Engineering Commons^™

Bs News November/December

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Development And Characterisation Of High Surface Energy Microstructured Sol-Gel Coatings For Sensing Applications, Emma Machugh

Doctoral

This study investigates the development of high surface energy photoreactive organic inorganic hybrid sol-gel coatings for the microstructuration of high-resolution microfluidic platforms and optofluidic biosensor platforms by standard photolithography processes. To achieve this, the first step of our work consisted of identifying the fundamental physico chemical processes governing the structuration and surface properties of hybrid organic inorganic sol-gel coatings. For this purpose, a reference material based on the combination of an organosilane (3-Methacryloxypropytrimethoxysilane, MAPTMS) and a transition metal (zirconium propoxide, ZPO), was firstly developed and characterised. It was highlighted that chemical, physical and combined physical and chemical processes can be …

Size Matters: The Impact Of Training Size In Taxonomically-Enriched Word Embeddings, Alfredo Maldonado, Filip Klubicka, John D. Kelleher

Articles

Word embeddings trained on natural corpora (e.g., newspaper collections, Wikipedia or the Web) excel in capturing thematic similarity (“topical relatedness”) on word pairs such as ‘coffee’ and ‘cup’ or ’bus’ and ‘road’. However, they are less successful on pairs showing taxonomic similarity, like ‘cup’ and ‘mug’ (near synonyms) or ‘bus’ and ‘train’ (types of public transport). Moreover, purely taxonomy-based embeddings (e.g. those trained on a random-walk of WordNet’s structure) outperform natural-corpus embeddings in taxonomic similarity but underperform them in thematic similarity. Previous work suggests that performance gains in both types of similarity can be achieved by enriching natural-corpus embeddings with …

Thermal Refurbishment Status Of The Irish Housing Stock, Ciara Ahern, Brian Norton

Articles

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are issued for buildings constructed, sold or leased across the EU. Using a generalizable methodology this work exploits Ireland’s EPC national dwelling stock database to determine the thermal refurbishment status of Ireland’s housing stock. It is estimated in 2014 that; i) 58% of walls were insulated at a mean overall heat loss coefficient or U-value of 0.66 W/m 2 K, ii) 67% of roofs were insulated at a mean U-value 0.37 W/m 2 K, iii) 97% of windows were double-glazed, and iv) 53% of floors were insulated to a mean U-value of 0.59 W/m 2 K. …

Attracting Diverse Talent To The Engineering Professions Of 2030 : Eu Research Project, Una Beagon

Other resources

This conference examines education in Irish engineering in an international context, including skills to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals and to succeed in a digital world. International and national speakers will address global challenges, future engineering skills, academic standards, and graduate mobility. Attendees will also have the opportunity to share ideas on educating students in this field and to shape Engineers Ireland’s accreditation process.

Part of an EU Research project.

An Investigation Into Current Procurement Strategies That Promote Collaboration Through Early Contractor Involvement With Regards To Their Suitability For Irish Public Work Projects, Barry Mcauley, Frederic Lefebvre

Conference papers

Previous research has established that multi-disciplinary collaboration will benefit a construction project throughout its lifecycle. While Lean Construction, Building Information Modelling (BIM), and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) can all be viewed as separate processes which add independent value to a project, they are more effective when used in partnership with each other. In order to ensure the high levels of collaboration expected for these processes to work in unison, the early involvement of the Contractor is paramount. Early contractor involvement within the design process can ensure a more focused integrated project team, improvement of both constructability and cost certainty, as …

Centres Of Excellence And Roadmaps For Digital Transition: Lessons For Ireland’S Construction Industry, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

Like most sectors in today’s working world, construction businesses are challenged to work in an increasingly digitised world with sophisticated demands from intelligent clients. So much has been written about the inefficiencies of the construction industry, its fragmentation, lack of collaboration, low margins, adversarial pricing, poor productivity, financial fragility, lack of research and development, poor industry image and relatively weak use of digital solutions. The Irish government recognises the importance of digital innovation to address many of the challenges the construction industry faces. With recent high profile reports of escalating spend on signature public sector projects and weak productivity performance …

Improving The Sustainability Of The Built Environment By Training Its Workforce In More Efficient And Greener Ways Of Designing And Constructing Through The Horizon2020 Bimcert Project, Barry Mcauley, Avril Behan

Conference papers

The construction industry consumes up to 50% of mineral resources excavated from nature, generates about 33% of CO2 present in the atmosphere and is responsible for 40% of total global energy through both construction and operation of buildings. The realisation that current pervasive construction practices now face globalization, sustainability, and environmental concerns, as well as ever-changing legislation requirements and new skills needed for the information age has resulted in technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) becoming a key enabler in navigating these barriers. To assist in overcoming these barriers, a number of funding initiatives have been put in place …

From Roadmap To Implementation: Lessons For Ireland’S Digital Construction Programme, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

As part of their Future of Construction initiative in 2018 the World Economic Forum published an action plan to accelerate Building Information Modelling adoption. The WEF report highlighted actions that companies, industry organisations and governments are advised to implement to accelerate BIM adoption and better capitalise on delivering better project outcomes. According the authors of the report BIM is seen as the centrepiece of the construction industry’s digital transformation, however they acknowledged that BIM adoption globally remain slow. Anecdotal experience would suggest that BIM usage in Ireland is also very low and that a similar initiative or an adaptation of …

Bim In Ireland 2019: A Study Of Bim Maturity And Diffusion In Ireland, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

In 2017, the BIM Innovation Capability Programme team applied five macro BIM maturity conceptual models to capture the capability of the Irish construction industry and assess its BIM maturity. The results found that while Ireland is mature for modelling processes, it is less developed with regards to collaboration processes and policies. Ireland also ranked poorly when it came to regulatory frameworks, measurements and benchmarks compared to a number of countries which also applied the same conceptual models. At the time, the findings highlighted that Ireland’s diffusion dynamic was middle out, meaning that larger organisations or industry associations were pushing the …

Accelerated Capital Allowances: An Overview, Bernard Doherty, James Mc Mahon, William Coffey, Ger Nagle, Kevin Delaney

Articles

ACA is based on the existing capital allowances tax structure or wear and tear allowance, for plants and machinery. Claiming the ACA is carried out the same way as for the standard capital allowances.

Organisations who invest in eligible energy-efficient capital equipment can deduct the full cost of the equipment from their profits in the year of purchase. This reduces the taxable profit in year one by the full cost of the equipment.

Delivering Energy Savings For The Supply Chain Through Building Information Modelling As A Result Of The Horizon 2020 Energy Bimcert Project, Barry Mcauley, Avril Behan

Conference papers

The global buildings sector is now responsible for 40% of final energy consumption as well as accounting for 33% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. This has resulted in a growing urgency to address energy and emissions from buildings and construction, to meet restrictive 2020 targets as specified by the European Union (EU). To achieve these targets a number of funding initiatives have been put in place through Horizon 2020 with a focus on BIM, due to it having the potential to rapidly produce energy outputs that enable design teams to analyse and compare the most cost-effective, energy-efficient options. However, despite …

Modelling The Addition Of Limestone In Cement Using Hydcem, Niall Holmes, Denis Kelliher, Mark Tyrer

Conference papers

Hydration models can aid in the prediction, understanding and description of hydration behaviour over time as the move towards more sustainable cements continues.

HYDCEM is a new model to predict the phase assemblage, degree of hydration and heat release over time for cements undergoing hydration for any w/c ratio and curing temperatures up to 450C. HYDCEM, written in MATLAB, complements more sophisticated thermodynamic models by predicting these properties over time using user-friendly inputs within one code. A number of functions and methods based on up to date cement hydration behaviour from the literature are hard-wired into the code along with …

Using Bluetooth Low Energy Devices To Monitor Visitor Activity In Remote Amenity Spaces, Ahlam Al Anbouri, David Powell, Damon Berry, John Mcgrory, Niall Holmes, Lorraine D'Arcy

Conference Papers

Tracking of pedestrian behaviour, particularly route selection and temporal behaviours, can be difficult to undertake. This is especially true of studies at a community or campus level where the anonymity of pedestrians can be difficult to protect. The introduction of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations 2016 (GDPR) has increased the complexity of this challenge. Advances in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology in recent years have increased the potential to monitor human behaviour by tracking and triangulating pedestrians. This paper describes an experiment undertaken along The Great South Wall at the Port of Dublin, which is considered a leading amenity …

Competitive Strategies In Small And Medium Sized Enterprises (Sme's): A Cross- Case Analysis Of Irish Construction Professional Service Firms, Oluwasegun O. Seriki, Roisin Murphy

Conference papers

Strategy formulation aims to attain strategic fit between an organisation and its business environment in pursuit of competitive advantage. Although competitive strategy research is long established within industries such as manufacturing, financial services and IT, strategy within construction is still under-investigated by comparison. For construction professional service firms (CPSFs), the dearth of academic inquiry is even more apparent, partly due to the intangible nature of their service offerings, highly customised nature of their services and reliance on intellectual capital. The Irish construction sector is experiencing stable growth since following a prolonged recession, thus understanding the strategy process within professional service …

A Techno-Economic Analysis Of Current Cooling Techniques In Irish Data Centres, Lee Gibbons, Bryan Coyne, David Kennedy, Sajad Alimohammadi

Articles

This research is part of a comprehensive study to determine reformative actions for cooling regimes within the Irish data centre market. To achieve this goal, preliminary Exergy, Entropy change and operational cost analyses are used. It is determined that there is no clear advantage for using one cooling method over another without knowing the data centres secondary function (e.g. district heating, energy generation). Air cooling technology is a good candidate for a highly reliable system due to the low exhaust temperatures of 30°C. Two-phase immersion is a possibility for economically viable data centres where operational costs are to be minimised, …

Predicting The Hardness Of Turf Surfaces From A Soil Moisture Sensor Using Iot Technologies, Ann Marie Mckeon

Other

In horseracing, “the going” is a term to describe the racetrack ground conditions. In Ireland presently, a groundskeeper or course clerk walks the racecourse poking it with a blackthorn stick, assesses conditions, and declares the going – it is a subjective measurement.

This thesis will propose using remote low-cost soil moisture sensors to gather high frequency data about the soil water content in the ground and to enable informed decisions to be made. This will remove the subjective element from the ground hardness, and look at the data in an objective way.

The soil moisture sensor will systematically collect high …

Bs News September/October

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Optimizing The Valorization Of Industrial By-Products For The Induction Healing Of Asphalt Mixtures, Amir Tabakovic, Marta Vila-Cortavitarte, Daniel Jato-Espino, Daniel Castro-Fresno

Articles

Self-healing within asphalt pavements is the process whereby road cracks can be repaired automatically when thermal and mechanical conditions are met. To accelerate and improve this healing process, metal particles are added to asphalt mixtures. However, thisapproach is costly both in economic and environmental terms due to the use of virgin metallic particles. So, even though the self-healing of asphalt mixtures has been widely addressed in experimental terms over the years, there is a lack of research aimed at modelling this phenomenon, especially with the purpose of optimizing the use of metal particles through the valorization of industrial by-products. As …

Hydcem: A New Cement Hydration Model, Niall Holmes, Denis Kelliher, Mark Tyrer

Conference papers

Hydration models are useful to predict, understand and describe the behaviour of different cementitious-based systems. They are indispensable for undertaking long-term performance and service life predictions for existing and new products for generating quantitative data in the move towards more sustainable cements while optimising natural resources. One such application is the development of cement-based thermoelectric applications.

HYDCEM is a new model to predict the phase assemblage, degree of hydration, heat release and changes in pore solution chemistry over time for cements undergoing hydration for any w/c ratio and curing temperatures up to 450C. HYDCEM, written in MATLAB, is aimed at …

Teaching Approximations Of Mechanical Engineering Practice Through Designing And Building Robots: An Approach Inspired By Monozukuri, Kevin Delaney, Ger Nagle

Conference Papers

Engineering design is a complex subject and undergraduate students, having learnt to quantify the performance of specific elements of engineering objects, often find it difficult to integrate these elements into quite basic design concepts. Upon entering the workforce engineering graduates must be able to do a great deal more than solve the technical problems taught in engineering school. To help students develop real-world engineering skills as part of their engineering education, the Mechanical Engineering Discipline in Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) introduced Problem Based Learning (PBL) for Third Year Mechanical Engineering students in 2005.

A recent review of this teaching …

The Knowledge Development Box: An Overview, Kevin Delaney, Bernard Doherty, James Mc Mahon, William Coffey, Ger Nangle

Other resources

Finance Act 2015 introduced the Knowledge Development Box (KDB). The broad objective of the KDB is to promote innovation and provide an incentive whereby profits arising from patented inventions, copyrighted software and certain other specific asset classes can effectively be taxed at a reduced rate of 6.25%.

Bs News July/August

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Development Of A Framework To Support The Effective Adoption Of Bim In The Public Sector: Lessons For Ireland, Shiyao Kuang, Alan Hore, Barry Mcauley, Roger West

Conference papers

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been formally adopted by many countries with the promise of creating greater economic, social and sustainability benefits. Several authors and institutions have presented alternative BIM policies and tactics which have been adopted by developed countries. However, there is evidence to indicate that BIM adoption theories are not well established and, in particular, the linkage between BIM public sector adoption strategy outcomes and their contribution to achieving Government policy objectives are underdeveloped. This paper will present the outcome of the first phase of a systematic literature review of published studies (including journal papers and noteworthy international …

Re-Annotation Of Cough Events In The Ami Corpus, Paul Leamy, Damon Berry, David Dorran, Ted Burke

Conference papers

Cough sounds act as an important indicator of an individual's physical health, often used by medical professionals in diagnosing a patient's ailments. In recent years progress has been made in the area of automatically detecting cough events and, in certain cases, automatically identifying the ailment associated with a particular cough sound. Ethical and sensitivity issues associated with audio recordings of coughs makes it more difficult for this data to be made publicly available. However, without the public availability of a reliable database of cough sounds, developments in the area of audio event detection are likely to be hampered. The purpose …

The Post-Occupancy Digital Twin: A Quantitative Report On Data Standardisation And Dynamic Building Performance Evaluation, Bim Tudublin, Jonathan Rogers

Capstone Reports

As a process, originally defined by the UK Government, Level 2 Building Information Modelling (BIM) involves the creation of digital project information, following industry standard guidelines. Through the application of Level 2 BIM, the construction industry can now develop digital representations of physical assets. By combining BIM with digital technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), an opportunity is created to link integrated building sensors to these digital representations via advanced Computer Aided Facility Management (CAFM) systems. Successfully combining physical elements to digital elements through a CAFM system results in the creation of Digital Twins (DT), providing an opportunity …

A Critical Appraisal Of The Potential For Public Works Contracts’ And Design-Build Clients In Ireland To Leverage Benefits From Bim Processes, Bim Tudublin, Trina Turner

Capstone Reports

The zeitgeist of the Irish Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operations (AECO) Industry is digital construction and collaborative processes. However, Clients don’t know what they want from BIM, and are confused about how to get what they need. This paper critically appraised the potential for public works contracts’ Clients to leverage the benefits from BIM processes. Key stakeholders were interviewed to establish where possible barriers and issues arise in order to enhance Client engagement throughout the capital/ delivery and operations phase of the built asset. A Toolkit, derived from the Literature Review, was investigated by the interviewees. This detailed research resulted …

Incentivising Multidisciplinary Teams With New Methods Of Procurement Using Bim + Blockchain, Bim Tudublin, Alan O'Reilly

Capstone Reports

This paper researches a potential method of incentivising AEC industry professionals to design to better than NZEB standards. Analysing the potential of a purposefully designed local microgrid storing excess energy generated by solar technologies embedded within the building envelope; the microgrid excess output is measured and recorded using a (Post Occupancy) “Blockchain” application and measured against the data provided at design stage on a (Predictive) “Blockchain” database. This paper researches how energy output predications at design stage, by multidisciplinary teams, may be enhanced by BIM + Blockchain Technology. The paper researches the potential of a digital twin (predictive versus post …

Problem Based Learning: A Case Study From Mechanical Engineering, Kevin Delaney, Ger Nagle

Conference papers

Engineering graduates today must be capable of much more than solving technical problems taught in engineering school. Despite learning to quantify the performance of certain engineering objects, undergraduate students find it challenging to integrate these elements into basic design concepts through a coherent and systematic design process. To help students develop real-world engineering skills as part of their engineering education, the Mechanical Engineering Discipline in Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) introduced Problem Based Learning (PBL) for Third Year Mechanical Engineering students in 2005.

A recent review of this teaching approach highlighted deficiencies not envisaged when the initial PBL module was …

Bs News May/June

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.