Search results

The provision of an accessible and inclusive built environment is both a common regulatory requirement for architects and facilities managers, and a critical issue of equitable access for people with disability. Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is key to ensuring appropriate building accessibility is provided and maintained. Improved Building Information Modelling (BIM) integration with Facilities Management (FM) will enable more effective POE over time. This study aims to define and demonstrate the practicability and utility of a particular configuration of emerging BIM and related digital technologies, applied in the field.

A field study approach is applied to investigate the practicability and utility of the technology configuration and POE procedures. A proposed technology configuration is applied to evaluate 21 accessible bathrooms across three university buildings in Sydney, Australia. First, a checklist of technical functionality for a POE of accessible bathrooms particular to the field study FM context is established. The checklist is based on a review of recent literature, relevant standards, best practice guidelines, expert opinions, and the organisational requirements. Then, a technical and procedural approach to POE and BIM integration with FM is defined and applied in the field. Finally, a quantitative analysis of the results is presented and discussed relative to both the particular and general FM contexts.

The use of low-cost BIM and related technologies can usefully be applied in the field to promote a more progressive integration of BIM with FM and provide enhanced baseline models for ongoing POE. A rudimentary risk assessment of key accessible bathroom features (in the context of this field study) identified that the Toilet: toilet rolls location is unsatisfactory across all bathrooms surveyed and represents an immediate and high-risk failing. Other high-risk issues highlighted in this study included: Approach: access; Entrance: door fittings and security; and Layout: hazards.

This study offers a blue-print for building practitioners to adopt and progressively integrate low-cost BIM and related technologies with extant FM systems. The study also promotes an improved approach to effective POE practice in general, and to the assessment of accessible bathrooms in particular.

Recent reviews highlight key barriers to BIM integration with FM and significant limitations to current POE practice. Proposals for BIM integration with FM tend to focus on the comprehensive use of BIM. This study demonstrates the practicability and utility of a more progressive approach to BIM adoption and integration with FM in general. The study is also novel in that it shows how low-cost BIM and related technologies can be used as a baseline reference for ongoing POE. Building practitioners can adopt and adapt the technology configuration and approach to support a range of POE applications. This field study has identified immediate and high-risk potential failings of the accessible bathrooms provided on one university campus in Sydney, Australia.

The purpose of this study is to highlight and demonstrate how the study of stress and related responses in construction can best be measured and benchmarked effectively.

A range of perceptual and physiological measures are obtained across different time periods and during different activities in a fieldwork setting. Differences in the empirical results are analysed and implications for future studies of stress discussed.

The results of this study strongly support the use of multiple psychometrics and biosensors whenever biometrics are included in the study of stress. Perceptual, physiological and environmental factors are all shown to act in concert to impact stress. Strong conclusions on the potential drivers of stress should then only be considered when consistent results apply across multiple metrics, time periods and activities.

Stress is an incredibly complex condition. This study demonstrates why many current applications of biosensors to study stress in construction are not up to the task and provides empirical evidence on how future studies can be significantly improved.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to focus explicitly on demonstrating the need for multiple research instruments and settings when studying stress or related conditions in construction.

The purpose of this paper is to present an approach to address the overfitting and collinearity problems that frequently occur in predictive cost estimating models for construction practice. A case study, modeling the cost of preliminaries is proposed to test the robustness of this approach.

A hybrid approach is developed based on the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and principal component regression (PCR). Cost information for a sample of 204 UK school building projects is collected involving elemental items, contingencies (risk) and the contractors’ preliminaries. An application to estimate the cost of preliminaries for construction projects demonstrates the method and tests its effectiveness in comparison with such competing models as: alternative regression models, three artificial neural network data mining techniques, case-based reasoning and support vector machines.

The experimental results show that the AIC–PCR approach provides a good predictive accuracy compared with the alternatives used, and is a promising alternative to avoid overfitting and collinearity.

This is the first time an approach integrating the AIC and PCR has been developed to offer an improvement on existing methods for estimating construction project Preliminaries. The hybrid approach not only reduces the risk of overfitting and collinearity, but also results in better predictability compared with the commonly used stepwise regression.

Currently there is no analysis of the development of disaster risk management literature in the construction and built environment context, the changes in its research paradigms over time and the role of different key players in the advance of its current body of knowledge. This study aims to address that gap by investigating the longitudinal data of disaster risk management literature published over the past three decades.

A social network analysis approach is used in this study to show the overall development of the field and specifically the impact of research collaborations between different organisations and countries on research productivity.

The results indicate that the focus of disaster risk management research in the built environment context is heavily biased towards reactive strategies (response and recovery) over proactive strategies (mitigation and preparedness). The findings also demonstrate that collaboration between disaster risk management researchers has a significant influence on their research productivity.

The findings from this study should be of value to researchers, policymakers and academic strategists. This study for the first time shows the ability of the social networks paradigm to reveal frailties in research connections in the field of disaster risk management in construction and built environment and highlights where networking strategies are needed.

To achieve the building and property by 2050, decarbonisation goals will now require a significant increase in the rate of improvement in the energy performance of buildings. Occupant behaviour is crucial. This study seeks to guide the application of smart building technology in existing building stock to support improved building energy performance and occupant comfort.

This study follows a logical partitioning approach to the development of a schema for building energy performance and occupant comfort. A review of the literature is presented to identify the characteristics that label and structure the problem elements. A smart building technology framework is overlaid on the schema. The framework is then applied to configure and demonstrate an actual technology implementation for existing building stock.

The developed schema represents the key components and relationships of building energy performance when combined with occupant comfort. This schema provides a basis for the definition of a smart building technologies framework for existing building stock. The study demonstrates a viable configuration of available smart building technologies that couple building energy performance with occupant comfort in the existing building stock. Technical limitations (such as relatively simple building management control regimes) and pragmatic limitations (such as change management issues) are noted for consideration.

This is the first development of a schema to represent how building energy performance can be coupled with occupant comfort in existing building stock using smart building technologies. The demonstration study applies one of many possible technology configurations currently available, and promotes the use of open source applications with push-pull functionality. The schema provides a common basis and guide for future studies.

Project selection is a critical decision for any organization seeking to commission a large-scale construction project. Project selection is a complex multi-criteria decision-making problem with significant uncertainty and high risks. Fuzzy set theory has been used to address various aspects of project uncertainty, but with key practical limitations. This study aims to develop and apply a novel Pythagorean fuzzy sets (PFSs) approach that overcomes these key limitations.

The study is particular to complex project selection in the context of increasing interest in resilience as a key project selection criterion. Project resilience is proposed and considered in the specific situation of a large-scale construction project selection case study. The case study develops and applies a PFS approach to manage project uncertainty. The case study is presented to demonstrate how PFS is applied to a practical problem of realistic complexity. Working through the case study highlights some of the key benefits of the PFS approach for practicing project managers and decision-makers in general.

The PFSs approach proposed in this study is shown to be scalable, efficient, generalizable and practical. The results confirm that the inclusion of last aggregation and last defuzzification avoids the potentially critical information loss and relative lack of transparency. Most especially, the developed PFS is able to accommodate and manage domain expert expressions of uncertainty that are realistic and practical.

The main novelty of this study is to address project resilience in the form of multi-criteria evaluation and decision-making under PFS uncertainty. The approach is defined mathematically and presented as a six-step approach to decision-making. The PFS approach is given to allow multiple domain experts to focus more clearly on accurate expressions of their agreement and disagreement. PFS is shown to be an important new direction in practical multi-criteria decision-making methods for the project management practitioner.

The purpose of this paper is to review the study of leadership and examine potential new directions specific to innovation research in the construction industry.

An editorial review of current literature and reflective critique of leadership research specific to the construction industry.

Two key barriers are identified: a general focus on individual leadership qualities, rather than leadership as an activity; the problems with qualitative research methodologies in general, and grounded theory specifically.

The intention is to promote a more grounded theoretical approach to the study of leadership in order to encourage research publications in journals such as Construction Innovation.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

MR. JOHN BURNS, President of the Local Government Board, speaking on the Housing of the Working Classes Bill before the Standing Committee of the House of Commons, on 13th May, is reported to have said that “he believed the time had come when men were tired of drenching the country with Public Libraries, and were beginning to realise that small gardens, parks and open spaces were infinitely better for the people.” We do not contend for one moment that more parks and open spaces are not wanted for the use of the people, but that these should be provided in place of Public Libraries is certainly another matter. If more open spaces be necessary for the physical well‐being of the race, surely libraries are quite as much a necessity for the intellectual equipment of the people. And Public Libraries, if used in an intelligent manner, will certainly help those who use the parks to appreciate their beauties all the more. We can, perhaps, forgive Lord Rosebery for his recent criticisms on libraries, because by reason of his position, and having the great advantage of owning a fine library, he has not really experienced the need for the help a Public Library affords. It is, therefore, an easy matter to criticise from his point of view. But such criticism from John Burns, the self‐made man, and essentially a man from the ranks of the people, is another matter. He is the man who must have found Public Libraries useful to him in his earlier days; indeed, one seems to remember reading somewhere, a short time ago, that Mr. Burns gave an address in which he publicly stated that he owed much to Public Libraries for the help he had received through their agency. We earnestly hope that Mr. Burns did not intend to make so sweeping an assertion as his present words imply. From the point of view of librarianship such drastic criticism as this from such an one as Mr. Burns appears to us to be of serious import, especially as there seems to be a half‐veiled sting in his words which is unduly emphasised by the inclusion of the word “infinitely”—that “open spaces were infinitely better for the people” than Public Libraries. It is tantamount to saying that our work as librarians is of little value or that we have failed in our mission, either of which is very wide of the mark.

The sublime in scent refers to the use of language and description that excites thoughts and emotions beyond ordinary olfactory experience, and I would like to borrow this literary concept to explore the recent development of incense traditions in Japan and China from a sociocultural perspective. In order to understand how olfactory characters of incense have been verbally expressed, we can start by looking into the sublime in scent through the articulation of relevant subtle approaches since ancient times.

This paper explains how the description of scent experienced by individuals has been associated with thoughts and history and why the sublime in scent is more complicated than the aroma people can tell. The data collected for this research is mostly based on observations by participating in various events and conversations with different people.

In Japan and China, the use of incense has a long history, and relevant scent cultures have been developed not only for offerings in religious practices, but also as a kind of scent appreciation together with a poetic presentation. Again, it is important and significant to discern several interactions of incense traditions in these two countries, since the transformations became obvious in the last two decades, while Japanese Kodo participated more in international exchange, and the Chinese people's view of intangible cultural heritage has become more important in their daily social practices.

As a way of showing how the study of scent can enhance ethnographic writing and the understanding of changes in the appreciation of incense, this paper hopes to contribute to the study of art and tradition.