Construction Innovation partners: Australian Building Codes Board, Arup Australasia, Bovis Lend Lease, Brisbane City Council, Building Commission (Victoria), CSIRO, John Holland, Qld Dept Main Roads, Qld Dept Public Works, Qld Dept State Development, Qld University of Technology, Rider Hunt, RMIT, Brookwater JV, University of Newcastle, University of Sydney, University of Western Sydney, DEM, Woods Bagot
AUSTRALIAN INVENTION TO REVOLUTIONISE BUILDING DESIGN
An Australian "green calculator" is poised to transform the building and construction industry.
The world-first LCADesign, developed in the Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation, provides property professionals with an instant cost and environmental assessment of any commercial building - straight from its 3D computer graphics.
With future development, the calculator may do the same for the family home, for roads, sewage networks or any major construction project, says the leader of the development team, Dr Peter Newton of CSIRO.
"Working from the 3-dimensional CAD design for a building, the calculator will provide an instant display of the volume and cost of all the materials involved in its construction - at the push of a button," Dr Newton says.
"At the same time, it can calculate the environmental impact of all those materials - how many tonnes of clay were used to make them, how much water, how much energy, and how much greenhouse gas and other polluting emissions they made to air, land or water."
This will offer designers, for the first time, the opportunity to instantly redesign or respecify materials for a building based on both the economic and environmental cost of the materials involved in its construction.
It will also let them see how well the building complies with government, industry, company or project standards.
Dr Newton says that the calculator is linked in real-time to a constantly-updated index of the prices of more than 800 key building materials - concrete, brick, steel, aluminium, glass, timber, and tiles - to obtain an instant read-out of the cost of alternatives.
At the same time it helps the designer to select those materials which have the least environmental impact over their lifetime.
"You can see the "environmental footprint" for the whole building over the lifetime of the materials it embodies. With further development, it is envisaged this will allow the builder to choose materials which are most effective over their service life, both economically and environmentally.
"It's a genuine world-first - and we're seeing real interest in it from North American industry where there is currently nothing equivalent," Dr Newton says.
"It is also likely to revolutionise the profession of quantity surveying," he adds.
Behind the LCADesign tool is an extremely powerful Australian-designed software engine, which uses a constantly-updated register of materials prices and a database of their environmental impact.
The calculator will be trialled by leading construction industry and building design firms, including Bovis Lend Lease, engineers Arup PL and architects Woods Bagot. From the government side, Building Commission (Victoria), Australian Building Codes Board, and Queensland Department of Public Works are key partners in the project.
Dr Newton says the green calculator illustrates a growing competitive advantage in Australian R&D - the ability to combine the best research from diverse fields coupled with industry focussed partners to drive real outcomes.
"In this case we're seeing the convergence of the best of Australian expertise in IT and software, with our skills in environmental science and assessment as well as design science. The result is a tool that is likely to put us at world leading edge for sustainable construction."
Construction Innovation envisages commercially releasing the first version of LCADesign following completion of the prototype development.
Chief Executive Officer of Construction Innovation, Dr Keith Hampson, says the calculator will meet a strong need in the commercial building industry.
Our industry is likely to remain a major source of environmental degradation if major steps aren't taken now, Dr Hampson explains.
"Commercial buildings have a substantial and multi-level impact on the environment that is predicted to increase in the next few years. On a global scale, they employ ozone-depleting chemicals, contribute to global warming from fossil fuel combustion, and use massive amounts of non-renewable resources.
"At a local level,
new commercial buildings all too often create urban congestion and lead to the
degradation of air, water and soil. Even indoors, some of the materials used in
the construction of commercial buildings are hazardous.
"This research will provide a practical tool for designers, material producers,
government regulators, building owners and managers so they can see the
environmental impact of commercial buildings," Dr Hampson says.
MAKING A SUSTAINABLE IMPACT - A message from Dr Keith Hampson
Sustainability no dont turn the page. Yes, were hearing a lot about it and yes it appears to have become a catch-cry more than anything else. Were all motivated by it, and were willing to go along with it. But whats really guiding us in this debate? And what will be achieved?
As we know, the key decisions impacting a project's performance take place in the early design phase of a buildings life. After that, its touch and go with decisions being made on the run, and after the main event.
At the Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation, we are placing stress on the early design phase of a construction project, the first 20% where the initial ideas are inputted, to minimise down-streaming when all too often little can be done to incorporate more than just a facade of sustainability.
Within our Sustainable Built Assets Research Program, 11 research projects are examining how the lifecycle of a building, from inception through to deconstruction, can be incorporated into the early stages of design for cost-effective and sustainable whole-of-life.
For instance, within the research project Environmental Assessment Systems for Commercial Buildings, we are developing a green calculator', a tool called LCADesign, which will provide property professionals with an instant cost and environmental assessment of any commercial building - straight from its 3D computer graphics, offering building designers, for the first time, the opportunity to instantly redesign or respecify materials for a building based on both the economic and environmental cost of the materials involved in its construction. It will also let them see how well the building complies with government, industry, company or project standards.
Talking about compliance, one of our research projects which recently completed has produced a comprehensive report examining sustainability and codes world-wide, to assist the Australian Building Codes Board in their decision on whether Sustainability should be incorporated into the Building Code of Australia. This report is currently with their Board, and although they have in part agreed on the concept of inclusion, it will be discussed further in May 2004.
At a national level, sustainability has taken on new heights with the Construction Innovation-led formation of ASBEC (Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council) at the end of 2003. ASBEC brings together the major players from Australia's greenspace in the context of a high-level advisory body tasked with designing a national agenda on how to improve uniformity and increase sustainability in the built environment.
Sustainability has many angles, and our research and development and new initiatives are trying to capture the possibilities into one big bag that will genuinely assist the property and construction industry to achieve a sustainable future in Australias built environment.
I suspect sustainability will be on the agenda for some time to come, and we look forward to making a real impact in this area for the betterment of the Australian industry.
Dr Keith Hampson
CEO Construction Innovation
www.construction-innnovation.info
SCHOLAR EXTOLS VIRTUES OF GOING VIRTUAL
Construction Innovation Scholar Ji Soo Yoon is undertaking his PhD through the University of Sydney. He is talking about his research.
Creating and designing virtual environments is no longer science fiction. However, this design process is becoming ever more complex due to rapid technological developments.
The construction industry has been a forerunner in appropriating technology to enhance our designing, planning and simulating capabilities. However, in order to further harness innumerable design potential thus created, attention must be paid on the development of reliable navigational tools. Streamlining user navigation has the potential to correct various design errors in the early conceptual design phase.
My research focuses on what is often an over-looked area - the development of virtual guides to assist user navigation in virtual environments. My primary focus is on designing a virtual embodied agent capable of modelling a users navigational behaviour, by using their 'past experiences' as a guide. The virtual embodied agent will also infer from current user actions to derive possible destinations. It will then suggest the most appropriate route to the desired destinations given a users preferences.
The intelligent interface agent I hope to develop will be built using a 3D multi-user game engine - similar to the Valve engine which allows limited collaborative design tasks by users. This will demonstrate the use of such agents in a design environment.
Measuring the social responsibility of property funds
Evidence is emerging demonstrating that socially responsible properties can actually yield higher capital growth returns than their competition. This has broad implications for fund managers, who not only look to maximise returns, but are increasingly expected to provide ethical investment streams for investors. Very little research has been done in Australia on developing appropriate social responsibility indicators for property assessment. The Construction Innovation project Evaluation of Functional Performance in Commercial Buildings is addressing this shortfall. Researcher Philip Kimmet discusses.
The provision of ethical investment choices is currently confined to equities, where certain types of enterprise are screened out. Yet significant chunks of investment funds are allocated to property. In Australia, the only objective guide to the ethical nature of property are environmental rating schemes. While these environmental benchmarks help us gauge ecological sustainability, energy savings and the like, social factors such as stakeholder and community attitudes are equally important social responsibility criteria.
In the business world, social responsibility is increasingly measured by Triple Bottom Line reporting. This accounting approach is changing the way business is done by focusing corporate concerns on social and environmental dimensions as well as the traditional financial approach. Meanwhile, independent social responsibility assessment agencies such as Reputex are bringing objectivity to the reporting process, driving ethical competition and exposing irresponsible corporate citizens. However, the indicators used to benchmark corporate performance are not easily translated to the property context, underscoring the need to develop sets tailored specifically to property.
The major obstacle for property fund managers selecting for social responsibility is their explicit obligation to acquire properties with the highest capital growth and returns potential. The problem is the perception that social responsibility comes at a greater cost and a lesser return. In part this may have arisen from fund managers experience with ethical equity funds. However, our research suggests that socially responsible properties can yield higher capital growth returns than their competition, especially over the longer term.
There is no denying that social, and particularly environmental, measures often come at an added cost. Nevertheless, these can be recovered if rents are adjusted to account for savings on capital expenses, and increased productivity and improved employee recruitment and retention are accounted for. Furthermore, research undertaken at the Rocky Mountain Institute and the U.S. Department of Energy shows that green building designs can result in sustained increased returns of 3 to 15%.
Risk is particularly important in the property sector and the benefits of selecting and managing for social responsibility should not be understated. A reduction of risk in property investment is achieved by better management controls, and lower maintenance and management costs. Moreover, the better the reputation of a property, the more desirable it will be to prospective purchasers and tenants, and the higher the returns are likely to be. Enhanced social and environmental safeguards also minimises exposure to loss in adverse or unforseen circumstances. In sum, our research suggests the use of social responsibility indicators is an effective strategy for managing risk related to property funds.
Clearly, indicators provide a reasonably accurate picture of a buildings social and environmental performance. Surely it is only a matter of time before those buildings that perform exceptionally in this regard begin to attract the attention of fund managers keen to improve their service to customers by providing access to an ethical property fund. This could profoundly challenge the way commercial property in particular is built and managed.
Join Innovators from the Australian Building and Construction Industry and learn from their experience!
You are invited to the launch of six innovation case studies, conducted by the BRITE Project (Building Research Innovation Technology and Environment) of the CRC for Construction Innovation. The case studies are drawn from the Australian building and construction industry. They highlight effective ways to implement innovation and demonstrate the significant benefits that can be achieved. Participants from each of the six case studies will share the secrets of their success.
Date: Thursday 26th February 2004
Time: 5.00pm to 6.30pm
Venue: Conference Room, Level 3, 80 George Street, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Cost: Free
PROGRAM
5.00pm Welcome by CRC Construction Innovation CEO, Dr Keith Hampson
5.10pm Address by Australian Construction Industry Forum Deputy Chair, Neil Marshall
5.15pm Introduction by BRITE Project Leader, Dr Karen Manley
5.20pm Case Study Presentations:
Case Study 1:Graeme Standfield, Director, MGF Consultants, and Graham Messenger, Acting Manager, Portfolio Branch, Building Division, QldDept of Public Works: Outstanding Whole of Life Gains Without Higher Up-Front Costs
Case Study 3: Tom James, Qld Civil Manager, Leighton Contractors: Motorway Alliance Drives Performance Improvement
Case Study 4:David Barber, Associate, ArupFire Melbourne: Performance-Based Building Codes and Fire Engineering Yield Innovative DesignSolution
Case Study 5:Louise Chandler, Engineer, Bridge Design, Qld Dept of Main Roads, and Neill Wagner, Company Director, Wagners CompositeFibres Technology: Australia s First Fibre-Reinforced Polymer Bridge Deck on the Road Network
Case Study 6:Richard Yelf, Managing Director, Georadar Research: Ground Penetrating Radar Finds Defects in Bridge Beams
6.10pm Questions and Discussion
6.30pm Close: Drinks and Horsdoeuvres
RSVP by 20 February 2004 toAletha Blayse, BRITE Project Research Associate
Phone: 07 3423 8270 Mobile: 0422 929 320
Click here for more information on the BRITE project.
WORKSHOPPING CONSTRUCTION 2020
We would like to particularly acknowledge the support of the following organisations for their support of our recent workshop series:
Property Council of Australia
John Holland Group Pty Ltd
Master Builders Association of Tasmania
Master Builders Association of the ACT
Queensland University of Technology
Click here for more information on Construction 2020.
CLIENTS DRIVING INNOVATION - INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
The Australian Cooperative Research Centre for
Construction Innovation is delighted to announce its first International
Conference themed Clients Driving Innovation, scheduled for 25 to 27
October 2004 in Brisbane, Australia.
Drawing on the experiences of leading practitioners and researchers in the
international built environment, including property and construction
industry clients, facility designers and constructors, and facility managers,
Clients Driving Innovation will offer a meeting place where ideas can be
exchanged, collaborations established and knowledge gained.
Using leading research examples of industry practice, issues to be addressed include the ability of clients to drive innovation through their purchasing power, through documentation standards, and through developing regulations and codes.
Click here to find out more information on this conference.
Visit www.construction-innovation.info for news updates.
CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION PROJECT ATTRACTS UK RESEARCHER
Dr Guillermo Aranda-Mena>, a Research Fellow, has recently been appointed to the Construction Innovation Project Contract Planning Workbench. The University of Newcastle's School of Architecture and Built Environment is delighted to have been able to attract Dr Aranda-Mena to the University, and to the project, as he comes from one of the top UK "construction" Universities, having recently completed his PhD there.
Business strategy solutions for SME's - Presentation
Professor Carmine Bianchi from the Faculty of
Political Sciences, University of Palermo, Italy, is delivering presentations
in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane from 25-27 February on Business strategy
solutions for SMEs (small to medium sized enterprises). Intended for SMEs,
Construction Innovation industry partners, economic/financial/accounting
professors, and the general public, the hour-long presentations will provide a
brief overview of
System Dynamics concepts; demonstrate series of models and successful case
studies, and explore applications in the real estate arena.
For more details click here.
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