Building Industry

In markets with high levels of financial exclusion, actors in the financial system, financial service providers (FSPs), consumers, providers of financial system infrastructure and other market supporting functions, regulators and other policy makers, often face capacity limitations. These include insufficient or inexperienced staff, lack of knowledge or understanding of the market, and limited financial literacy. Building sustainable and inclusive financial markets will require building the capacity of these actors. Funders that work to promote financial inclusion can play a very useful role in tackling capacity challenges, particularly if they provide support in a way that facilitates the development of a capacity building services market. This approach can benefit the whole financial market as opposed to the more common approach of providing direct support to one or a few actors in the market. This focus note builds on the ideas discussed in ‘facilitating market development to adv...

Abstract: Material waste has been recognized as a major problem in the construction industry that has important implications both for the efficiency industry and for the environmental impact of construction projects. Moreover, waste measurement plays an important role in the management of production systems since it is an effective way to assess their performance, allowing areas of potential improvement to be pointed out. This paper describes the main results of two research studies carried out in Brazil that investigated the occurrence of material waste at 74 building sites located in different regions of that country. Some typical figures for the waste of some key construction materials are provided, and the main causes of waste in the sector are discussed. The results indicate that the waste of materials in the Brazilian building industry is fairly high and that a large variability in waste incidence is found across different projects. Most of this waste can be avoided by impleme...

Job satisfaction has received immense attention in organizational research. It is proven as one of the key factors that contribute to productivity. The focus of this study was to examine factors affecting job satisfaction of employees in the local building construction industry in Ghana. Quantitative survey based research approach was used in the study. One hundred and fifty eight (158) employees working in selected construction organisations in the Ashanti Region of Ghana were involved in the study. Primary data was collected through questionnaire instrument and analysed using descriptive statistical tool with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16.0. The findings indicated that non-wage based factors such as recognition, task itself, work environment, supervision and job security appeared to influence job satisfaction than wage paid to the employees in the construction sector. Managers in construction supply chain should make policies and incorporate ...

To deliver quality architecture to the vast majority of people, the building industry should move to full industrialization. Industrialization is basically the aggregation of a large market to divide into fractions the investment in strategies and technologies capable, in return, of simplifying the production and therefore reducing the costs. Simplification is the goal. Whereas the first four degrees of industrialization (i.e., prefabrication, mechanization, automation, robotics) remain at the level of duplicating the traditional construction processes, the fifth degree, reproduction, seeks innovative processes capable of short-cutting the repetitive linear operations of craftsmanship nature. A methodology can be extrapolated from the analogical model of printing (from the electronic printed circuit to the printed plumbing core). Adopting this methodology implies three steps: (i) generating the geometry of the product from the performance criteria; (ii) selecting a process that can simplify the materialisation; and (iii) designing the product accordingly. The load-bearing service core offers a relevant case study of that methodology: the space is distributed between the served and serving areas, the latter being concentrated into a value-added factory-made module capable of generating diversified building types.

The Single European Electronic Market (SEEM) is expected to stimulate the take-up of eBusiness in Europe, increasing the competitiveness of SMEs through advanced eBusiness process models and tools, by offering to companies a model for modernizing work organization that allows them to face changing markets with an effective use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). However, the Building and Construction industry (B&C) has its ICT fragmented, having in the Building Information Model (BIM) paradigm a vehicle to address this problem. Interfacing with BIM brings another layer of complexity, mostly due to the heterogeneity of the systems and applications that need to interface with it. Thus, the adoption of a cluster of proper services in the Web that can offer in a unique way the functionalities needed for the adoption of BIM, is essential. The implementation of BIM under the Cloud Computing paradigm holds the promise of accelerating the B&C industry to achieve the Single Electronic Market. After presenting the vision for a Single European Electronic Market, and the expectation of the B&C sector to be integrated in a universal information space, this paper proposes the SOA4BIM framework as a cloud of services that enables universal access to the BIM paradigm by any system, application, or end user on the web.

Parametric modeling has been proposed as an effective means to embed domain expertise in models of buildings. As information technology becomes more powerful in terms of the ability to manipulate large parametric models, the potential grows to build increasingly sophisticated functional systems for designing, modeling and fabricating buildings. Implementing more powerful systems implies greater functional specificity, which requires elicitation and capture of increasingly detailed and complex domain-specific semantics ...

This review analyzes the profile, trends and challenges of Georgia's changing urban landscape since independence in 1991 and provides policy suggestions to facilitate the economic transition of the country through its cities. In its analysis and subsequent recommendations on policy interventions, this report draws on a program of diagnostics called the 'Urbanization Review' (UR). The UR diagnostic is based on three main pillars of urban development which have emerged as key areas of policy engagement for successful cities. These are: a) planning, charting a course for cities by setting the terms of urbanization, especially policies for using urban land and expanding basic infrastructure and public services; b) connecting, physically linking people to jobs, and businesses to markets; and c) financing, raising and leveraging up-front capital to meet the increasing demand for infrastructure and services. In moving forward, the review recommends that Georgia focus on: a) dev...

Hughes (1987) develops a model of industry development based on invention, innovation and the state of an industry in relation to a general purpose technology (GPT). This model is applied to the construction industry and production of the built environment to assess potential effects of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital fabrication. The paper first outlines GPTs and technological systems, then argues that construction of the built environment is the output of such a system of production. The second part focuses on invention and the effect of previous GPTs and their impact on building and construction is discussed, with steam power and the mechanization of construction in the nineteenth century as examples. The following section discusses innovation, with incremental innovation in concrete used as an example of how new materials affect on-site processes in construction. An attempt is made to identify the technological frontier in construction. It is argued the impact of AI and digital fabrication will work along the three dimensions of industry development in construction identified by Peters (1996): industrialized production of components and materials; mechanization and automation of tasks; and organization of projects. The conclusion discusses AI, digital fabrication and the organization of construction's system of production.

This paper gives an overview of a formal semantic-based approach of modeling some regulations in the photovoltaic field to help the delivering of technical assessments at the French scientific center on Building Industry (CSTB). Starting from regulatory texts, we first explicit SBVR rules and then formalize them into ontology-based rules in the SPARQL language. These are exploited in the modeling of the compliance checking process required for the delivering of technical assessments.

Construction industries in New Zealand and abroad have a low track record for successful sustainable innovations. This often has a negative impact on private and government spending, and on quality, society and the environment. This paper posits that the construction industry needs step-change (i.e. architectural, system, radical, modular) environmental technical innovations to make drastic improvements. Often entrepreneurial or small to medium-sized firms at the beginning of supply chains or from other industries will introduce such innovations. These firms will use the innovation capacity of suppliers and of their own organisations to transform and commercialise such innovations into the industry. However, after an extensive literature review it remains unclear how innovative New Zealand firms procure environmental step-change technical innovations for the construction industry. The research focuses on procurement activities within such firms who supply the New Zealand constructio...

The building industry continues to occupy an important position in the nation’s economy even though it contributes less than the manufacturing industries. It has continued to be a major player in the socio-economic development of many countries globally. However, recently, issues of quality, costs, reliability and human and environmental safety have emerged posing a challenge to the growth of industry. This is as a result of poor planning phase principles in the building industry. However, poor planning in the Nigerian Building Industry (NBI) was linked to its inability to deliver service effectively and efficiently; and these are impediment on the Nigerian economy. This study therefore sought to examine how planning phase principles influence project performance within the building industry in Abuja, Nigeria. Explanatory and descriptive approaches were used to obtain data from completed projects files (three from both public and private sectors respectively) and professionals from ...

Summary form only given. Information and knowledge management is essential in all the phases of construction projects, from the inception and design/engineering phases, through the realisation and exploitation phases, where contractors and facility owners ...