. In order to achieve a high level of demolition material reuse and recycling, new management approaches are also necessitated, in particular in conjunction with the applications of information technologies. The development of an information system for demolition project management is an impactful strategy to support various demolition activities including waste exchange, demolition visualization, and demolition method selection and evaluation. This paper aims to develop a framework of an integrated information system for building demolition project demolition decision-making and waste minimization. The components of this information system and their interactions are demonstrated through a specifical demolition project.<br /

Case study of demolition costs of residential buildings

Building demolition is one of the most common activities in the construction industry. Several demolition techniques are commonly used, including mechanical demolition, deconstruction and hybrid demolition. Although deconstruction has been advocated for its environmentally friendly approaches, the cost comparison of a demolition project under different techniques is rarely researched. In this paper, the cost of a demolition project is broken down to input and output costs, which are further broken down to more countable sections. Through an empirical study in Victoria, Australia, project costs of mechanical demolition, hybrid demolition and deconstruction are investigated. It is found that deconstruction has the greatest profitability among the three techniques. Hybrid demolition, which is the actual technique adopted by the contractor, has a slightly lower profit, and mechanical demolition is the most expensive. Although deconstruction has the best overall economical performance, the small extra gain comes with increased complexity and risk that deters demolition contractors from its attempt. It is found in the paper that an optimized demolition project strategy exists between hybrid demolition and deconstruction with the greatest profitability among various building demolition techniques

Salvage material logistics management for building demolition project

Building demolition imposes substantial environmental impacts. In particular, large amount of demolition wastes are disposed to landfills. A solution to ease the situation is to maximally reuse and recycle waste building material. Management philosophies such as Just-in-time are applied into demolition project management in order to promote reuse and recycling of demolition wastes. Transportation logistics, widely applied in the manufacturing industry, is ideal to be adopted into demolition projects to optimise waste material production, inventorying, and transportation. In particular, it enables right types and amounts of dismantled building materials to be transferred to right location, and at right time, as required by material demanders. Consequently, waste reuse and recycling can be facilitated. Furthermore, logistics management helps the demolition project team to reduce cost, shorten project duration, and satisfy material demanders. Transportation planning concerns thorough preparation technically and managerially on the demolition site for transportation activities. Information exchange is playing a significant role in delivering and sharing information among project participants, including building owner, demolition project team, potential material demanders, and transporters. This research paper aims to identify the role of transportation logistics in a building demolition project and to analyse inventory control, transportation, and various technical aspects of logistic management for demolition wastes.<br /

Development of a web-based information system for cascading utilisation of construction materials

This paper presents a Web-based information system for promoting the cascading utilisation of construction materials in order to mitigate the increasing environmental pressure by the construction industry. First, this paper points out me weaknesses of current waste material exchange systems. Then, a new approach is introduced to reuse demolished materials, by which the utilisation of demolished materials may be ascertained before the demolition is actually produced.. Information technologies, including web-based intelligent and distributed systems, are applied to actua1ise this approach. Finally, the development and implementation of the system is described in detail.<br /

Electronic waste exchange for just-in-time building demolition

Waste exchange is as a facilitator for construction and demolition waste deduction by reuse and recycling in construction projects. The just-in-time philosophy, which has been well cultivated in the manufacturing industry, is highly adoptable for demolition projects. Particularly, waste exchange that is usually performed after the actual demolition process can be shifted forward so that waste inventory from demolition is eliminated or reduced to facilitate waste reuse and recycling. A web-based waste exchange system is an ideal platform to enable communications among project participants before a demolition project commences so that waste materials can be sold before they are produced. Therefore, the productivity of the demolition project could be improved. This research paper aims to investigate and analyse the adoption of just-in-time philosophy in building demolition project management. It also describes the development of the proposed web-based waste exchange system that implements just-in-time demolition in detail, including its functionalities, information flows and major components.<br /

Development of a multimedia data acquisition toolkit and its application for exchanging demolished materials

In the development of a web-based information system such as a demolition material management system, a great amount of diversified information on projects should be acquired from particular users located with various computer platforms. This issue is difficult to handle using the limited HTTP form submission, which could lead to inaccuracy of the information and inefficiency of the whole system. This paper describes a web-based graphical user interfaced, dynamic and distributed multimedia data acquisition mechanism, which accepts users\u27 drawings and retrieval information from the canvas and stores the multimedia data on a server for further usages. Furthermore, techniques and principles needed to construct such a multimedia data acquisition tool are addressed in detail. The application of this distributed multimedia tool in developing a web-based demolition material management system is also described.<br /

Technical developments for building demolition management

Environmentally friendly demolition methods such as deconstruction are currently not widely accepted due to a lack of economic motivation for demolition contractors. This research aims to economically analyse demolition techniques, and to adopt E-commerce into demolition project management in order to enable a higher level of material reuse and recycling

Value analysis of just-in-time demolition approach

The recent deconstruction approach for demolition projects promotes reusing and recycling materials. However, the demolition project is interrupted and slowed down while the project team wait for the waste exchange process. Wasted materials generated from the demolition project have to be stored on demolition site or extra depository. Cost and time might be lost for the inventory of wasted materials and products. Just-in-Time (JIT) is a matured method widely used in manufacture industry as well as construction industry. It is utilised to reduce the inventory of both raw materials and final products. It is also used to shorten production cycle and improve the quality of the products. The JIT philosophy can be applied into demolition project so that the inventory of wasted materials can be eliminated and the project time can be shortened. To implement JIT demolition, the waste exchange process can be performed before the wasted materials are generated from the project. Material owners and demanders can virtually plan for waste handling before the demolition project is physically implemented. As a result, waste materials can be sent to demanders through transportation right after they are produced from the project. Applying JIT philosophy in demolition projects can effectively reduce the inventory of wasted materials and the amount of demolition waste to be sent to landfills. Therefore the cost and time of the project are reduced, and the quality of final delivered materials is improved.<br /

Information system development for demolition material management

Proceedings of 12th International Conference on Information Systems and Development, held in Melbourne, Australia, August 29-31, 2003<br /