Journal of Construction Engineering, Management & Innovation

Salman Shooshtarian Tayyab Maqsood Peter Wong Malik Khalfan Rebecca Yang

The construction industry in Australia has grown significantly in the past two decades in the wake of population growth, migration and expansion in the tertiary education industry. The growing population has necessitated extensive property development, better public transport and improved infrastructure. To achieve all of this, construction activities have been on rise; resulting in a significant growth in construction and demolition (C&D) waste generation. Australia has adopted a waste hierarchy to manage waste including C&D waste. According to this notion, waste produced should be managed in a hierarchal order comprising reduction, re-using, recycling, energy recovering, treatment and disposal. Energy recovery of waste is a new concept to the Australian context where, due to a lack of regulatory support and environmental concerns, it has not been well-developed. This review study aims to provide insight into Energy from Waste (EfW) activities in Australia at both national and jurisdictional levels. It reviews associated regulations and standards to show how EfW is being perceived and practiced. The findings demonstrate that Australia has a long way to go to fully utilise EfW opportunities, the role of government in providing regulatory support to promote EfW is found to be of particular importance. Furthermore, several measures are recommended to navigate efforts leading to improved C&D energy recovery activities in Australia. The results are expected to be beneficial to the C&D waste industry, researchers and regulatory authorities in the development of useful regulations and best management practices.

https://doi.org/10.31462/jcemi.2019.03112130

Gul Polat Harun Turkoglu Atilla Damci Ilayda Demirli

“Urban renewal” has emerged as a real alternative to prevent potential earthquake damages. Since Turkey is located in the seismic zone and exposed to severe earthquakes, there has been a great need for urban renewal projects in the last 20 years. As a result of this need, urban renewal projects have constituted an important proportion of the growth in the Turkish construction industry. Selecting the right urban renewal project is one of the vital decisions for contractors as they are taking more risk than the other parties. However, it is a challenging and time-consuming process as there are various compromising and conflicting that need to be considered simultaneously. Therefore, this selection problem should be considered as a multi-attribute-decision-making (MADM) process. The main objectives of this study are to propose an integrated approach, which uses the combination of different MADM methods, for selection of urban renewal projects in Turkey, and to compare the findings of these methods with each other. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was combined with Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), VlseKriterijuska Optimizacija I Komoromisno Resenje (VIKOR), COmplex PRoportional Assessment (COPRAS), and Evaluation based on Distance from Average Solution (EDAS) methods. In the proposed approach, AHP was used to calculate the weights of the criteria that may affect the urban renewal project selection decision and the other MADM methods were used to rank the alternative projects. A case study was carried out in order to illustrate how the integrated approach can be applied in a real-life problem. The findings of using these methods were compared to each other. Application of the proposed approach revealed that it can be a useful tool in selecting urban renewal projects.

https://doi.org/10.31462/jcemi.2019.03131143

sena göknur koç Sibel MAÇKA KALFA

Nowadays, the atrium is designed to provide more daylight to the interior and to reduce heating, cooling and total energy loads of buildings. Optimum atrium design can reduce the total energy consumption of a building by reducing artificial lighting loads that greatly affect the heating and cooling energy load. Many parameters are effective in optimum atrium design for building energy performance. These are atrium type, aspect ratio (length to width), height, and preferred glazing types and shading devices on atrium facades. The goal of the study is to assess the impact of these parameters on the building total energy loads and to identify the most energy-efficient atrium design. For this goal, a hypothetical reference office building model is designed. Three office building models were created with the addition of a central courtyard, a central atrium and a semi-closed atrium on the reference office building. It was tested five different double-glazing systems, two window-to-wall ratio, and horizontal louvre shading device on these four office models according to climate regions. All of the models were simulated in DesignBuilder energy simulation software using climatic data of İzmir (hot-humid), Trabzon (moderate-humid) and Ankara (cold) provinces representing primary climatic regions of Turkey. Obtained results were evaluated according to annual heating, cooling and total energy loads according to the climate regions. As a result, the office building model (Model 1) with the central courtyard showed the highest performance in terms of total energy loads in moderate-humid and hot-humid climates. As for the cold climate, Model 3 with semi-closed atrium shows the best performance.

https://doi.org/10.31462/jcemi.2019.03144156

Ali Bedii Candas Onur Behzat Tokdemir

There are many Green Hospitals certification criteria in the industry, depending on the institute that issues the certification. Designers, builders, owners aim to achieve these criteria requirements in their studies but not always consider the end user’s perspective. The aim of this article is to determine the most valuable LEED certification criteria, that contributes towards the success of the project after it is built, from the end user’s perspective in hospitals with LEED certification in Turkey. The authors hypothesized that easiness and comfort values related to LEED certification criteria are the general values that end-users are looking for in their working environment. In order to determine the most valuable criteria, authors have selected a focus group of people who have working experience in both LEED and non-LEED certified hospitals. First, the Delphi technique is utilized to generate a list of advantages for working at a LEED-certified hospital, and then a shorter list is generated by comparison of the abovementioned list with LEED certification criteria. Finally, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to find out the most valuable LEED certification criteria. The hypothesis has been confirmed with AHP results.

https://doi.org/10.31462/jcemi.2019.03157166