Jacobus Daniel van der Walt

• PhD
• Senior Lecturer (~Associate Professor in US) at University of Canterbury

In the eventuality of a major volcanic eruption or nuclear war, particles would accumulate in the stratosphere and reduce sunlight, potentially altering climate conditions severely and decreasing crop yields. Mass starvation could be prevented with the help of resilient foods, such as transforming natural gas into protein, wood into sugar, and relo...

Purpose Current solutions for monitoring the progress of pavement construction (such as collecting, processing and analysing data) are inefficient, labour-intensive, time-consuming, tedious and error-prone. In this study, an automated solution proposes sensors prototype mounted unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) for data collection, an LSTM classifier f...

In New Zealand, the prevalent approach to surfacing chip-sealed roads is to utilize the Transverse Variable Application Spray Bar (TVAS), which sprays a reduced bitumen within wheel path zones to mitigate flushing, while applying a higher rate outside these areas to minimize raveling. Visual inspection is currently used to locate wheel paths for ca...

The use of pre-construction services (PCS), or early contractor involvement, has become common internationally due to its various advantages to complex construction projects. However, determining the optimal timing for engaging PCS remains an open question for researchers and government organisations. This paper develops a methodology to report on...

As-built progress of the constructed pavement should be monitored effectively to provide prompt project control. However, current pavement construction progress monitoring practices (e.g., data collection, processing, and analysis) are typically manual, time-consuming, tedious, and error-prone. To address this, this study proposes sensors mounted u...

During construction, pavement projects often suffer from a lack of progress certainty, which leads to cost and time overruns. The pavement construction progress should be monitored in a timely and accurate manner to provide prompt feedback and ensure project success. However, current pavement construction progress monitoring practices (e.g., data c...

The value of infrastructure activity in New Zealand is expected to increase to $11.2 billion per year by 2026. However, there is a question concerning the capability and capacity of the construction sector to deliver this quantity of work. This study provides an analysis of award notice data, specifically for transportation physical works contracts...

The construction sector in New Zealand is overloaded and does not have the construction capacity to deliver the projects that are in the pipeline. This problem will only be exacerbated in the future since the Government has planned to increase the expenditure on infrastructure over the next 25 years. Often it is argued that if companies are busy, t...

In New Zealand, most roads are chip-sealed over granular base pavements, which rely on the Transverse Variable Application Spray Bar (TVAS) during the resealing process. TVAS sprays a lower application rate of bitumen in the wheel path areas to limit flushing and uses a higher application rate outside of wheel path areas to limit raveling. Currentl...

Base Isolation is used in seismically active countries around the world to successfully minimize damage caused by large earthquakes, safeguarding both people and property. Yet, while the technology is understood by earthquake engineers, base-isolated buildings are designed by multi-disciplinary teams, and owned, operated, and maintained by stakehol...

With the advancement of digital technology, the collection of pavement performance data has become commonplace. The improvement of tools to extract useful information from pavement databases has become a priority to justify expenditures. This paper presents a case study of PaveMD, a tool that integrates multi-dimensional data structures with a data...

The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry has seen a significant rise in the adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the last few years. BIM software have launched with numerous robust capabilities and features to satisfy the ever-demanding needs of the AEC industry. Various factors are associated with the selection...

Purpose The aim of this study is to broaden the understanding of the set of knowledge, skills, attributes and experience (KSAE) that teams should demonstrate and the necessary roles they need to play within the team in Relational Contracting (RC). This research seeks to answer three questions: first, what KSAEs are required in a team operating unde...

Previous research regarding safety in design (SiD) primarily focused on legal aspects of integrating health and safety into the design, identifying causal links between flawed designs and accidents, safe design tools and methods, and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Despite these advancements in SiD, there is a lack of studies investigating how new...

Disaster reconstruction projects are delivered in complex and uncertain environments, but owners still expect that both cost and non-cost objectives will be achieved. Alliancing is well suited to complex projects with undefined scopes. The alliance project or program delivery method uses key performance indicators to manage non-cost project objecti...

The use of Pre-Construction Services (PCS) is becoming increasingly common internationally. What remains unclear is defining the optimal stage to engage it. This paper adopted complexity factors to find the optimal moment to engage in PCS. From literature, the factors: schedule-pressure, risk, financing, and technicality were adopted as factors of...

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck in November 2016 in central New Zealand about 60km south west of the coastal town of Kaikoura in the south island. The earthquake caused widespread damage throughout many districts on the south island closing both State Highway 1 (SH1) and the Main North Line railway between Picton and Christchurch. More than 200 a...

Procurement methods need to be flexible to adapt to the client's needs after a major disaster. Multi-party procurement methods have been shown to have many positive attributes when applied to disaster recovery. This research will investigate how value for the client can alter the structure of multi-party agreements in disaster recovery. The 7.1 and...

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck in November 2016 in central New Zealand about 60km south west of the coastal town of Kaikoura in the south island. The earthquake caused widespread damage throughout many districts on the south island closing both State Highway 1 (SH1) and the Main North Line railway between Picton and Christchurch. More than 200 a...

Large and complex projects have become commonplace, increasing the need to engage contractors in pre-construction services (PCS). Clients now have a range of procurement options that can involve a contractor in any phase of the pre-construction process. This research investigated what factors are important when deciding how soon to engage the contr...

Pavement surface deflection has been used by researchers and highway agencies to assess the structural condition of the pavement structure. None of the currently available approaches provides an acceptable evaluation method for the rigid pavement structural capacity at the network level. In this research, pavement structural ratio (PSR) and overall...

As pavement condition becomes an ever-growing problem within the ageing New Zealand road network, a challenge emerges to effectively analyse the ageing pavement databases to improve pavement performance. Establishing how the various factors affect pavement performance is complicated due to the random features of pavement deterioration and the compl...

Public agencies in charge of maintaining highways and bridges walk a fine line between cost and quality. Recently the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) has adopted many changes in their procurement methods to obtain greater value for money. The new Network Outcomes Contracts (NOC) have been set up to invest where needed and give more control to t...

The position of vehicles is different from the pavement design assumptions. This is an important finding for collecting pavement condition data and could play a significant part in the chip seal maintenance procedure. Contractors have identified that lateral wheel path distribution is a central factor in calibrating the variable transverse applicat...

Pavement design assumptions suggest that traffic loading on pavements is evenly distributed between the wheel paths. The practice of including a slight camber, commonly up to 4% to assist runoff is assumed to have negligible effects concerning vehicle loading. However, it has been shown that a slight camber or crown can cause unequal loading in the...

Construction safety is a dynamic and complex phenomenon where accidents can be caused by the interactions among human, technical and organizational factors. Traditional safety assessment techniques in the construction industry often fail to adequately capture risks in unforeseen situations. To create and maintain a safe site requires an understandi...

In Canterbury New Zealand, chip seal is the primary surface material for rural state highways. The roads are designed to accommodate various types of traffic; traffic that has grown steadily over the past decade. The growth in dairy and logging, two of New Zealand’s main exports, resulted in a large rise in milk and logging trucks. This significant...