Construction Engineering Commons^™

Hvac System Remote Monitoring And Diagnosis, Jeffrey N. Arensmeier, Gregg M. Hemmelgarn, Fadi M. Alsaleem, Priotomo Abiprojo

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

A monitoring system for a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system of a building includes a monitoring device installed at the building, a monitoring server located remotely from the building, and a review server. The monitoring device measures an aggregate current Supplied to components of the HVAC system and transmits current data based on the measured aggregate current. The monitoring server receives the transmitted current data and, based on the received current data, assesses whether failures have occurred in first and second components of the HVAC components. The monitoring server generates a first advisory in response to determining that …

Project Impact: A Case Study Of Developing A Manufactured Construction Workforce Through Contextualized Training, Arefeh Mohammadi, Kevin R. Grosskopf

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

With a looming shortage of skilled craft workers forecast to exceed 2 million by 2017, prefabrication may become a necessity for many U.S. contractors attempting to remain competitive with a smaller, lower-skilled workforce. Building components manufactured in a controlled, offsite environment have proven to reduce time, cost and site logistics while improving productivity, quality, safety and sustainability. However, entry-level workers, including more than 765,000 recession displaced manufacturing workers, often lack the basic skills necessary to retrain for jobs in manufactured construction. As a result, a $ 6.3M U.S. Department of Labor grant was awarded to an institutional consortium to develop …

Prestressed Concrete Inverted Tee Beams With Cfrp For Building Structures, Herish A. Hussein, Zia Razzaq

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Presented herein is the outcome of a study of prestressed concrete inverted tee beams with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) sheets for possible use in building structures. To determine an effective approach for the use of CFRP, nine different retrofitting schemes are investigated for a prestressed beam under quasi-static distributed load to increase flexural strength. The theoretical analysis is based on coupling moment-curvature relations with a central finitedifference formulation. Three different thicknesses of CFRP sheets are studied in both tension and compression and effective retrofitting schemes are identified.

Cfrp Retrofitting Schemes For Prestressed Concrete Box Beams For Highway Bridges, Hussein A. Herish, Zia Razzaq

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper investigates various retrofitting schemes for a prestressed concrete box beam using carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) sheets with the goal of increasing flexural strength. A simply-supported box beam is studied with a constant uniformly distributed load and three gradually increasing concentrated loads proportional to HS20 truck loading of the Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). Various retrofitting schemes are considered each with single, double, and triple CFRP sheets, respectively, installed in high compression and tension regions. Cross-sectional nonlinear moment-curvature relations are developed and coupled with a finite-difference solution algorithm to predict load-deflection relations for both retrofitted …

Urban Waterways And Waterfront Spaces: Social Construction Ofa Common Good, Anne Taufen Wessells, Raul P. Lejano

Anne Taufen

No abstract provided.

Tender Procedure For Traditionally Procured Building Contracts In Ireland, Tony Cunningham

Other Resources

The process of tendering for construction contracts is an expensive process, particularly where contracts are large and/or complex or involve partial, or total, contractor design. The underlying philosophy guiding best practice in tendering procedure is that of ensuring fair play among the tendering contractors. Tenders for building contracts may be obtained using a range of approaches. This study examines best practice in tendering procedure for building contracts in the private and public sectors in Ireland and focuses in particular on the procedures to be carried out under open and selective/restricted tendering approaches.

The study identifies where open tendering and selective …

The Lived Experience Of Online Educators: Insights From Construction Management, William Sher, Anthony Williams, Maria T. Northcote

Maria Northcote

Academics in higher education institutions often experience the conflicting demands of teaching, research and administration. With the growth of online education these staff are frequently required to design, develop, teach, facilitate and, in some cases, administer online courses. Cumulatively these additional tasks challenge academics, not only in terms of the personal professional development but also in accommodating the range of tasks expected of them. This paper reports the findings of a study which investigated the lived experience of construction management academics teaching at universities in Australia. The study adopted a lived experience research approach that enabled the lives of construction …

The Impact Of Project Delivery Methods On Dispute Occurrence In Public Highway Projects, Samaneh Nasrollahi, Ghada M. Gad, Alan Atalah

Master of Technology Management Plan II Graduate Projects

The construction industry is a complex and competitive industry in which different participants with different expertise, talents, and levels of knowledge work together to achieve their objectives and complete a project. Sine different participants with different interest involve in a construction project, therefore, conflicts arise and become inevitable. Conflicts in projects will cause an adversarial environment which result to disputes. Hence, if conflicts are not well managed and resolved in a timely manner, they quickly turn into disputes, which prevent the successful completion of the construction project, in terms of cost and time, and increasing the potential for poor project …

An Introduction To Building Contracts: An Irish Context, Tony Cunningham

Other Resources

A contract is an agreement which is capable of being enforced at law and whose essential characteristic is that of a bargain. Contract law focuses predominantly on commercial transactions and in the construction context these range from simple every-day transactions such as purchasing a box of nails to procuring multi-million euro building facilities. In Ireland construction clients typically engage designers and quantity surveyors to formulate designs and they subsequently contract with building contractors to construct the designs. The contractors, in turn, typically outsource much of the work to subcontractors and order materials from numerous suppliers. All of these activities involve …

Bs News November/December

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Kihefo Vocational Center: Kabale, Uganda, Jason Matthew Angerer

Construction Management

Journeyman International (JI) is a non-profit organization which acts as a platform for bringing together volunteer Architects, Designers, Engineers, and Construction Managers with humanitarian projects around the world. Kigezi Healthcare Foundation (KIHEFO) a non-profit NGO located in Kabale, Uganda is a client seeking to build a vocational center to educate the workforce of Uganda. The center will include multi-purpose class rooms, a dining hall, rabbit farm, carpentry shop, and living complex. The Architect on the project was Courtney Wedel from Cal Poly. As the Construction Manager on the project my responsibilities include; Design Assist, Feasibility Analysis, Scheduling, Estimating, and Managing …

Lightweight Material Prototypes Using Dense Bundled Systems To Emulate An Ambient Environment, Chris Knapp, Jonathan Nelson, Andrew Kudless, Sascha Bohnenberger

Jonathan J Nelson

This paper describes and reflects upon a computational design and digital fabrication research project that was developed and implemented over 2014-2015, with subsequent development continuing for applications at present. The aim of the research was to develop methods of modelling, analysis, and fabrication that facilitate integrative approaches to architectural design and construction. In this context, the development of material prototypes, digital simulations, and parametric frameworks were pursued in parallel in order to inform and reform successive iterations throughout the process, leading to a refined workflow for engineering, production, and speculation upon future directions of the work.

Lightweight Material Prototypes Using Dense Bundled Systems To Emulate An Ambient Environment, Chris Knapp, Jonathan Nelson, Andrew Kudless, Sascha Bohnenberger

Chris Knapp

This paper describes and reflects upon a computational design and digital fabrication research project that was developed and implemented over 2014-2015, with subsequent development continuing for applications at present. The aim of the research was to develop methods of modelling, analysis, and fabrication that facilitate integrative approaches to architectural design and construction. In this context, the development of material prototypes, digital simulations, and parametric frameworks were pursued in parallel in order to inform and reform successive iterations throughout the process, leading to a refined workflow for engineering, production, and speculation upon future directions of the work.

International Construction Measurement Standard, Charles Mitchell

Other Resources

The International Construction Measurement Standard Coalition (the Coalition) was formed on 17 June 2015 after meeting at the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, USA. The Coalition, comprising the organisations listed below at the date of publication, aims to bring about consistency in construction cost reporting standards internationally. This is achieved by the creation and adoption of this ICMS, an agreed international standard for the structuring and presentation of cost reports. ICMS sets out a structure for describing construction costs in terms of project scope, attributes and values descriptors. This document setting out the provisions of ICMS is the first …

How Acoustics In California High Performance Schools Relate To Student Achievement, Devin K. Wong

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Dissertations, Thesis, and Student Research

This research project seeks to determine if students attending K-12 schools meeting a minimum standard of high performance classroom conditions in the state of California do evidence higher scholastic achievement, based on publically available results on state-wide standardized tests. In three phases, a subset of 200+ schools applying for grants dedicated to building high performance schools over the past decade was correlated with an existing database of achievement scores for all public schools in California. The criteria utilized to specify high performance classrooms was provided by the California High Performance Initiative (HPI) Grant program. Academic achievement was evaluated on a …

Mother's Room - Design | Build, Zoey Koester, Shelby Orr, Damian Smith, Andrew Estabrook, Sarah Barth, Caroline Simmons

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

The lack of a comfortable environment for mothers on campus was challenged by the Non-Traditional Student Services department of a public university this past year. The department recruited a team of architecture, interior-design, and construction management faculty and students to design and build a mother’s room for the campus library.

The Lived Experience Of Online Educators: Insights From Construction Management, William Sher, Anthony Williams, Maria T. Northcote

Anthony Williams

Academics in higher education institutions often experience the conflicting demands of teaching, research and administration. With the growth of online education these staff are frequently required to design, develop, teach, facilitate and, in some cases, administer online courses. Cumulatively these additional tasks challenge academics, not only in terms of the personal professional development but also in accommodating the range of tasks expected of them. This paper reports the findings of a study which investigated the lived experience of construction management academics teaching at universities in Australia. The study adopted a lived experience research approach that enabled the lives of construction …

Group-Work: Does It Have To Be That Bad?, Anthony Williams, L Henry, R Tucker, N Abassi

Anthony Williams

Many accreditation bodies and universities require the graduate attribute of “an ability to work in teams” or to “effectively collaborate”. Students invariably dislike working in groups maintaining that “malingerers ride on the back” of those students who work hard and contribute effectively to the outcomes of the group or team. This is the context in which an ALTC/OLT project was established, the project is to consider ways of enhancing group-work in Architecture and design related disciplines. The project has identified the issues associated with group-work, from the perspective of student and lecturer, and has begun to develop strategies to overcome …

Buildings As An Assembly Of 3d Printed Components, Stephen S. Lauer

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

This project aimed to design a series of components that would be assembled to become a house. The design is a house that is printed in a series of modules and assembled using a series of printed connectors for not only attaching the modules but also used in other various details.

Influence Of Ground Granulated Blastfurnace Slag On The Thermal Properties Of Pcm-Concrete Composite Panels, Dervilla Niall, Oliver Kinnane, Roger P. West, Sarah Mccormack

Conference papers

The thermal mass of concrete within a building can be used as an energy storage system and hence reduce the demand on the auxiliary heating and cooling systems in the building. The heat storage capacity of concrete can be enhanced by adding phase change materials (PCMs) which provide a high latent heat storage capacity. However the addition of PCM to concrete reduces the conductivity of the concrete due to the low conductivity of the PCMs. This hinders the efficient utilisation of the additional heat storage capacity provided by the PCM.

It is generally understood that the use of ground granulated …