Modelling greenhouse gas emissions for Australian residential building construction

International pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has forced many countries to look beyond 'demand side' measures. Several industry sectors are examining indirect requirements for energy and other resources that involve significant greenhouse gas emissions. The operation of buildings is responsible for approximately one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia. Moreover, he construction process consumes vast quantities of raw materials and complex goods and services each year. Each of the processes required for the provision of these products requires energy, and most of this is fossil fuel based. A national model of greenhouse gas emissions is required for residential building construction, to indicate where emissions reduction strategies should focus. A disaggregated input-output model is developed for the Australian residential building construction sector, and recommendations are made about how this model can be used in the development of policies of emissions mitigation for both the sector and individual residential buildings.

An analysis of factors influencing waste minimisation and use of recycled materials for the construction of residential buildings

Residential building construction activities, whether it is new build, repair or maintenance, consumes a large amount of natural resources. This has a negative impact on the environment in the form depleting natural resources, increasing waste production and pollution. Previous research has identified the benefits of preventing or reducing material waste, mainly in terms of the limited available space for waste disposal, and escalating costs associated with landfills, waste management and disposal and their impact on a  building company's profitability. There has however been little development internationally of innovative waste management strategies aimed at reducing the resource requirement of the construction process. The authors contend that embodied energy is a useful indicator of resource value. Using data provided by a regional high-volume residential builder in the State of Victoria, Australia, this paper identifies the various types of waste that are generated from the construction of a typical standard house. It was found that in this particular case, wasted amounts of materials were less than those found previously by others for cases in capital cities (5-10 per cent), suggesting that waste minimisation strategies are successfully being implemented. Cost and embodied energy savings from using materials with recycled content are potentially more beneficial in terms of embodied energy and resource depletion than waste minimisation strategies.

Height and construction costs of residential high-rise buildings in Shanghai

A widely recognized theme of construction economics suggests that the cost of construction per square meter increases as building height rises. However, over a number of years, research conducted regarding the height and cost issue has established a classic relationship between the two factors which can be represented by a U-shaped curve. This paper describes the study of the height-cost relationship of high-rise residential buildings in Shanghai in terms of the total construction cost and elemental costs while considering the context and commonality of buildings. This research was developed as an extension of the previous work, which examined data for buildings in Hong Kong. Initial findings indicate that the curves illustrating the relationships between height and cost of residential buildings in Shanghai and Hong Kong exhibit different profiles. The dissimilarities indicate that different sets of criteria should be applied in the judgment of height that affects cost in different locations. In terms of elemental costs, the findings suggest that there are differences in the way these costs react to changes in the building height.

Using national input-output data for embodied energy analysis of individual residential buildings

Embodied energy (EE) analysis has become an important area of energy research, in attempting to trace the direct and indirect energy requirements of products and services throughout their supply chain. Typically, input-output (I-O) models have been used to calculate EE because they are considered to be comprehensive in their analysis. However, a major deficiency of using I-O models is that they have inherent errors and therefore cannot be reliably applied to individual cases. Thus, there is a need for the ability to disaggregate an I-O model into its most important 'energy paths', for the purpose of integrating case-specific data. This paper presents a new hybrid method for conducting EE analyses for individual buildings, which retains the completeness of the I-O model. This new method is demonstrated by application to an Australian residential building. Only 52% of the energy paths derived from the I-O model were substituted using case-specific data. This indicates that previous system boundaries for EE studies of individual residential buildings are less than optimal. It is envisaged that the proposed method will provide construction professionals with more accurate and reliable data for conducting life cycle energy analysis of buildings. Furthermore, by analysing the unmodified energy paths, further data collection can be prioritized effectively.

Estimating demolition costs for single residential buildings

With the increasing stock of aging structures, building
demolition is becoming achallenging research field from
the perspective of management. As the converse of
construction, management of demolition puts forward some
new management themes or adds some new contents
even though the same issues are faced in construction
management. This research aims to develop a quantitative
approach to estimate the costs of a demolition project. A
cost analysis method is presented to systematically break
down the cost components involved in the demolition of
a structure. Due to the lack of robust research in theory
and systematic summary in practice to date, the economic
performances of demolition will be studied through acase
study, and the majority of parameters are derived from
actual experiences in practice. The proposed demolition cost
estimation method is applied to the actual form of building
elimination (Scenario 1), and further comparison is carried
out with two other elimination methods, which are the newly
developed deconstruction (Scenario 2) and mechanical
demolition (Scenario 3). Deconstruction is found to be the
most profitable in this particular instance, and is closely
followed by the actual form.

Bryan the builder-residential work only

The High Court, in the 1995 landmark case of Bryan v Maloney, held a builder of a residential house liable to a subsequent owner for economic loss suffered by way of the reduction in value of the house caused by its defective foundations. Since that decision, several cases in state courts have indicated that any extension of the principle in Bryan to commercial properties is a matter for the High Court. This year, Woolcock Street Investments Pty Ltd v CDG Pty Ltd provided the vehicle for the High Court to revisit the Bryan principle in a commercial context. Faced with the question 'can a subsequent owner of a commercial property who discovers faulty foundations sue the builder for the costs of fixing the problem before it causes any physical damage to person or property?', the resounding response from the High Court has been 'no'. Gleeson CJ, Gummow, Hayne and Heydon JJ in a joint judgment and McHugh J and Callinan J in separate judgements rejected any 'extension' of the Bryan principle to commercial premises. Much to the relief of the construction industry, the Court made it clear that it will be difficult for a subsequent owner to make out a case in negligence against the original builder unless it can show special vulnerability to the risk of injury. Kirby J, in a dissenting judgment, suggested that the extension of liability to commercial builders fits quite comfortably with general principles and lamented the 'incremental' approach to liability presently favoured by the Court. Consequent upon the retirement of Gaudron J, Kirby J appears to be a lonely light on the hill, shining a solitary beacon on matters of principle.

The revisitation of Bryan has long been anticipated. However, Woolcock does not provide the solid bricks and mortar craved by the construction industry. Close examination of the reasoning of the Court suggests that it may itself rest on faulty foundations. In his dissenting judgment, Kirby J questions some of the assumptions made by the majority and highlights the deficiencies of the 'stated case' procedure for a re-examination of this particular area of law, thus suggesting that Woolcock may not be completely sound.

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.

Australia's residential building faults : a view from the state of Victoria

Presented is an examination of residential building faults in the Australian Slate of Victoria. The aim is to determine the interconnections between identified main house faults., with a view to establishing their cause· effect relationships. A total of 42753 residential houses in Victoria were examined for nine key faults fully documented in Archicentre's database. These faults are: rising damp. framing fault, illegal building, stump fault, timber rot, cracking, electrical fault, roof fault and water supply issue. Second to framing fault, roof fault was found to be closely associated with other house faults examined. Hence, this paper concludes that a properly framed and roofed house could limit most of these faults. As illegal building was observed to have only a little overall association with other house faults, this study has implications for the Australia Productivity Commission's on-going efforts to deregulate various aspects of the building and construction industry professions.

Modelling direct and indirect water requirements of construction

Water consumed directly by the construction industry is known to be of little importance. However, water consumed in the manufacture of goods and services required by construction may be significant in the context of a building's life cycle water requirements and the national water budget. This paper evaluates the significance of water embodied in the construction of individual buildings. To do this, an input-output-based hybrid embodied water analysis was undertaken on 17 Australian non-residential case studies. It was found that there is a considerable amount of water embodied in construction. The highest value was 20.1 kilolitres (kL)/m2 gross floor area (GFA), representing many times the enclosed volume of the building, and many years worth of operational water. The water required by the main construction process is minimal. However, the water embodied in building materials is considerable. These findings suggest that the selection of elements and materials has a great impact on a building's embodied water. This research allows the construction industry to evaluate design and construction in broad environmental terms to select options that might be cost neutral or possibly cost positive while retaining their environmental integrity. The research suggests policies focused on operational water consumption alone are inadequate.

Procurement of construction facilities: a case study of design management within a design and construct organisation

Presents a case study of design management within an Australian design-construct organization on a large residential apartment project, with the purpose of identifying and analysing issues associated with the organization, responsibilities and stages of development in a typical design-construct project. Discusses the nature of introspection in the Australian construction industry, the shift in procurement methods, the design and build approach, whole life issues, the need for a design manager, and the role of the facilities manager. Profiles the case study organization and its contracts and procurement methods, before focusing on weaknesses in the company, the role of the project design development manager in leading the design team, managing the design consultants, and interacting and advising the developer in relation to design decisions. Suggests from the exercise that: the project manager should remain the overall project leader, manager and interface between design, cost, programme, buildability, construction and user requirements; the design manager should be responsible for issuing all documentation; and the design cost manager should be responsible for verifying that the design developed accords with project budgets, project brief and quality requirements in conjunction with the design manager.

A new paradigm for sustainable residential buildings

This paper explores a new paradigm in housing, where dwellings will be pre-fabricated, modular, energy efficient, transportable and use renewable and/or recyclable resources. The paper reviews previous attempts to produce housing, which meets some of the criteria for this new paradigm. Their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. An approach towards a new type of modular prefabricated unit is proposed. A preliminary energy analysis, comparing a present relocatable classroom construction with one upgraded, is provided as an example towards low energy building operation. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the requirements of future housing if we are to progress towards sustainability.

Project management practice in transition of old residential region

With the rapid urbanisation worldwide, the transitions of old residential regions inside or close to the urban districts have been challenging both governments and professionals. The sustainable maintenance, innovation and construction of these regions incorporate the history, culture, environment and policy factors into the economic objectives. Over the long and complex process of a transition project, the dedicated project management crew are frequently confronted with diversified novel issues and obliged to contribute appropriate solutions urgently. In this paper, the authors first analyse the state of the art of transition projects of old residential regions based on their practices in real projects. Furthermore, the authors explore the sustainable alternatives of transition projects from the reservation and development perspectives of culture, environment, society and infrastructure. Finally, the authors develop a multi-dimensional implementary framework for guiding the practices of management of transition projects.

Convergence among the sub-markets in Australian regional building and construction sector

Studies on market convergence are well considered in the literature. However, the majority of the previous research focused on housing markets and few studies have concentrated on construction markets. Owing to a simultaneously dramatic increase in the construction prices of the sub-markets in the building construction sector in Australia, this paper aims to identify the convergence among these markets, involving house construction market, other-residential building construction market, and non-residential building construction market. To achieve it the Granger causality test and generalized response function depending on the vector error correction model with the quarterly data of Australia’s eight states from 1998 to 2010 will be applied. Based upon the econometric tests, the price diffusion patterns among these construction markets have been identified. Research on the convergences of construction markets not only helps construction firms perform well in business operations and arbitrage activities, but also provides policy makers with useful information for enacting effective construction policies for national perspectives and approaches to infrastructure planning.

Cost planning and control : case study of design economics for constructability and prefabrication construction

Cost management includes planning and control, and constructability1 and prefabrication construction are two main design economics factors for early cost planning decision. Despite the fact that constructability and prefabrication have been considered in design and cost planning, there is no guarantee if the intention meets the expectation. This requires on-going control during construction stage. In fact, prefabrication construction has been encouraged for some years, application is not always positive. One of the reasons is its constructability. This paper investigates the appropriate research methodology to determine how design for prefabrication and constructability will contribute to cost planning through control and review during construction stage. Through a study of an Australian residential project using prefabrication in structural concrete, internal partitioning and internal fit-out, this research concludes that case study is a viable choice. Prefabrication construction does provide a positive impact on the major project objectives: time, cost and quality. Cost reduction is due to saving in time related preliminaries as a direct result of time reduction of onsite activities whilst quality is ensured due to better control of prefabricated components inside the factories. However, it can only be achieved after considering constructability: suitable materials choice, design for available skills, use of available plant, and clear communication. The keys are through plan at design phase and control in construction stage.