Beyond Bryan: Builders' liability and pure economic loss

In Bryan v Maloney, the High Court extended a builder’s duty of care to encompass a liability in negligence for the pure economic loss sustained by a subsequent purchaser of a residential dwelling as a result of latent defects in the building’s construction. Recently, in Woolcock Street Investments Pty Ltd v CDG Pty Ltd, the Court refused to extend this liability to defects in commercial premises. The decision therefore provides an opportunity to re-examine the rationale and policy behind current jurisprudence governing builders’ liability for pure economic loss. In doing so, this article considers the principles relevant to the determination of a duty of care generally and whether the differences between purchasers of residential and commercial properties are as great as the case law suggests

Effectiveness of WSUD in the ‘real world’

Many urban developments are implementing Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) strategies to attenuate flows and decrease pollutant loads carried by stormwater runoff. A water quality monitoring project was undertaken at the residential development of ‘Coomera Waters’ on the Gold Coast in Queensland to assess the effectiveness of a bioretention swale, a constructed wetland and a bioretention basin in treating stormwater runoff before it enters protected Melaleuca wetlands. This paper compares the effectiveness of these WSUD devices in reducing flow frequency, peak flow, and stormwater volume leaving the WSUD systems. The pollutant loads reductions are also described and the concentrations of pollutants are compared to the trigger values derived from the ANZECC (2000) Guidelines.

Sydney Opera House – FM exemplar project

The Sydney Opera House Facilities Management Exemplar Project (SOH FM Exemplar Project) aims to develop innovative research on facility management (FM) with the focus on asset maintenance. The project utilises the Sydney Opera House (SOH), one of most unique buildings in Australia, to research and create innovative FM strategies and models that will have a direct beneficial role for the Australian facilities management industry as well as the economy as a whole. The procurement, benchmarking and digitisation are crucial in improving the performance of FM. The procurement develops strategic plan and deployment framework enabling products, services, etc. meet objectives of performance, economic, environment, etc. Benchmarking is a technology used to compare practice and assess performance against the competitors recognised as industry leaders who achieve most successful activities in the field. Digitisation develops digitized FM modelling that facilitates the integration and automation of facility management. The project carries out the research on all the three areas as well as the relationship between them. It aims to develop an integrated approach for the improvement of FM performance.

The Smart Skies Project

Smart Skies is an international research project exploring the development and demonstration of future aviation technologies which facilitate the more efficient utilisation of airspace for both manned and unmanned aircraft. These technologies include autonomous vision-based collision avoidance systems, autonomous airspace separation management systems and a mobile ground-based radar system to support non-segregated UAS operations within the NAS. This presentation will provide an introduction to the key programs of research, detail results from recent flight trial activities and will outline future directions for the project.

Automatic Detection of Marine Mammal from Aerial Imagery

The following technical report describes the approach and algorithm used to detect marine mammals from aerial imagery taken from manned/unmanned platform. The aim is to automate the process of counting the population of dugongs and other mammals. We have developed and algorithm that automatically presents to a user a number of possible candidates of these mammals. We tested the algorithm in two distinct datasets taken from different altitudes. Analysis and discussion is presented in regards with the complexity of the input datasets, the detection performance.

Final report of Delphi study

This is the final report of project 2002-010 Component Life – A Delphi Approach to Life Prediction of Building Material Components. A Delphi survey has been conducted to provide expert opinion on the life of components in buildings. Thirty different components were surveyed with a range of materials, coatings, environments and failure considered. These components were chosen to be representative of a wider range of components in the same building microclimate. The survey included both service life (with and without maintenance) and aesthetic life, and time to first maintenance. It included marine, industrial, and benign environments, and covered both commercial and residential buildings. In order to obtain answers to this wide range of question, but still have a survey that could be completed in a reasonable time, the survey was broken into five sections: 1 External metal components – residential buildings. 2. Internal metal components – residential buildings. 3. External metal components – commercial buildings. 4. Internal metal components – commercial buildings. 5. Metal connectors in buildings.

Evaluation of separation management algorithms in Class G airspace

Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in support of government applications has already seen significant growth and the potential for use of UAVs in commercial applications is expected to rapidly expand in the near future. However, the issue remains on how such automated or operator-controlled aircraft can be safely integrated into current airspace. If the goal of integration is to be realized, issues regarding safe separation in densely populated airspace must be investigated. This paper investigates automated separation management concepts in uncontrolled airspace that may help prepare for an expected growth of UAVs in Class G airspace. Not only are such investigations helpful for the UAV integration issue, the automated separation management concepts investigated by the authors can also be useful for the development of new or improved Air Traffic Control services in remote regions without any existing infrastructure. The paper will also provide an overview of the Smart Skies program and discuss the corresponding Smart Skies research and development effort to evaluate aircraft separation management algorithms using simulations involving realworld data communication channels, and verified against actual flight trials. This paper presents results from a unique flight test concept that uses real-time flight test data from Australia over existing commercial communication channels to a control center in Seattle for real-time separation management of actual and simulated aircraft. The paper also assesses the performance of an automated aircraft separation manager.

Sustainable subdivisions – energy efficient design

Australia’s current pattern of residential development is resulting in urban sprawl and highlights the necessity for development to be more sustainable to avoid unnecessary demand on natural resources and to prevent environmental degradation and to safeguard the environment for future generations. This report summarises the results from a series of cases studies that examined the link between sub-divisional layout and dwelling energy efficiency, the possibility for a lot-rating tool and the potential for on site electricity generation.

Sustainable subdivisions – review of technologies for integrated water services

Water is a current major global, national and local issue. Historic drought and unprecedented restriction levels are now substantially influencing almost all Australia’s major cities. Residential design and adoption of appropriate technologies plays a key role in urban water efficiency. This project, the first of the CRC-CI Sustainable subdivisions program with a focus on water, explores the existing technologies available for sustainable suburbs.

Sustainable subdivisions – ventilation monitoring

Australia’s current pattern of residential development is typified by relatively low-density subdivision of land and highlights the necessity for development to be more sustainable to avoid unnecessary demand on natural resources and to prevent environmental degradation and to safeguard the environment for future generations. What role can climatically appropriate sub-division design play in decreasing the use of energy required to cool premises by maximising access to natural ventilation? How can this design be achieved?

Report : wireless data throughput testing on a mobile device using WiFi and GPRS

This project report presents the results of a study on wireless communication data transfer rates for a mobile device running a custombuilt construction defect reporting application. The study measured the time taken to transmit data about a construction defect, which included digital imagery and text, in order to assess the feasibility of transferring various types and sizes of data and the ICT-supported construction management applications that could be developed as a consequence. Data transfer rates over GPRS through the Telstra network and WiFi over a private network were compared. Based on the data size and data transfer time, the rate of transfer was calculated to determine the actual data transmission speeds at which the information was being sent using the wireless mobile communication protocols. The report finds that the transmission speeds vary considerably when using GPRS and can be significantly slower than what is advertised by mobile network providers. While WiFi is much faster than GPRS, the limited range of WiFi limits the protocol to residential-scale construction sites.

Stability analysis and control of multiple converter based autonomous microgrid

In this paper, the stability of an autonomous microgrid with multiple distributed generators (DG) is studied through eigenvalue analysis. It is assumed that all the DGs are connected through Voltage Source Converter (VSC) and all connected loads are passive. The VSCs are controlled by state feedback controller to achieve desired voltage and current outputs that are decided by a droop controller. The state space models of each of the converters with its associated feedback are derived. These are then connected with the state space models of the droop, network and loads to form a homogeneous model, through which the eigenvalues are evaluated. The system stability is then investigated as a function of the droop controller real and reac-tive power coefficients. These observations are then verified through simulation studies using PSCAD/EMTDC. It will be shown that the simulation results closely agree with stability be-havior predicted by the eigenvalue analysis.

Power quality enhanced operation and control of a microgrid based custom power park

This paper describes the operation of a microgrid that contains a custom power park (CPP). The park may contain an unbalanced and/or nonlinear load and the microgrid may contain many dis-tributed generators (DGs). One of the DGs in the microgrid is used as a compensator to achieve load compensation. A new method is proposed for current reference generation for load compensation, which takes into account the real and reactive power to be supplied by the DG connected to the compensator. The real and reactive power from the DGs and the utility source is tightly regulated assuming that dedicated communication channels are available. Therefore this scheme is most suitable in cases where the loads in CPP and DGs are physically located close to each other. The proposal is validated through extensive simulation studies using EMTDC/PSCAD software package (version 4.2).

Benchmarks for recycling practices in commercial office building refurbishment : data collection challenges

In recent years considerable effort has gone into quantifying the reuse and recycling potential of waste generated by residential construction. Unfortunately less information is available for the commercial refurbishment sector. It is hypothesised that significant economic and environmental benefit can be derived from closer monitoring of the commercial construction waste stream. With the aim of assessing these benefits, the authors are involved in ongoing case studies to record both current standard practice and the most effective means of improving the eco-efficiency of materials use in office building refurbishments. This paper focuses on the issues involved in developing methods for obtaining the necessary information on better waste management practices and establishing benchmark indicators. The need to create databases to establish benchmarks of waste minimisation best practice in commercial construction is stressed. Further research will monitor the delivery of case study projects and the levels of reuse and recycling achieved in directly quantifiable ways

Construction defect reporting using mobile and digital workbench technologies

Sending data between the construction site and an off-site design office is one of the more problematic areas in information technology for construction automation, particularly for construction defect management. The aim of this research is to investigate how mobile computing and new forms of human-computer interaction can be brought to bear on specific problems in construction management. The construction defect reporting system is one such application. Combining mobile and wireless computing technologies with a digital workbench, we have developed a system to facilitate remote telecollaboration between a construction site and an off-site engineering office. The application reported in this paper demonstrates how construction defect reporting can be streamlined by field collection of construction defect information using a mobile device and visualising the defect in a CAD model on a digital workbench in an engineering office. This paper reports on the design of the system and our tests of sending images from the construction site to the engineer’s office and positional accuracy of GPS for localization of the defect.