ICCREM 2018: Sustainable Construction and Prefabrication

Due to increasingly complex structures and higher prefabrication rates, the hoisting order of precast components in fabricated buildings is gradually getting attention. During the assembly construction forbidding precast components on site, there are some influencing factors that interfere with the smooth implementation of a hoisting sequence scheme. This paper identifies and analyzes these factors through literature method, on-site investigation, and expert interview to establish an index system affecting the changes of a hoisting sequence scheme. Then, the index system is illustrated through a case, and the results show that the changes of a hoisting sequence scheme caused by transportation management are more than those caused by construction site management. Finally, this paper also discusses some influencing factors that affecting the changes of a hoisting sequence scheme in the premise of allowing precast components to be stacked on site.

Building structural design plays an important role in reducing embodied environmental impact (EI) of buildings as it decides building material and engineering quantities. Existing tools that assist structural designers in reducing EI are mainly software for assessing EI of material consumption, while EI happening in construction phase, which is related to engineering quantities, is out of the assessment scope. To better support structural designers in achieving a balance between structural requirements and environmental protection, this paper builds an ontology framework for assessing the embodied EI of building structures. The ontology is based on a building environmental performance assessment model—BEPAS, and takes account of EI related both to material consumption and construction activities. The EI of a reinforced concrete column was assessed and served as a case study to test the correctness and application of the constructed ontology.

From the view of slack resources, profitability is crucial for a firm to implement eco-innovation. Nevertheless, existing studies that investigate the relationship between corporation’s profitability and eco-innovation, rarely examine corporation’s profitability as a driving factor of eco-innovation. To fill this gap, the authors conducted an empirical study to determine the impact of corporation’s profitability on eco-innovation, using the balanced panel data of high and new technology enterprises (HTEs) in Shanghai, China, from 2010 to 2015. The results reveal that corporation’s profitability has positive effect on product eco-innovation. In addition, both firm size and R&D intensity are positively related to product eco-innovation. Product and process eco-innovation both exhibit path dependency.

Building information modeling (BIM) is regarded as a feasible and efficient tool to realize sustainable construction. A lot of research has been conducted using BIM to evaluate and improve environmental, economic, and social performance of construction. Yet there is still lacking in a review which analyzes the application of BIM in sustainable construction (ABSC). This study utilized a systematic literature searching-selection-classifying method to obtain papers of ABSC research from five databases. To investigate who contributes most in ABSC field, the papers were distributed according to the countries/regions, journals, and research centers. To reveal the research emphasis and research trend in ABSC field, the emphasis of research level, project phase, sustainable dimension, and research topic was analyzed. Based on the analysis results, four critical gaps of ABSC research have been identified, including a lack of an integrated BIM tool for all three sustainable dimensions, unexplored potential of BIM in infrastructure, a lack of sustainable BIM application for maintenance and operation management, and a lack of sustainable BIM application at organizational level. This study will be valuable for researchers to gain an in-depth understanding of research trend and knowledge gaps in ABSC research, and future studies could be conducted to fill the gaps found in this review.

Green retrofit of aged residential buildings contributes to reduce global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The promotion of green retrofit and the performance of retrofitted buildings depend on applicable technologies and policies. A wide range of retrofit technologies and retrofit policies have been applied throughout the world. However, little attention has been paid to identify suitable retrofit technologies and retrofit policies for particular regions, for example Hong Kong. In this study, both of technologies and policies of refurbishment were reviewed and examined with aiming to implement suitable green retrofit technologies and policies in Hong Kong. In referring to the particular characteristics of Hong Kong residential buildings, 28 green retrofit technologies and 18 green retrofit policies were recommended. The findings in this study are useful for local government setting up green retrofit strategies for Hong Kong and also provide good references for other countries and regions.

Prefabricated residential building (PRB), as a sustainable modern method of construction, has been vested with strong momentum in China, while the sustainable performance of PRB cannot be well realized. The sustainable performance of PRB contingent on supply chain parties sustainable practice, especially general constructor’s sustainable development capacity (SDC) of supply chain management. Previous research on sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) of PRB is scarce, so there is a gap to evaluate supply chain sustainability from the perspective of general contractor. Through literature reviews and expert interviews, a process-oriented and general contractor centralized indicator system of SDC in PRB was established based on the sustainable development theory, the method of fuzzy AHP, and TOPSIS were employed to determine the indicator weight and make a comprehensive assessment. Three PRB projects which applied EPC contract were selected as case studies, through questionnaire survey and semi-interview towards general constructor, the effectiveness of proposed assessment method was demonstrated. The research can provide a decision support tool for project manager to evaluate and continuously improve supply chain sustainable performance of PRB.

The last decades have witness the rapid urbanization in China, which cause the growing demand for affordable housing. Meanwhile, many social and environmental problems arise due to the large-scale rural-urban migration, which attract attention of the government and the public. Comparing with traditional one-site construction, prefabricated construction is more environmentally friendly and labor-saving, exactly meeting the current demand in China. To promote the application of prefabricated construction in the field of affordable housing construction and the sustainable degree of affordable housing construction, this paper first analyzes the relevance and similar characters between prefabricated buildings and affordable housing construction. We further states that prefabricated buildings play a facilitative role in the construction of affordable housing and how affordable housing construction feeds back prefabricated buildings. On this basis, we analyze how to realize the sustainability of affordable housing and put forward a conceptual framework of sustainable affordable housing.

Along with the trend of developing green building, problems appear when investors try to make the best decision about their green investment. Due to lack of related research on this problem, this project aims to propose a method for green building investment decision making to help investors make choice wisely. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and complex proportional assessment of alternatives-Grey (COPRAS-G) methods are adopted in this study with a case study to illustrate its work mechanism and feasibility in reality. Also, this study will provide an effective and accurate decision-making method to assist the investment in green buildings.

Prefabricated building is the inevitable trend of development of China construction industry. And it becomes a hot spot of the construction research at present with its obvious advantages such as mass building production, less environmental pollution, and guaranteed quality. However, prefabricated building is still in the government-led promotion stage at present and few companies take the initiative to implement prefabricated building. This paper studies the evolutionary games among the property developers, precast manufacturers, and government in the period of prefabricated building promotion, with the aim to reveal the reason that players make their choices in different situation and give some suggestions for the development of fabricated building. By doing this, the result of evolutionary game can maximize the benefits of relevant stakeholders, promoting the development of prefabricated building.

The uncertain supply of the construction and demolition waste (C&DW) affects the robust design of the regional C&DW reverse logistics network. In order to make the reverse logistics network have certain robustness and do not generate a large cost of robustness, the decision-makers need to decide the quantities and locations of the sorting and recycling facilities in the network, as well as the flow of wastes among the network nodes. In this article, we use robust optimization method to establish the decision-making model of this problem. The proposed model can adjust the robustness of the reverse logistics network according to the degree of uncertainty, which provides a decision tool for the design of the regional C&DW reverse logistics network.

With the government promotion of sustainable construction and rising demand of Chinese people on the private and public buildings, the traditional construction method cannot meet these requirements. Compared with traditional method, prefabricated construction leads to higher productivity, shorter construction period, and more friendly effects on the environment, so it gets more attention. However, the application rate of prefabricated concrete structure is low in China. The research is aimed at finding the main influencing factors and the relationship between factors for the promotion of prefabricated concrete structure. An integrated method of questionnaire, factor analysis, and structural equation modeling is applied. Thus the importance of different factors can be identified and the corresponding strategies of successful adoption of prefabrication are put forward. Policy factors have the highest impact on the application of prefabricated structures. The Chinese Government should give preferential policies and strengthen management, which is of great significance for application.

How to deal with the huge amount of construction waste reasonably becomes a difficult task. The traditional choice is to dump the construction waste in the landfill. However, some construction contractors dump construction waste illegally in the non-filling area to reduce the cost and bring adverse impact on the society and environment. The existing regulatory punishment mechanism often sets the corresponding punishment fee according to the experience, but does not effectively curb the phenomenon of illegal-dumping. Therefore, in the view of the imperfect characteristics of the illegal-dumping information and the perspective of incomplete information, this paper utilizes the evolution game method to study the regulatory mechanism of government management in the illegal-dumping, analyzes the game strategy between government departments and construction contractors, and discusses the decision-making behavior of government departments and construction contractors under the condition of public participation in supervision, and finally provides a theoretical basis for the establishment of effective supervision and punishment mechanism.

As a development trend of the modern construction industry, prefabricated building has the advantages of short construction period, high quality, energy saving, and environmental protection. However, the high cost of prefabricated building has hindered its implementation and popularization in China. To explore the factors affecting the life-circle cost of prefabricated building, the building circle was divided into five phases, including design, manufacture, transportation, assembly, and operation. After analyzing the cost of the prefabricated building during the whole life cycle, this paper selected 23 factors affecting the life-cycle cost of prefabricated building, and find the key factors through questionnaire survey and factor analysis method. The findings can provide the basis for cost control, so as to promote the development of prefabricated buildings.

Sustainable development has gradually become an overarching policy goal of various countries/regions and China is no exception. The architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry consumes a large amount of resources and therefore plays a vital role realizing the spirit of sustainability in the country. Though green building industry has boomed during the last decade in China, barriers still exist hindering its further development such as emphasizing of sustainable design while ignoring sustainable operation. A participatory approach evaluating project performance during the operation phase is therefore suggested and a quantitative method prioritizing stakeholder impacts proposed to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the overall process. The results indicate government organizations occupy the top of the list, followed by the owners and property management companies. The end-users as well as non-governmental organizations however stay at the bottom. Different strategies should be applied to achieve a rational distribution of participants from various stakeholder groups when evaluating sustainability during project operation.

Carbon emissions in the construction phase will be more relatively significant over time. However, a real-time emissions monitoring tool, which is essential to help construction teams avoid excessive emissions, has not been introduced yet. Therefore, with a focus on enhancing monitoring of carbon emissions in this stage, this paper proposes an IoT-based system framework that integrates a distributed sensor network to collect real-time emissions data and a BIM virtual model to show the emissions status of different construction activities. In doing this, carbon emissions sources are firstly identified form three main activities in prefabricated construction: components manufacturing, transportation, and on-site installation. And different kinds of sensors, such as RFID, are adopted to acquire carbon-related data, which will be stored and extracted in a potential database. In addition, an on-line BIM platform is developed to visualize the emissions at different times in the construction processes and help project team to take corrective action to against potential emissions. This system framework is considered as a promising approach to encourage exploration of possible strategies to cut down carbon emissions in construction industry.

High capital cost is the most barrier to hindering the prefabrication development in some nations, especially in China. There exits cognitive deviations in high capital cost among stakeholders. This study aims to explore the factors affecting the high capital cost from the perspectives of perception and practice, and probe the effect of experience on cost management, then set up corresponding strategies for the government and decision maker to conduct rational policies for promoting the prefabrication development. The semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore factors affecting the high capital cost, and then questionnaire survey was employed to collect professionals’ views on their effects. After data collection, exploratory factor analysis was adopted to explore the latent factors from perception and practice respectively. The findings emphasized that experience as a tacit knowledge has a significant effect on the cognition of capital cost. Experienced paid more attention to practical problems, while inexperienced stressed on the potential risk and expensive. This study provides a new perspective for the government and decision makers to conduct policies for promoting the prefabrication development.

The building sector generates significant energy and environmental footprints in a society, and green building techniques are being rapidly developed in China. However, the deployment of green building techniques is primarily prioritized by their initial economic costs, and their energy and environmental benefits are usually not considered. To facilitate robust deployments of green building techniques in China, in this study, we developed an energy-economic-environment assessment framework based on the e-QUEST building energy simulation tool and the data envelopment analysis approach, and a high-rise educational building in north China was selected for the case study, and five types of green building techniques were considered: the geothermal heat pump (GHP), solar photovoltaic system (SPS), rainwater collection and storage (RCS), external thermal insulation (ETI), and energy-efficient lighting (EEL). The results of the building under consideration show that ETI, SPS, and EEL have high priority for adoption, followed by GHP, and then RCS.

At present, in order to promote the prefabricated construction, the state has formulated a series of government subsidy policies. However, due to the asymmetry and imperfection of information, the equilibrium between government and companies is affected by the cost of fraud and the risk cost of being discovered, while the government is in the inferior position of information asymmetry. This article considers the factors such as the research and development costs of prefabricated construction, the costs under traditional construction methods, the time cost of funds, the impact of goodwill, the cost of fraud, government costs of different monitoring methods, subsidy costs under different subsidy policies, environmental benefits obtained through the use of prefabricated buildings. By using the Bayesian game model, we can analyze the real estate developers’ payout and the government’s payoff and then provide theoretical support to subsidy policy.

In order to study the impact of PM10 particle pollutant emissions on air at construction sites and its influencing factors, this study select six typical construction sites in Qingyuan City, and monitor PM10 particle emissions from sample sites in accordance with relevant national standards, and conduct econometric analysis. The following conclusion can be drawn: (1) there is indeed a slight PM10 pollution situation on some construction sites, but the main reason for PM10 concentration exceeds the limit is the external atmospheric environment rather than the construction site itself. (2) The PM10 pollutants generated by the dust at the construction site have a certain degree of impact on the air throughout the city. (3) Whether the upwind or downwind direction, the concentration value of the measuring point mainly depends on the air quality of the basic environment, and the correlation with the single meteorological factors is not obvious. (4) The dust generated by vehicles traveling has an important influence on the PM10 particle emission intensity at the construction site.

With the development of economic globalization and increasingly fierce competition in the real estate market, the scale, technology, and functions of construction projects all have more stringent requirements. These all put forward higher requirements on the management flexibility of construction projects in real estate enterprises. Under such objective conditions, the application of lean construction system can effectively improve the efficiency of construction. Based on lean construction theory and real estate management status quo, a new management model with strong adaptability and high standardization is put forward, and the management of real estate enterprises in the construction of the whole life cycle of the project is clarified so as to realize the management efficiency of real estate enterprises improve.

Green building is proposed under the background of China’s full implementation of the “Green Development Philosophy” and “Sustainable Development”. Promoting green building is an important way to build “beautiful China”. At present, China’s green building is still lagging behind. It is imperative to promote green construction. This article analyzes the development status of green building at home and abroad, sums up the advanced nature of foreign green building and the problems existing in the development process of China’s green building, and proposes practical methods and development trends for green construction in China’s national conditions.

There is a widespread awareness of the need to reduce carbon emission as the influence of it on the rise in global average temperature is well established. Therefore, it is significantly necessary to quantify the carbon emission of buildings more comprehensive and accurate in order to reduce the carbon emission of the buildings. In this model, building life cycle is divided into four phases based on life cycle theory, including design phase, building materials mining and production phase, construction phase, operation and maintenance phase, and demolition and disposition phase. A calculation model is proposed based on the coefficient method and inventory analysis according to engineering quota. Through the research on the carbon emission situation of each stage of buildings, control measures that can make it possible for carbon emission reduction are expected to be selected.

Road transportation is the lifeline of sustainable, healthy, and rapid development of the social economy. However, with the advancement of urbanization and industrialization, the pollution and environment of road transportation become unbalanced. This paper focuses on the research method of road sustainable development evaluation. Firstly, the objective weight of each index can be calculated by the variable fuzzy iterative clustering model, and then the subjective weight is calculated by AHP. Next, the combined weight is obtained according to the minimum discriminant information principle. Finally, the variable fuzzy recognition model is used to evaluate the sustainable development level of the index. It is proved that the method is reasonable and effective, which can help the management department to formulate a reasonable strategy for sustainable development of road transportation.

High cost is one of major obstacles to widely promote the application of prefabricated construction (PC) in construction process in China. According to research on cost of PC, the production scale of component factory and the transport distance have a significant impact on the PC cost. Applying the theory of supply chain management (SCM), this paper aims to lower the total cost of PC supply chain especially in production and delivery links, which are mainly involved in three stakeholders including supplier, deliverer, and contractor. So, two strategies which are distinguishing in factory scale and transport distance are taken into consideration: one is to establish large factory suppling for several sites, which could be called PC component industrial base; another is to build a small mobile factory, suppling components for its adjacent site, which may spend no transport cost. What’s more, two supply chain models are built according to these two strategies, which comprise 1 supplier-2 contractors and deliverers, to calculate the total cost of fixed cost, variable cost, and delivery cost during PC construction process. At last, a case is studied to make optimal decision between the two strategies for PC component factory’s development.

At present, the assembly-type structure of the building in our relatively slow development, the use of this structure is also one of the few businesses, assembly-type building cost is affecting the promotion, and application of assembly-oriented building one of the major factors, so sort out the cost of assembly type construction. The interrelationship among the influencing factors helps us better understand the reasons for the high cost of fabricated buildings. Through the use of the theory of causation of system dynamics, this paper established a causal relationship feedback model of the key factors affecting the cost of PC component. By means of loop analysis, the intrinsic mechanism of PC component cost influencing factors was studied.

The technology of prefabricated construction (PC) has been partly used in undeveloped countries for many years, such as China. But there are still many obstacles which affect the utilization of PC. Seventeen factors influencing the use of PC were identified through a literature review, questionnaire survey, and face-to-face interview with professionals in the construction industry. 200 questionnaires had been sent out to contractors in China, 122 were returned with valid responses. Ranking analysis was used to identify critical factors. The top obstacles has been found after the questionnaire investigation. These findings provide a valuable reference for the contractors to understand the major barriers to their decision making.

With the increase of construction waste (CW) in China, construction contractors begin to pay attention to the on-site CW management. The first step of on-site CW management is to estimate the quantity of CW that the whole project may produce. The existing methods mainly rely on the qualitative judgment of the managers' experience, which is inaccurate. The paper presents that the quantity of CW produced in the residential projects is affected by many factors. Through literature research and field investigation, the paper concludes that the main factors are building area, structure type, construction management level, and so on. Considering the complex nonlinear relationship between the factors and the quantity of CW, the paper presents a modified BP neural network model based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for estimating the quantity of CW of residential projects. The example of the data from 20 projects of Shanghai shows that this model has high estimation accuracy.

Because of the rapid development of highway construction, environmental effects of this industry have drawn a lot attention of both industry and academy. Governments’ attitude towards these effects influences the projects’ environmental results. This study uses text mining method to analyze Chinese Government’s concerns about environmental effects of highway construction. It firstly collected government’s replies to environment impact assessment reports of highway projects. Then, it segments the text organized. Finally, it uses latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling to analyze Chinese Government’s concerns during different periods. The results indicate that Chinese Government concerns more on noise pollution and less about the creatures in each period. The government’s concerns also experienced a change. The government’s focuses on environmental effects of highway construction have been found and it can help to forecast the future policy trends.

Developing green building is the general trend of sustainable development of global construction industry in the 21st century. Currently there are few technologies applied to the hot summer and cold winter climate zone to achieve the green building construction standard. In this paper, a new type of green building wall technology is proposed, and the Flotherm software is used simulating the wall’s performance in real environment. Compared with the traditional type of wall, it is found that the green effect and the feasibility of this new type wall are significant. And on the basis of this technology the intelligent integrated wall monitoring program is put forward for the users, which can provide a real-time feedback system. This paper provides a new idea for the green development of the prefabricated construction industry.

With the advancement of urbanization process, the amount of material and energy input continues to increase, while the output of waste is increasing, and the urban land development faces new challenges. In this paper, based on the material flow analysis of the urban material input and output in Guangzhou 2007–2016, the carbon metabolism is quantified, the urban carbon metabolism model is established, the carbon flow in the city is studied, and the relationship between the urban land sustainable developments is discussed through correlation analysis. Finally, the paper puts forward some suggestions on balancing urban carbon metabolism flux and improving carbon metabolism efficiency, which provides scientific methods and tools for promoting sustainable development of urban land.

There are many obstacles in the development of the prefabricated concrete enterprises in the process of advancing prefabricated buildings. These enterprises have to face lots of difficulties in choosing their development strategies, which have greatly affected China’s progress of boosting prefabricated buildings. In this paper, some qualitative analysis and quantitative calculation methods are combined to analyze the advantages, weaknesses, opportunities, and menaces of the prefabricated concrete enterprises in China based on data analysis results and reference literatures. A hierarchical analysis model is built to calculate the weight of S judgment matrices, W judgment matrices, O judgment matrices, and T judgment matrices. According to the calculation results, the strategic quadrilateral is drawn. Then we calculate the center of gravity of it. According to the center of gravity location in the quadrangular quadrant, the strategy of enterprise development is obtained. The result shows that it is a new approach for enterprises to scientifically choose their development strategy by using SWOT-AHP method.

With the accelerating pace of urbanization, the building area of China’s cities has grown rapidly, and the energy consumption of buildings has also increased. To build a resource-saving society, most scholars continue to conduct research on energy-saving design and reconstruction of buildings. This study takes a campus office building of a university in Guangzhou as a research case, and uses Green Building Studio (GBS) to perform energy simulation analysis of the building to obtain energy consumption of campus office buildings. In the annual electricity consumption of the building, the air-conditioning system accounts for the largest proportion, which is 47.9%; in the total building energy consumption composition, the pumping system consumes the largest proportion, which is 39%. After that, by changing the relevant building design parameters and analyzing the influence of building exterior wall types, form materials, window-to-wall ratio, and building orientation on the total energy consumption of the building, we conclude that the impact of building window-wall ratio on building energy consumption (K=0.97) > window material (K=0.95) > building orientation (K=0.88) > building exterior wall type (K=0.66), which provides some reference for the energy efficiency design or reconstruction of campus office buildings in the future.

In the last decades, green building has experienced a rapid development at a global scale. Although, the technologies of green building are developing fast, designers or managers often face challenges in the selection and application of green building technologies. Our research team has proposed an integrated system of text mining technique and case based reasoning (TM-CBR) for supporting green building design in the previous research. However, TM-CBR system has shortage that semantic similarity is not considered in case retrieval process. This may lead to inaccurate results by using TM-CBR system. This study introduces a new semantic similarity measure to improve the accuracy of results in the case retrieval process of TM-CBR. This method can help designers find more useful experiences from the existing green building practices.

Environmental issues are related to people’s lives and social development. Green consumption has become the theme of consumption patterns. Because the real estate market needs to be developed, so green elements must also be introduced into products and green housing should be constructed to guide green consumption. Blue Diamond Manor is a typical green housing in Beicheng New District of Linyi City. First of all, it expounds the generation of green housing and explains the conception of green housing. Then it introduces the design, construction, marketing, and estate management of Blue Diamond Manor. Finally, the future development and direction of real estate green housing in Linyi City are prospected.