Building Systems and Costing - Assignment Example

BUILDING SYSTEMS AND COSTING By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Building Systems and Costing Question One Buildability can be described as the level to which decisions that have been made at the time of whole process of building procurement, eventually facilitating the ease of construction as well as improving the completed project quality. Abbas (2014) define buildability as the capability to economically and efficiently construct a building to the required levels of quality from its constituent sub-assemblies, components and materials. Buildability can also be described as the most efficient and economical way of constructing a building. Integration, according to Fouchal et al. (2012),can be defined as the process through which data, water, air, and electricity are combined into one trunking delivery system that provide a crucial progression in reducing cost of services installation, the building running cost and maintenance. The principle of integration in building services is akin to process of producing automobiles, whereby the design and production process allows for optimisation of the car performance; therefore, they can be extended to involve integration of diverse building parts. The design of building services have to be integrated into the building’s overall design, especially on complex building projects like hospitals. Coordination is the process of handling interdependencies between activities associated with building services. Communication is a crucial aspect of coordinating and it involves sketches, drawings, written (letters, emails, instructions, and memos) as well as verbal (meetings). Coordination can also be described as the process of making things to go together well or to be the same. Coordination can also be described as the process developing a design, which is responsive to a number of applicable regulations and code requirements. Question Two Plant Rooms With regard to buildability, it is imperative that the areas of plant room are ventilated carefully as needed, in order to make sure the plant operates correctly and ensure the comfort, health and safety of the workers. In the plant environment, workers could be exposed to different contaminants. Therefore, it is imperative for the designers to be conscious about job-site safety while designing the plant room. More importantly, the designer has to take considerations that offer a safe environment for working; thus, enabling safe trades sequence as well as workers safety while handling components and materials. Plant rooms normally hold large equipment, which are huge in size and heavy; thus, they require special handling and accommodation during the process of construction. The constructers and designers can integrated the machinery (air handling units, chiller plant and pumps) with gas, water supply, and fire services Duct to form one system. With regard to coordination, the constructers can coordinate building services by using the latest technologies as well as tools to offer three-dimensional mechanical, electrical and plumbing coordination services. The coordination work of plant room include coordinating all building services (electrical systems, pipework, HVAC, and public health) with numerous disciplines that make up the building external envelope, fabric and structure. Coordination work would ensure that there are no clashes and would allow the designers to accurately model as well as represent every mechanical component in the plant room. A Typical Floor The buildability factors associated with a typical floor include the beam sizes’ variability, floor layouts repetition, the floor’s average slab panel area, floor area and the beams intersection. It is also associated with labour costs and productivity as well as the benefits associated with applying buildability principles. Accoridng to Jarkas (2010), the structural configurations of slab floor are different from beamless floors in terms of panel geometry, span, and size. Erections of floor formwork involve slab soffit or setting-out beam levels. Through coordination, the specified levels of soffit can be marked clearly on every vertical supporting member, specifically walls and columns. Coordination allows the designers to place the plywood panels and nail them into beam sides to construct the forming surface for various slab panels’ shapes and areas. In terms of integration, integration help reduce space and allows different building systems like HVAC, structures, communications, electrical, fire protection and plumbing to be integrated. The design process can be simplified by allocating an independent volume to all these systems.  Below the floor, these systems are offered their own volume, whereby a greater vertical dimension is allocated to accommodate the truss or deepest spanning beam.  Modular coordination can be applied to the vertical dimensions during the construction of the building, but it is important to define a plane of reference from which the modular dimensions could be taken. Building Core The buildability building bore normally involves the building portions that serve every tenant indirectly such as ventilation shafts, public restrooms, elevator shafts, electrical distribution, as well as stairwells. The buildability principle that applies to building core includes material systems, whereby the materials used have to be optimised in order to improve buildability and prevent wastage during the construction process. Therefore, integrating the materials choice could assist in realisation of ease of construction since problems associated with coordination are inclined to crop up from designs involving various forms of materials. Furthermore, designers have to create simplest details that are compatible with the building’s overall requirements to maximise performance. Question Three The deficiencies problem associated with design could be associated with less concern of buildability during the design stage. A number of building designs are essentially inefficient because of minimal consideration of buildability in the design process. The problems of buildability normally happen because of design deficiencies and can lead to high construction’s cost. Other buildability problems include unpractical design assembly, poor dimensional rationalisation as well as issue associated with getting the right skill labour, tool and equipment (Aina & Wahab, 2012). Basically, failure to consider the design process has made the construction of buildings costlier. Effective design coordination play a crucial role in reducing disruption, delays and costs that are attributed to on site problems as well as the desire for redesign and abortive works or remedial. Some of the issues associated with coordination include clashes, such as hard clashes which happen in pipework route running through the steel beam. Soft clashes are attributed to construction tolerances, lack of space to maintain or install a building component, failure to consider health and safety requirements, and high number of personnel working simultaneously in the same space. Question Four It is imperative to avoid these problems to prevent the recurrence of the problem and allow designers to carefully consider the root causes of the problems associated with buildability. Efficient construction can be obstructed by lack of coordinated, concise, and clear contract documents. Lack of qualified engineers in designing process can lead to challenges in creating a buildability design. Basically, the buildability problems are commonly associated with designing without considering the involvement and the input of contractors as well as failure to consider the proposed changes made by the contractors. The buildability and coordination problems associated with building services are attributed to design discrepancies, changes in design, time limitation, poor design-team experience, failure to review the design, and non-participation of construction personnel (Mydin et al., 2011). As pointed out by Fouchal et al. (2012) integrating all building services into one trunking system can only be possible if interactions are maintained within the restrictions imposed by presently implemented building standards. The concept of intra-inter dependent teamwork could allow reduce the inherent gaps amongst the different processes and trades associated with building services. More importantly, the dynamic coordination buffer could help prevent the construction project against different critical chain activities (Wan & Kumaraswamy, 2012). Question Five The issues of buildability and coordination can be addressed by designers, builders and contractors by integrating good buildability into an effective overall design. Basically, good buildability results in a major cost benefits for builders, designers, and clients. According to Tindiwensi (2000), good buildability can be realised if both builders and designers can oversee the entire process of construction. To improve profitability, productivity, and efficiency, they should understand that sound results are achieved by adding simple actions and simple objectives. More importantly, they should adopt customer led designs, whereby the customers are involved in the design process operation. The customers need a maximum of completeness from all trades. It is imperative to understand what brings forth efficiency in operation; for instance, erecting a steel frame is controlled largely by the fabricator attitude and productivity of welding productivity. It is also controlled by exactness and efficiency of the manner in which components are assembled. The process of assembly is influenced by the preparation accuracy and draughtsman’s detailing. According to Lam and Wong (2009), buildability attributes are hardly examined when the building designs are assessed through generic measures like design quality indicators based on their functionality, build quality as well as impact. A good design should consider the site constraints and characteristics, and the challenges that the construction team poses at the time of production stage. Besides that, a well-drawn design but with no coordinated information and does not appreciated the construction difficulties is inclined to be more costly and would take long to build due to high inordinate amount of waste attributed to abortive trials. Besides that, the design details and layouts could be modified often to improve the buildability devoid of sacrificing many other objectives. According to Lam et al. (1997), building services coordination determines how successful a building project would be. Success can be achieved if the building services are fully coordinated as well as integrated. All contractors as well as designers should work closely to create an integrated building where building elements, structural and building services are systematically organised, completely planned, as well as brought to completion as needed by the client. Domingo (2015) emphasises that lack of coordination and integration of building services is detrimental to the project success since it can delay other activities associated with the construction process, create unsightly services, lead to monetary claims, and make maintenance challenging. Annotated Bibliography Domingo, N., 2015. sessment of the Impact of Complex Healthcare Features on Construction Waste Generation. Buildings, vol. 5, pp.860-79. The objective of this study was identifying the relationships between complex features in construction waste production and building projects. Lam, K.C., Gibb, A.G.F. & Sher, W.D., 1997. An analysis of building procurement factors affecting coordination of building services. In 13th Annual ARCOM Conference. Cambridge, 1997. Association of Researchers in Construction Management. The authors presents two models that can be utilised to manage the coordination of building services select suitable path for procurement with the view to the complex building services’ coordination. Jarkas, A.M., 2010. Buildability factors affecting formwork labour productivity of building floors. Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, vol. 37, pp.1383–94. The study quantifies the effects as well as the relative influence of the variability of beam sizes and factors of buildability that significantly affect the formwork labour productivity. Mydin, S.H., Zin, R.M., Majid, M.Z.A. & Zahidi, M., 2011. Buildability Problems in the Malaysian Building Construction. In 2011 IEEE Symposium on Business, Engineering and Industrial Applications (ISBEIA). Langkawi, Malaysia , 2011. IEEE. The objective of the study was to examine the buildability problems as well as the root causes that have cropped up in the Malaysian building construction by studying different construction sites across Malaysia. Aina, O.O. & Wahab, A.B., 2012. An Assessment of Build ability Problems In The Nigerian Construction Industry. Global Journal of Research Engineering, vol. 11, no. 2, pp.43-52. The authors examined the buildability problems occurrence as well as the factors that contribute to these problems in Nigerian construction project. Fouchal, F., Hassan, T. & Loveday, L., 2012. Design approach for the integration of services in buildings. Journal of Building Services Engineering Research & Technology, vol. 34, no. 3, pp.333–48. The authors explain the new technique of integrating building services into a single trunking system whose proximal distances is minimal. Wan, S.K.M. & Kumaraswamy, M.M., 2012. Improving building services coordination at the pre-installation stage. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, vol. 19, no. 3, pp.235-52. The authors investigated the significant factors that contribute to production shortcomings that can be traced in the pre-installation stage and how they contribute to higher amount of construction debris. Tindiwensi, D., 2000. Integration of Buildability Issues in Construction Projects in Developing Economies. Research Paper. Kampala, Uganda: Makerere University. The author tries to address the issue associated with buildability by considering the economic constraints in the developing countries. Lam, P.T.I. & Wong, F.W.H., 2009. Improving building project performance: how buildability benchmarking can help. Construction Management and Economics, vol. 27, no. 1, pp.41-52. The authors try to determine the relationship between buildability and safety performance, cost, time, and quality. Abbas, M.G., 2014. Buildability Concept Influencing Quality of Building during Design Process in UNRWA Projects. Thesis. Gaza: The Islamic University of Gaza. The author examines buildability in the design stage, which can enhance the schedule and performance of the project and improve building quality during of the stages of operation as well as maintenance stages in Gaza’s UNRWA projects. Read More

A Typical Floor The buildability factors associated with a typical floor include the beam sizes’ variability, floor layouts repetition, the floor’s average slab panel area, floor area and the beams intersection. It is also associated with labour costs and productivity as well as the benefits associated with applying buildability principles. Accoridng to Jarkas (2010), the structural configurations of slab floor are different from beamless floors in terms of panel geometry, span, and size.

Erections of floor formwork involve slab soffit or setting-out beam levels. Through coordination, the specified levels of soffit can be marked clearly on every vertical supporting member, specifically walls and columns. Coordination allows the designers to place the plywood panels and nail them into beam sides to construct the forming surface for various slab panels’ shapes and areas. In terms of integration, integration help reduce space and allows different building systems like HVAC, structures, communications, electrical, fire protection and plumbing to be integrated.

The design process can be simplified by allocating an independent volume to all these systems.  Below the floor, these systems are offered their own volume, whereby a greater vertical dimension is allocated to accommodate the truss or deepest spanning beam.  Modular coordination can be applied to the vertical dimensions during the construction of the building, but it is important to define a plane of reference from which the modular dimensions could be taken. Building Core The buildability building bore normally involves the building portions that serve every tenant indirectly such as ventilation shafts, public restrooms, elevator shafts, electrical distribution, as well as stairwells.

The buildability principle that applies to building core includes material systems, whereby the materials used have to be optimised in order to improve buildability and prevent wastage during the construction process. Therefore, integrating the materials choice could assist in realisation of ease of construction since problems associated with coordination are inclined to crop up from designs involving various forms of materials. Furthermore, designers have to create simplest details that are compatible with the building’s overall requirements to maximise performance.

Question Three The deficiencies problem associated with design could be associated with less concern of buildability during the design stage. A number of building designs are essentially inefficient because of minimal consideration of buildability in the design process. The problems of buildability normally happen because of design deficiencies and can lead to high construction’s cost. Other buildability problems include unpractical design assembly, poor dimensional rationalisation as well as issue associated with getting the right skill labour, tool and equipment (Aina & Wahab, 2012).

Basically, failure to consider the design process has made the construction of buildings costlier. Effective design coordination play a crucial role in reducing disruption, delays and costs that are attributed to on site problems as well as the desire for redesign and abortive works or remedial. Some of the issues associated with coordination include clashes, such as hard clashes which happen in pipework route running through the steel beam. Soft clashes are attributed to construction tolerances, lack of space to maintain or install a building component, failure to consider health and safety requirements, and high number of personnel working simultaneously in the same space.

Question Four It is imperative to avoid these problems to prevent the recurrence of the problem and allow designers to carefully consider the root causes of the problems associated with buildability. Efficient construction can be obstructed by lack of coordinated, concise, and clear contract documents. Lack of qualified engineers in designing process can lead to challenges in creating a buildability design.

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