Climate change has become a considerable concern for humanity during this anthropocentric era. Scientists believe that the rate of global warming and climate change varies directly with the increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide. Urbanization is happening at a higher rate in this era than in any other generation. It was reported that the building sector plays a critical role in the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Construction of buildings, operation, and utilization of the built environment has led to emissions of a large number of CO2 into the ambient air. Various issues and challenges arise from the building sector in reducing CO2 emissions. The exploitation of non-renewable energy resources, poor building design, and lack of sustainability consideration in urbanization has been holding back CO2 emission mitigation measures in the building sector. Therefore, CO2 emission mitigation plans and schemes are necessary alongside standardized frameworks and guidelines. The strategies to reduce CO2 in the building sector are enforcing standards and policy, conducting impact assessment, adopting low carbon technology, and restricting energy utilization. All stakeholders must play their roles efficiently to reduce CO2 emissions and aid in the fight against climate change.
Abstract Building Information Modelling (BIM) serves as a useful tool in facilitating the on-site assembly services (OAS) of prefabricated construction for its benefits of powerful management of physical and functional digital presentations. However, the benefits of using BIM in the OAS of prefabricated construction cannot be cultivated with an incomplete, inaccurate, and untimely data exchange and lack of real-time visibility and traceability. To deal with these challenges, an Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled platform is designed by integrating IoT and BIM for prefabricated public housing projects in Hong Kong. The demands of the stakeholders were analysed; then smart construction objects (SCOs) and smart gateway are defined and designed to collect real-time data throughout the working processes of on-site assembly of prefabricated construction using the radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The captured data is uploaded to cloud in real-time to process and analyse for decision support purposes for the involved site managers and workers. Visibility and traceability functions are developed with BIM and virtual reality (VR) technologies, through which managers can supervise the construction progress and approximate cost information in a real-time manner. The IoT-enabled platform can provide various decision support tools and services to different stakeholders, for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of daily operations, decision making, collaboration, and supervision throughout on-site assembly processes of prefabricated construction.
S. Navaratnam, Tuan Ngo, Tharaka Gunawardena
et al.
Volumetric prefabricated building construction is growing in most developed countries; for example, in Sweden the market share of prefabricated building systems in the housing industry was more than 80%. However, in Australia only approximately 3–4% of new building constructions are prefabricated buildings in a year. A major hindrance to the growth of prefab construction in Australia is that systems are developed under commercial and confidential conditions. There are limited publicly-available research and case studies for certifiers, regulators, engineers and academia to provide independent information on the performance, advantages and disadvantages of prefabricated building systems. Independent designers and structural engineers are relying on the strength of the structural and non-structural element, as well as the connections of the prefabricated building systems. This strength is estimated from the “commercial-in-confidence” test of individual components by manufactures, and it might result in undesired outcomes in design. This paper provides an overview of available literature on structural performance, benefits, constraints and challenges of prefabricated building systems. This paper also highlights the research needed on the prefabricated building systems such as full-scale tests, numerical modelling, hybrid simulations, case studies and social and economic assessments. Being supported by sound academic research will increase the market demand for prefabricated building systems in Australia as well as in other countries.
Abstract The implementation of lean principles and approaches is gaining grounds in the construction industry globally. However, there is no clear understanding of the number and categories of lean practices implemented and the benefits associated with it in the planning, design and construction of building and infrastructure projects. This paper relied on a systematic review of published literature in Scopus, Science Direct and Google Scholar to identify and categorize the different lean practices implemented in the construction industry and the benefits derivable from them. Totally, 102 documents published between 1996 and 2018 were reviewed and their contents analyzed using descriptive statistics and content analysis. A total of 32 different lean practices categorised into design and engineering; planning and control; construction and site management; and health and safety management were identified. The review also found that the last planner system and just-in-time were the top two most implemented lean practices and about 20 different economic, social and environmental benefits were linked to the implementation of lean practices in the construction industry. This review is instructive that lean practices have good prospects for enhancing the productivity of the construction industry and achieving sustainable built environment, but a critical mass uptake and sustained implementation are required to attain these goals.
Abstract Modular construction is considered as the future of the construction industry. While the sector is growing rapidly in some areas, there are still barriers to overcome. For more than two decades, several regions and countries, such as mainland China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, were using prefabricated/precast components to construct high-rise buildings in both private and public sectors. Such practices suffered from several limitations, which warrant the need for modular construction. Modular construction method needs to evolve so as to meet different regional requirements and restrictions, namely regulations, economy, market and building types. But the regional requirements and constraints on adopting modular construction remain unexplored. These differences are not widely appreciated. Hence, this research aims to perform comparative analysis of modular construction practices in terms of policies, specifications, and real projects in Hong Kong, Singapore, and mainland China. The results of the comparative analysis indicate that Singapore has developed a relatively effective policy system to help the construction industry embrace modular construction, while the three regions have not issued authoritative specifications. In general, modular construction still needs more support from the government, especially in terms of technical guidance and innovation. Cases studies show that the sustainability performance of modular construction is not balanced in terms of the economic, social and environmental dimensions. The lessons and challenges of modular construction drawn from the cases are also summarized. The construction industry should work closely with the government to achieve sustainable construction of modular building. The developed research on modular construction will increase the understanding of common practices in close countries where the industry in each can benefit from such practices to advance the domain.
Abstract Applications of phase change materials (PCMs) have become of great interest in recent years owing to beneficial effects on the thermal, mechanical and durability properties of construction and pavement materials. PCMs can alter the thermal mass and thermal inertia of building materials, thus enhancing thermal energy storage. The effects of PCMs on cement hydration, thermal stress and shrinkage of concrete have stimulated further applications. Despite various virtues of PCMs in construction and pavement materials, their drawbacks still need concerted research efforts. Among the fundamental problems of PCMs is their risk of leakage in the melted state. Hence, several techniques have been proposed to mitigate this problem. The present study examines potential methods of incorporating PCMs into building materials, including microencapsulation, macro-encapsulation, shape-stabilization, and porous inclusion. A critical analysis of PCM applications and stabilization materials and methods in concrete is provided, hence identifying practical recommendations, research needs and current knowledge gaps.
Abstract Technologies such as virtual reality (VR), online databases, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Building Information Modelling (BIM), Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), 4 D Computer-Aided Design (4 D CAD), wearable robotics have been adopted to improve construction site health and safety. However, little attempt has been made to map global research on construction health and safety technologies. Therefore, this paper conducts a review of technologies for construction health and safety management to reveal emerging research trends. A bibliometric review adopting a two-step literature selection method was conducted to compile relevant publications from the Scopus database. In total, 240 related papers were examined. VOSviewer was used to develop a co-occurrence network based on the bibliographic data obtained. The analysis focussed on co-authorship per country, country/region distribution, the number of publications annually, publication source and source and trend of research topics. Findings revealed that emerging trends in construction health and safety technologies research focussed on project health and safety design and planning, visualisation and image processing for construction projects, digital technologies for project monitoring, information management and Internet of Things, automation and robotic systems, health and safety and accident prevention and structure evaluation.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) is reshaping the construction industry and bringing it into an intelligent construction era. Emerging technologies, such as the Building Information Modelling, Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, have penetrated into all stages of the building life cycle and play a significant role. However, the major issue of intelligent construction is integrating multiple technologies to create more potential opportunities rather than their fragmented application. Considering the various special characteristics of the construction industry and the high heterogeneity of these technologies, their integration in the construction industry is challenging and requires in-depth investigations. This paper summarizes the Industry 4.0–related technologies involved in the construction industry based on an analysis of the characteristics of the industry. Further, this study presents a framework of a cyber–physical system to integrate these technologies and improve the overall capabilities of construction organization and management. A case study of the Xiong’an citizen service center is introduced to verify the technological feasibility and preliminary implementation effect of the proposed framework. As forward-looking research, the significance of this paper may also to inspire more efforts in this field.
Abstract Several aspects hinder the application sustainability in construction industry. The most prominent problems are related to the conservation of natural resources and the generation of construction and demolition wastes. Previous studies indicated that these problems are due to lack of information available to construction projects stakeholders on the proper handling of building materials in their different lifecycle stages. This paper presents Material Passport (MP) tool that provides information on how to handle building materials at the construction stage and how to benefit from them at their end-of-life stage through different recovery opportunities. This tool provides three quantitative indicators that assess building's sustainability: 1) deconstructability score; 2) recovery score; and 3) environmental score. These indicators help stakeholders to choose more sustainable solutions to building elements in the initial stages of the project. The paper introduces a framework that incorporate MP within Building Information Modeling (BIM). Such incorporation automates sustainability assessment as well as facilitating the documentation and sharing of building's information for future needs. A case study of a traditional residential building is presented to illustrate the concept of the material passport. Also, new alternatives of modular building concept are presented to validate the sustainability indicators, allowing a comparison with traditional building to reach more sustainable solutions. The results reveal that modular buildings are preferred as expected, demonstrating the effectiveness of the presented tools in evaluating alternatives. The results also show the influence of the parameters used in calculating the presented indicators, such as the connection type and the material used. The research provides a methodology that solves the problem of the of insufficient information in order to achieve sustainability for buildings by including quantitative and qualitative information. The provided information covers all lifecycle stages of the building, making it more comprehensive compared to other tools.