Bahriye Ilhan

As one of the largest resource consumption and waste production sectors, the construction industry recognises the need to improve the materials, processes and systems used for a more sustainable built environment. Even though the nature of the industry creates obstacles to transformation, new approaches and technologies developed both inside and outside of the industry can help this change. The adoption of the circular economy concept, which aims to reuse and recycle as many resources as possible, can enable the construction industry to design and construct components to be repairable, renewable, reusable and detachable to keep the maximum value and minimum waste through a closed loop principle. Building information modelling (BIM) can aid the application of the circular economy to the construction industry by not only simplifying the design and construction processes but also enabling long-term asset management. This chapter focuses on the role of BIM at each phase of the building life cycle in the context of the circular economy, aiming for environmental, economic and social sustainability benefits. This is expected to increase awareness and prove the feasibility of adopting circular economy principles within the industry.

Although BIM provides various benefits to the architecture, engineering, construction and facilities management (AEC/FM) industries, it lacks wider and comprehensive utilisation. This study assesses the understanding and perception of BIM uptake in UK architectural offices. The aim is to analyse and compare BIM adoption at the organisational level for the years 2011, 2014 and 2018 as well as to form the basis for an evaluation structure of its utilisation. The objectives of the study are to examine the level of BIM adoption and capability of UK architectural offices and to investigate the drivers and barriers to BIM usage. The research is based on online questionnaires made available to all Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) chartered members. The data are analysed through descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA), regression and cross-tabulation. The results are discussed in terms of BIM usage and BIM readiness with regard to the company profiles. Companies are motivated to utilise BIM technology due to its facilitation of effective teamwork and project efficiency. However, the need for extensive training, a general lack of demand and its perceived sophistication in relation to day-to-day tasks are reasons why the use of BIM is avoided. The study concludes with key learning points from the questionnaire depending on three different years and the proposed evaluation framework to achieve improved utilisation of BIM.

Autonomous navigation is of great importance for service robots. Such robots need various technologies, especially localization, and mapping. In this paper, we focus on the localization problem. Commonly, to solve the localization problem, the creation of a map is needed. However, creating the map takes considerable time and costs. Therefore, one solution for indoor environment is to use architectural floor plans since buildings have own floor plans. If a robot can use them for localization, it enables users to cut the time and costs for creating the map from scratch. However, the floor plans sometimes do not match with a real building. Besides, sensor measurement sometimes contains objects such as a pedestrian, which are not contained in the floor plans. In this paper, we propose a localization algorithm with architectural floor plans that is robust to such inconsistencies. The algorithm estimates a robot coordinate by matching the floor plan with the point clouds obtained from depth images. Outliers derived from the inconsistencies in the point clouds are filtered with plane information from the depth images with the Generalized ICP framework. We tested our algorithm with floor plans in a real building and in a simulator as a case study. The results show that our algorithm can localize a robot with average more than twice accuracy compared to AMCL and be used for real-time applications.

Construction projects in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Facility Management (AEC/FM) domains can significantly impact on the economic and social environment. However, the labour-intensive and largely heterogeneous construction industry has been acknowledged as one of the slowest adopters of new technologies. The problems faced by the industry such as a lack of qualified labour, unexpected site conditions, design changes, communication problems, feasibility issues, and the impracticality of the tools and techniques therefore make it prone to low productivity and high costs. A competitive, market-oriented, and rationalised construction sector for tomorrow therefore requires the development of automated and robotised construction systems today (Bock, 2008). This would provide an opportunity for improving the efficiency of the whole building lifecycle in terms of: time, cost, and quality, through rationalisation, as evidenced by use in many other industries. As a result, it could be possible to meet the growing quality demand with safer, healthier, and better working conditions, and advanced mechatronics know how and skills. It is advocated that less time spent on construction would improve the cost benefit analysis. For instance, replacing in-situ concrete casting panels with prefabricated elements resulted in a 70 per cent reduction in construction time and a 43 per cent reduction in labour costs (Jaillon et al., 2009). Similarly, Shahzad et al. (2015) stated that the use of prefabrication in place of traditional building system resulted in 34 per cent and 19 per cent average reductions in the completion times and costs, respectively. Tam et al. (2015) also indicated that on average, more than half of material usage costs could be saved, 30 per cent reduction for site manpower, an additional 4–6 per cent saving from gross floor area exemption and up to 100 per cent saving on additional works for precast construction (compared to traditional construction).

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the issues that should be considered for a better gauge of the construction industry and built environment and to propose a set of indicators for measuring the social, economic and environmental value of construction. Design/methodology/approach: The indicators proposed in this study use Pearce’s schema, which presents a framework to evaluate the socio-economic value of construction and its contribution to sustainable development. After analysing the problems faced by the industry, solutions are raised and finally indicators for each pillar of Pearce’s schema are established through a literature review. Since the proposed indicators can be used for cross-country analysis, these comparisons are also presented as graphs including only those countries for which valid national data could be sourced from OECD databases. Findings: The issues, suggestions and indicators related to each concern about the main domains of the schema are addressed through the related literature and supported by available statistical data. Originality/value: Although previous studies have drawn attention to measures for better evaluation of the construction industry and the built environment, this study, distinctively, presents an integrated approach in order to gauge the true value and impacts of construction in a more comprehensive way. The work’s contribution to the body of knowledge is in revealing the hidden input and impact of construction on sustainable development by determining the barriers to this and their solutions, in addition to the proposal of relevant indicators.

When compared to the manufacturing industry, the advances of intelligent and seamless project management approaches lag behind in the construction industry. This is due to the complexity of the construction projects as well as various stakeholders who acquire specific interest of the project. For instance, public building construction has many sub-tasks and numerous systematised working processes such as planning, mobilisation, scheduling, procurement and controlling. The management of the processes of each phase of the project life cycle is of great importance in order to prevent project delay and cost overrun. A particular importance is required if construction robotics is involved since precise process and scheduling information as well as feedback are critical to ensure each task is completed accordingly. This paper proposes a holistic system approach, which focuses on the process-oriented management for on-site construction. To succeed, the Process Information Modelling (PIM) concept is introduced. The main goal of PIM is to integrate Building Information Modelling (BIM) for extensible solutions with a process-based database platform, which allows for smooth data transfer and supports continuous data sharing among all stakeholders. The overall aim is to develop a collaborative way of planning, designing, producing, assembling and managing the entire project life cycle strategy. Digital documentation, simulation and real-time data are produced progressively to facilitate decision-making. A case study applying the PIM concept for the façade painting task by a painting robot for an on-going consultancy project commissioned by the construction industry council (CIC) in Hong Kong is presented. This paper is the revised version of the paper that has been published in the proceedings of the Creative Construction Conference 2018 (Pan et al., 2018).