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Publications (127)
To meet global carbon emissions reduction targets we need to adopt sustainable construction practices and transition toward a Circular Economy (CE). The present paper proposes a combination of CE-focused technologies, Circular Building Adaptability (CBA), Open Building (OB) and Mass Timber Construction (MTC) working in concert to support emissions...
Open Building (OB) represents a fundamental shift in the approach to building design viewing the overall superstructure (the base building) as one element and each unit/residence within (the infill/fitout) as separable non-standardised spaces. Mass Timber Construction (MTC) is a modern approach to building that utilises large structural wood compon...
Biophilia refers to the innate human inclination to connect with nature. Mass Timber Construction (MTC) may hold the key to increasing the adoption of biophilic treatments in sustainable architecture through the inherent properties of timber. Existing literature on biophilia has explored its benefits and adoption strategies, however, these studies...
Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) are becoming popular for managing energy supply in urban environments with Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). However, decision-making for VPPs in such complex environments is challenging due to multiple uncertainties and complexities. This paper proposes an approach that optimizes decision-making for VPPs using Reinfo...
1. World Building Congress 2022 Overview
The International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB) World Building Congress (WBC) 2022 ‘Building Our Future: Informing Practice to Enhance the Lives of Current and Future Generations’ was held from 27 to 30 June 2022 at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia and online....
Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) is an excellent renewable energy application for building envelopes. In Australia, BIPV roofing is considered to be promising because of recent major concerns about fire risks of façades. However, the integration of PV into building envelope elements is a complicated process which, if not done properly, may...
The design of building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) envelopes involves a large set of envelope-related parameters, PV-related parameters and conflicting performance criteria. Therefore, optimization of BIPV design is crucial and it has become a complex process. Existing BIPV design optimization frameworks lack BIPV product and application type-re...
The construction sector is vulnerable to safety risk incidents due to its dynamic nature. Although numerous research efforts and technological advancements have focused on addressing workplace injuries, most of the studies perform empirical and deterministic postimpact evaluations on construction project performance. The effective modeling of the s...
Community buildings such as childcare/ aged care centres, sports pavilions possesses a massive investment in Australian economy built up over generations. From one viewpoint, they are providing essential services to the community and another viewpoint, the delivery of those services is limited by the ongoing degradation of the structural and servic...
Building-integrated photovoltaic technology (BIPV) is a decentralised renewable energy source with a building material function. Lack of confidence in the economic viability of BIPV has become one of the critical issues in investment decisions. Therefore, there is a need to review the real economic value of recent BIPV projects to dispel the common...
Applying Virtual Reality (VR) in construction professional training has been advocated as an effective method to improve learner’s cognition. However, there has been a lack of a systematic approach in VR-based training in the construction context. This study aims to develop a framework to institutionalize VR-based construction professional training...
Blockchain as an emergent decentralized digital technology has been widely explored in many sectors to remedy the deficiencies of centralized solutions It has been recognized that blockchain technology has great potential to facilitate business activities spanning the whole life cycle of a building project in the construction industry, such as bett...
It is increasingly expected that public sector clients embed work health and safety (WHS) into procurement and project management practices for infrastructure/engineering construction projects. Client practices in relation to the management of WHS were examined in a longitudinal case study conducted in a public infrastructure programme of work in A...
The given state-of-the-art review of BIPV design and management tools presents recent developments in BIPV modelling concerning design and management processes with different levels of detail, targeting various stakeholders and their requirements in the BIPV value chain in relation to geophysical, technical, economic and environmental aspects. It g...
The given state-of-the-art review of BIPV design and management tools presents recent developments in BIPV modelling concerning design and management processes with different levels of detail, targeting various stakeholders and their requirements in the BIPV value chain in relation to geophysical, technical, economic and environmental aspects. It g...
Many hazards are present in the construction work environment. This chapter presents a foundation system case study of reducing occupational health hazards to highlight the importance of considering the work health and safety (WHS) aspects of alternative work processes when designing features of the permanent structure. It shows how the way that wo...
The economic environment in many developing countries also creates challenges for work health and safety (WHS) as construction businesses operate in a competitive, relatively unregulated, environment. Despite structural and cultural challenges associated with achieving an integrated approach to managing WHS in the construction industry, the potenti...
Elevator planning is a key factor for high-rise building construction and building design. Up-peak load is a common phenomenon in building elevator design and operation. For example, in the morning, passengers want to take an elevator to their working floors. Up-peak is often used as the critical traffic period for elevator planning in a building....
Distributed solar PV design and management in buildings is a complex process which involves multidisciplinary stakeholders with different aims and objectives, ranging from acquiring architectural visual effects to higher solar insolation in given location, efficient energy generation and economic operation and maintenance of the PV system. Therefor...
Successful urban open spaces can largely contribute to the enhancement of humans’ day to day life. Among the determinants of the quality of outdoor environments, high priority is given to ambient climatic conditions. This study is aimed to understand the usage pattern of outdoor spaces in an educational precinct and to discover its linkage to therm...
The essence of Australian community buildings’ sustainable management drives through a previously established decision-making structure with four sustainability aspects and accompanying 18 criteria. Informed decisions are supported with a decision-making model that generates sustainability impacts of building components based on this decision-makin...
This research focuses on determining the significance of foreign investment in the Australian residential property market subsequent to the Global Financial Crisis 2008. Quantitative models built on secondary data were tested on two residential property markets comprising Metropolitan Melbourne and a key suburb in the Victoria State, Australia. The...
Purpose
Real option valuation is capable of accounting for uncertainties in residential development projects but still lacks practical adoption due to limited evidence to support application of the theory in practice. The purpose of this paper is to use option valuation to value staging option embedded in residential projects and compare with resu...
Purpose:
This research aims to focus on the emerging determinants for the Australian residential property market subsequent to the Global Financial Crisis 2008.
Design/methodology/approach:
Quantitative models built on secondary data were tested on three residential property markets comprising metropolitan Melbourne and two key suburbs in the stat...
Active participation by foreign investors in Australian residential property market is common subsequent to the Global Financial Crisis 2008. Many residential properties in the Australian capital cities were purchased by overseas buyers. An estimated 18% of new dwellings in Sydney and 14% in Melbourne were purchased by foreigners in 2014. Simultane...
The architecture, engineering and construction industry has long dealt with problems such as schedule and budget overruns, quality and safety issues, and low productivity. Off-site construction, which is a hybrid of manufacturing and construction, has significant potential to address industry’s endemic problems. However, off-site construction has b...
The current management process for community buildings in Australia is mainly reactive. Data collected using regular inspections are used for maintenance decision making in the period between consecutive inspections, disregarding the future degradation of the assets and the resultant levels of service. Forecasting future conditions using historic d...
Purpose
Australia has a huge stock of community buildings built up over decades. Their replacements consume a large sum of money from country’s economy which has called for a strategy for their sustainable management. For this, a comprehensive decision-making structure is an utmost requirement. The purpose of this paper is to capture their sustain...
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge on the advantages of integrating safety earlier in the construction project lifecycle.
Design/methodology/approach
– A case study approach is used to collect data from construction sites in the USA, which performs poorly in construction safety and health, and Australia (AU), which perform...
Three-dimensional imagery derived from a building information model (BIM) based virtual prototype can be used to non-verbally communicate constructability information. This paper describes an assessment of using instructive pictographs to characterize prefigured assembly information for construction assembly procedure. It employs industry-recognize...
Interaction and integration of uncertainties in on-site and off-site project activities often result in the risk of delays and schedule overruns in hybrid construction projects. To address this problem, a holistic risk analysis approach that assesses the integrating impact of uncertainties on completion times is proposed. The results of the analysi...
The hybrid use of off-site and on-site processes in construction projects has increased significantly over the past decade. The analysis and management of uncertainty in hybrid projects is not a trivial task as workflow variability in off-site and on-site operations can interact and amplify one another. The aim of this paper is to analyze various d...
Capstone experiences provide critical opportunities for undergraduate students to integrate and apply the skills and knowledge they have previously developed in their degree or program. Commonly, this involves students engaging in learning experiences that involve real-world issues and which in turn enhance the student experience and employability...
Risk perception is an antecedent to the conceptualisation of a risk control strategy. If project stakeholders do not perceive risks in a similar way, it is likely that they will have disagreement about how risks should be controlled and /or the adequacy of strategies developed to control these risks. If the disagreement is not understood and remain...
Concerns about production efficiency, quality, and affordability in the residential construction indicate there may be benefits in adopting alternative production control strategies to those traditionally used. Reducing adverse effects of exogenous variability in demand and endogenous variability in process are the ultimate goals of production cont...
This work uses a mixed methods research design to explore how social sustainability outcomes are impacted by early supplier integration and associated strategies for successfully implementing this integration. Much of the literature in the area focuses on environmental factors, while social sustainability factors such as worker and consumer safety...
Problems in existing methods of production tracking in off-site construction result in schedule delays and increased costs. To eliminate these deficiencies, an autonomous production tracking that analyzes real-time production data is proposed. A specific implementation of the proposed production tracking mechanisms has been developed for a large of...
Work health and safety (WHS) on construction sites can be influenced by decisions made upstream from the construction stage. The effectiveness of WHS risk management relies on decision makers’ ability to decide appropriate strategies to mitigate/control risks. However, it is unclear whether upstream decision makers share similar WHS risk perception...
Photographic Q-methodology was used to explore construction professionals’ mental models of occupational health and safety (OHS). Sixty Australian construction professionals participated in the research, including 15 architects, 15 engineers, 15 constructors and 15 OHS professionals. Participants were asked to sort photographs depicting different b...
Traditional approaches in construction project management assign each process to a trade contractor with an individual specialisation, and trades with the greatest work content (bottlenecks) have a significant influence on the progress rate of projects. A system with integrated processes, however, is able to function dynamically in response to vari...
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the timing with which decisions are made about how to control work health and safety (WHS) risks in construction project (i.e. either pre- or post-construction) and the quality of risk control outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
– Data were collected from 23 construction...
Construction sites are dynamic environments due to the influence of variables such as changes in design and processes, unsteady demand, and unavailability of trades. These variables adversely affect productivity and can cause an unstable workflow in the network of trade contractors. Previous research on workflow stability in the construction and ma...
The position of the constructor in communication networks, including those before the commencement of construction, is likely related to the quality of work health and safety (WHS) outcomes realized. In order to examine the extent of this relationship, 23 cases were drawn from 10 participating construction projects in Australia and New Zealand. Soc...
The Australian construction industry is identified as one among five industries to receive priority attention under the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2012-2022. Among the recorded construction fatalities in 2012, vehicle incidents accounted for 15% and being hit by moving objects accounted for 10%. Tracking of individuals on-site could...
This research aims to analyse the within- and between-group similarity/difference in WHS risk perceptions of construction project participants. This study employs Q-methodology with an innovative photographic data collection method to explore construction project participants’ WHS risk perceptions. Specifically, a set of photos were selected to rep...
Social network analysis was used to model information exchange networks in construction case studies in the United States of America and Australia/New Zealand. For each case, the quality of work safety and health (WHS) risk control outcomes was measured. This measurement was based on an established “hierarchy of control” in which risk controls are...
Purpose
– In Australia, the A$2.2 trillion managed funds industry including the large pension funds (known locally as superannuation funds) are the dominant institutional property investors. While statistical information on the level of Australian managed fund investments in property assets is widely available, comprehensive practical evidence on p...
Operational performance in residential construction production systems is assessed based on measures such as average house-completion time, number of houses under construction, lead time, and customer service. These systems, however, are prone to nonuniformity and interruptions caused by a wide range of variables such as inclement weather condition...
Safety in the construction industry is important because people continue to be injured on construction sites. To address this, the Australian construction industry and its regulator, the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner, have required that anyone who intends to work on a construction site must complete an Occupational...
Preventing occupational health and safety (OHS) hazards through design is consistent with the principle that OHS is best managed by eliminating hazards at their 'source' rather than reducing risks that eventuate in the workplace. In 2007, an industry-initiated research and development project was undertaken in Australia to identify and document bes...
Buildings are one of the major infrastructure investments in cities. Sustainable preservation of building assets in order to deliver an appropriate level of service throughout their life cycle requires a comprehensive and optimised decision making methodology. This decision making method needs to be supported not only by accurate data, but also by...
The Construction Industry has one of the highest rates of injury and fatality in Australia and across the world. A key challenge for OH&S training is to engage learners. Construction students tend to be experiential learners and class room teaching is often not engaging for them. In this project we developed a computer game aimed to motivate studen...
Purpose
The research aims to explore the interaction between design decisions that reduce occupational health and safety (OHS) risk in the operation stage of a facility's life cycle and the OHS experiences of workers in the construction stage.
Design/methodology/approach
Data was collected from three construction projects in Australia. Design deci...
The construction industry is plagued by long cycle times caused by variability in the supply chain. Variations or undesirable situations are the result of factors such as non-standard practices, work site accidents, inclement weather conditions and faults in design. This paper uses a new approach for modelling variability in construction by linking...
Sustainable management of community buildings is heavily relied on, and implemented through, the council's decision making framework. This study investigates current practices and previous studies, and identifies major flaws in the decision making process. The study aims to develop an integrated decision making framework which enables local governm...
There is increasing recognition that many construction occupational health and safety (OSH)
hazards arise as a result of activities in the planning and design stage. Improvement of
construction OSH performance can be influenced by various stakeholder groups, not just the
appointed construction contractor. It is important for stakeholder groups t...
The construction industry is plagued by long cycle times caused by variability in the supply chain. Variations or undesirable situations are the result of factors such as non-standard practices, work site accidents, inclement weather conditions and faults in design. This paper uses a new approach for modelling variability in construction by linking...
Subcontracting has been widely used in order to address the high level of variability and associated risks in the complex configuration of residential construction production systems. However, the explosion of subcontracting and the parade of trades have made the construction operations very fragmented, leading to lack of predictability and adequat...
The idleness of equipment-oriented and labor-intensive resources causes productivity losses in construction systems. The aim of this paper is to use discrete-event simulation to determine the system sensitivity to resource level variations. The wall cladding process of a high-rise Hotel was analyzed to investigate the interaction of three hoists an...
Purpose – The research explores the interaction between design decisions that reduce occupational health and safety (OHS) risk in the operation stage of a facility’s life cycle and the OHS experiences of workers in the construction stage.
Design/methodology/approach – Data was collected from three construction projects in Australia. Design decision...
This report presents the outcomes of a research project conducted by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) RMIT Research Centre on the way a significant proportion of new suburban detached housing is built in Australia. The report examines the 'volume building' housing industry that supplies detached housing, the dominant form...