Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Owner's requirements
Financial
Environmental
Social
Functional
Preservation of
primary resources
Performance
requirements
Investment costs
Business culture
Use of waste
materials
Construction costs
Lifestyle
Health & safety
Exposure
environment
Through-life costs
Recycling
Traditions
Service life and
durability
Design for reuse
Aesthetics
Energy in
manufacture
Management &
maintenance in use
Energy in use
Adaptability
Figure 5.6
One possible breakdown of the components of sustainable construction
changing business need may also be a factor. Issues of main-
taining functionality, meeting changes of use or business focus
may well be higher order requirements than cost. However, in
some cases the issue of affordability or the overriding import-
ance of some non-technical factors can necessitate consider-
ation of what might be considered to be sub-optimal technical
(functional) solutions.
Figure 5.7
presents a schematic showing conceptually the
goal of combining the three project performance components
of quality, functionality and impact to achieve what have been
termed 'best value' solutions. The three components relate to
the concept of design quality discussed in Box 5.3 above.
This approach can also be applied to the goal of combining
the components of sustainable construction, with the objective
of being able to achieve an acceptable balance between all the
considered factors.
Figure 5.8
takes the above described concepts further and
graphically illustrates their application to sustainable con-
struction, with the four components of sustainable construc-
tion defined in
Figure 5.6
being adopted. Thus the schematic
uses a four-factor representation involving the components
of life-cycle cost, environmental impact, functional perform-
ance and the cultural contribution of the constructed facility.
Interestingly it is noted that the UK Green Building Council
(IStructE, 2010a) has suggested that it would like to see more
Achievement level
1 = Fundamental
2
Quality
Functionality
2 = Added value
3 = Excellence
3
2
2
Impact
Where in this context:
Quality = The performance level of the particular item, product, system, etc., including
its durability.
Impact = The contribution that the particular item, product, system, etc. makes to the
performance of the completed structure/the finished works.
Functionality = How well the item meets the specified requirements and achieves its
purpose.
Figure 5.7 Schematic combination of the components of design
quality to achieve 'best value' solutions using the three-factor
representation style
consideration given to the efficiency of the primary struc-
ture which it suggests can be overdesigned by as much as
50% when engineers fail to optimise designs. The UK Green
