Jisong Zhang

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have proliferated and adapted to public development in recent decades; within it, the value for money (VfM) assessment defines the feasibility of the project procurement model as one of the essential components of PPP. However, evaluating the VfM in PPPs remains problematic. Given concerns about PPP profitability, a more integrated VfM evaluation is urgently needed to manage multiple indicators along the project lifecycle. Building information management (BIM), popular in architecture, engineering, and construction, provides resources that could support the VfM to a great extent. This paper uses a review approach to identify the current issues that are affecting VfM assessments and suggests that BIM, functioning throughout the PPP lifecycle, could support decision-making in VfM processes in order to satisfy service targets.

Sustainable building design has become a hot topic over the past decades. Many standards, databases, and tools have been developed for achieving a sustainable building. Not until recently have the importance of structural engineering and its contribution to sustainable building design been full recognised. However, due to the highly fragmented and diversity of knowledge across building and infrastructure domains, there is a lack of approach that can address all the sustainable issues within the structural design. This paper reviews the sustainable design from the perspective of structural engineering: (1) reviewing the current situation; (2) identifying the gaps and difficulties; and (3) making recommendations for future improvements. The strategies and indicators, as well as BIM‐enabled methodology, for sustainable structural design (SSD) are also discussed in a holistic way. The results of this investigation show that most of the methods are not doing well in terms of delivering a successful sustainable structural design. It is expected that the future BIM could probably provide such a platform to address these issues.

Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) has superior mechanical properties and durability to normal strength concrete. However, the high amount of cement, high environmental impact, and initial cost are regarded as disadvantages, restricting its wider application. Incorporation of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) in UHPC is an effective way to reduce the amount of cement needed while contributing to the sustainability and cost. This paper investigates the mechanical properties and microstructure of UHPC containing fly ash (FA) and silica fume (SF) with the aim of contributing to this issue. The results indicate that, on the basis of 30% FA replacement, the incorporation of 10% and 20% SF showed equivalent or higher mechanical properties compared to the reference samples. The microstructure and pore volume of the UHPCs were also examined. Furthermore, to minimise the experimental workload of future studies, a prediction model is developed to predict the compressive strength of the UHPC using artificial neural networks (ANNs). The results indicate that the developed ANN model has high accuracy and can be used for the prediction of the compressive strength of UHPC with these SCMs.