Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities

Prior to the 20th century, building walls were often constructed of stone or brick up to several feet thick. Such massive walls served not only to support the floors and roof but also to keep out the weather. In the early 1900s economic pressures and the need for taller buildings led to the development of thinner, lighter, and less costly wall systems. While these thinner walls did not usually carry gravity loads, they often involved a combination of materials and components requiring more complex leak control and connection/support mechanisms. A wide variety of unanticipated problems, such as accumulated differential thermal or moisture expansion, increased water leakage due to a lack of drainage redundancy, and cracking or displacement related to material incompatibility, sometimes accompanied these new wall systems.

This case study presents maintainability implementation by means of a formal program developed by a manufacturing company. The manufacturing company's ultimate goal is optimal production availability. Accordingly, projects are planned and designed with a long-term vision that recognizes the importance of life-cycle costs. This relatively new maintainability program addresses the plan and design for maintenance in equipment and facility projects, both new and retrofit. Elements of the formal maintainability program will be described through the model process for implementing maintainability as defined by the Construction Industry Institute, along with qualitative implementation costs and benefits. Additionally, an example of a successful project-level implementation, the clean room project, will be presented.

A multistory factory building with elevated access allows loading and unloading of the raw materials and finished products right in front of each factory unit. This enhances the land productivity of land-scarce Singapore. However, container trucks traveling within the building may cause vibration of a production floor where high-precision equipment is located. In this study, a dynamic vehicle model is established to simulate a 40-ft container truck. The road roughness is represented by a power spectral density function according to ISO 8606. The random response of a typical production floor is analyzed by the fully coupled vehicle-structure interaction method as well as the decoupled moving dynamic nodal loading method. Compared with the acceleration and velocity acceptance criteria, the random response results show that the vertical response of the production floor to the container truck traveling at 15, 30, and 40 km/h over road classes B and C is generally acceptable. However, the maximum vertical vibration may exceed the more stringent criteria for some extremely high-precision equipment.

Subcontracting is a common, and sometimes warranted, practice on large construction projects. However, it is also well recognized that disputes are likely to develop between subcontractors and general contractors in trying to achieve target objectives of cost, quality, and time. This paper tackles quality- and time-related disputes that are peculiar to the case of subcontracting asphalt works under a large construction program, such as that of a new airport construction. In particular, it reports on disagreements regarding the achieved thickness and surface smoothness of the constructed asphalt concrete layer, and on activity-interfacing and delay-attribution issues resulting from improper contractual and scheduling practices. Factors believed to be relevant to both classes of disputes are identified, and analyses are offered to pinpoint significant anomalies. Finally, arguments are developed and recommendations given, that reflect best industry practices whose application could help minimize the likelihood of facing such disputes in the future.

Aluminum bridge decks may prove to be an alternative to concrete decks for improving the performance of structural bridge systems. Combining excellent corrosion resistance with extremely low density, aluminum decks can prolong surface life, facilitate the construction process, and expand rehabilitation capabilities. Reynolds Metals Company, Richmond, Va., has invested considerable resources to develop a proprietary aluminum deck system. The Virginia Department of Transportation agreed to employ the Reynolds deck system in two projects. Using Federal Highway Administration sponsorship, the Virginia Transportation Research Council initiated a study to evaluate the aluminum deck system. The first phase of this project analyzed the static response of a 2.74 × 3.66 m (9 × 12 ft) deck panel. Both service-load tests and ultimate-load tests were performed on the panel at the Turner-Fairbank Structural Laboratory. The experimental and analytical evaluation of the ultimate load static tests is the subject of this paper. The failure load and failure mechanism were predicted with great accuracy. The model data predicted panel failure at a load of 911.89 kN (205 kips) by yielding under the load patch while failure during the laboratory test occurred at a load of 872.07 kN (196.05 kips) by gross yielding underneath the load patch.

A construction worker was seriously injured after falling from a roof to a concrete floor. He was working on a plank while placing insulation material when the accident occurred. The plank broke into three pieces. Visual observation of the plank indicated a relatively new plank. Further investigation of the plank revealed a grade of structural plank no. 2. A common practice is for a construction worker to use scaffold grade plank, which has twice the capacity of a structural grade plank. This represents the most probable procedural cause of the plank's failure. The most probable enabling cause (internal cause) of the failure is a local split at the midspan, whereas the most probable triggering cause (external cause) is the impact loads produced by the weight of the worker and the insulation material he carried while walking on the plank. The study also concluded a failure mechanism that was initiated by a longitudinal split at the midspan of the plank. The split weakened the plank and led to a transverse break at the midspan.