Watson, N (2016) Developing material selection strategies to improve the embodied impacts of buildings. EngD thesis, University of Bath, UK.
Abstract
The embodied environmental and socioeconomic impacts of building construction are rarely considered within industry. Renewable and certified resources will continue to provide a viable low impact supply chain for construction, yet the use of such low impact building materials (LIBM) remains a small proportion of the current market. Structural engineers should be encouraged to use LIBM and consider the impacts of building construction, and so the research aim was to create an informed and responsible approach for structural engineers to reduce the embodied impacts of their projects. The limited amount of academic literature on the consideration of embodied impacts within construction and the use of LIBM prompted a two-phase research methodology. The first Problem Exploration phase developed a rich understanding of the current context of embodied impacts within construction through an analysis of data gathered from an online questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The findings identified three key aspects to consider when developing an Embodied Impact Reduction Approach (EIRA); the alignment of the project-life cycle with influence, the limitation of time and costs, and the importance of support and education within the approach created. The second Action phase developed EIRA using the findings and supplementary data gathered from focus groups, which highlighted that EIRA should be flexible so as to be relevant to the breadth of projects that BuroHappold Engineering, who partially sponsored the research, work on. EIRA runs parallel to the RIBA Plan of Work, adapting to the different objectives, level of detail and information available at each project stage. Three components were developed; the Material Design Sheets, Carbon Calculator, and the Option Appraisal Support Technique (tOAST). tOAST was implemented on five projects to test its applicability, which identified that greater understanding of embodied impacts plus their relative importance to each other is required. Another key issue was the availability of appropriate embodied environmental data.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | education; market; material design; structural engineer; focus group; interview |
| Index terms: | building construction, strategy, level of detail, focus group, interview, relative importance, plan of work, appraisal, questionnaire, exploration, structural engineer, life cycle, option, material design, building material, research methodology |
| Subjects: | management, decision analysis, value management, research design and methodology, data collection methods, risk assessment, profession, building materials, technical documentation, factor and component analysis, building construction, innovation and technology management, environmental resource management, operations management |
| Topics: | Roles and Professions, Construction Technology, Business Strategy, Research Practice, Design Practice, Risk Management, Sustainability, Engineering Principles, Project Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here