Myers-Lawson School of Construction
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Browsing Myers-Lawson School of Construction by Content Type "Article"
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- Adoption of High-Performance Housing Technologies Among U.S. Homebuilding Firms, 2000 Through 2010McCoy, Andrew P.; Koebel, C. Theodore; Sanderford, Andrew R.; Franck, Christopher T.; Keefe, Matthew J. (HUD, 2015)This article describes foundational processes of a larger project examining U.S. home builders’ choices to adopt innovative housing technologies that improve the environmental performance of new single-family homes. Home builders sit at a critical juncture in the housing creation decision chain and can influence how new housing units change related to energy consumption, and the units they produce can also reflect shifting technology, demography, and policy landscapes. With some exceptions, U.S. home builders have been characterized as being slow to adopt or resistant to the adoption of product and process innovations, largely because of path-dependent and risk-averse behavior. This article focuses on home builder choices by analyzing a summary of innovation adoption literature and that literature’s relationship to homebuilding. Researchers then describe analytical approaches for studying home builders’ choices and markets at a Core Based Statistical Area level, the data and statistical methodologies used in the study, and the policy implications for promoting energy efficiency in housing. Future work will draw on the foundation presented in this article to specify versions of this generic model and report results using improved quantitative analyses.
- Energy Efficient Technology Diffusion Factors: A Systematic ReviewBhattacharjee, Suchismita; McCoy, Andrew P. (IJSER Publications, 2012-11)Due to the escalating population and the resulting increase in energy use, the world is faced with the challenge of energy crisis. To mitigate the rise in energy crisis, innovation, adoption, and diffusion of energy efficient technologies is imperative. Review of available literatures indicates that expected improvement in energy consumption has not been achieved in spite of the innovation and improvement in energy efficient technologies. This imbalance points towards the lack of proper adoption and diffusion of these technologies. This paper has looked into prior arts to determine the factors responsible for this diffusion process. Upon identifying the factors, it is evident that some factors can be improved to act as accelerators to the diffusion process. The other set of factors tend to remain as hindrances which can be reduced to an extent, but not removed completely. The paper further investigates the reasons behind these factors and categorizes them under three groups – financial, informational, and behavioral. Findings prove that most of the factors can be attached to a financial cause. Thus research and development alone is not the answer to the rising energy demand, but effective economic motivation is necessary to curb the demand. Future research will look into the present energy policies and group them based on their targeted sector. This will enable to locate the gaps in the policies already implemented and subsequently help in the creation of new policies.
- An Evaluation Approach of Socio Economic Factors Affecting Household Energy ConsumptionBhattacharjee, Suchismita; Reichard, Georg (2011)Residential energy consumption in the United States has been marked by a steady growth over the past decades, in spite of the implementation of various energy efficiency policies. To frame effective energy policies for the residential sector it is important to understand the cause and impact of factors affecting residential energy consumption. A vast majority of earlier research has explored the role of individual human factors that are responsible for the increase of household energy usage, whereas, a few studies have discussed the effect of standard-of-living and income on overall household energy consumption. However, there is a dearth of literature and research on plausible ways to modify and manipulate factors that influence household energy consumption. This paper builds on previous research by the authors that identified a list of factors affecting residential energy consumption and grouped them under five major categories, i.e. demographics, consumer attitude, economic variables, climate, and technology. The here presented investigation analyzes the root causes for each of the identified consumption factors such as household size, dwelling characteristics, etc. through Cause & Effect diagrams. Finally, all energy efficiency control elements under each of the energy consumption factors are generated and sorted using the Affinity Diagram method. Our research shows how the identified control elements govern energy consumption factors to a great extent. Ultimately these control elements will assist policy makers in ameliorating and targeting the most critical factors that will help to curb the increasing household energy consumption in the United States.
- Intelligence Complements from the Built Environment: A Review of CPS-Enabled Smart Buildings for Cognitively Declined OccupantsAlimoradi, Saeid; Gao, Xinghua (2022-01-01)Traditionally, caregivers, whether formal or informal, have taken the responsibility of providing assistance and care to the patients with cognitive decline. However, both the caregivers and the patients are subjected to experience financial and emotional burdens, which has impacted the patients’ life quality and quality of the provided care. To overcome the situation, Ambient Assistive Living (AAL) technologies have been sought for to replace the caregivers and complement patients’ lack of intelligence. Technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have enabled intelligent ubiquitous learning for smart buildings to monitor the cognitively declined occupants and provide in-home assistive services and solutions. This review aims to evaluate and summarize the intelligence complements provided by smart buildings enabled with such capabilities to increase the cognitively declined occupants’ quality of life and autonomy. The review finds that most of the existing contributions are towards learning the occupants’ behavior to identify assistive services and solutions. The identified services are delivered through technological interventions or caregivers. Moreover, key research gaps are identified. The most important is the lack of adequate adoption of technological interventions to fully support the occupants’ autonomy and independence. Other identified gaps include challenges in usability and acceptability, ethical concerns, systems' comprehensiveness, and lacking human- in-the-loop. Lastly, a conceptual framework is proposed to address the gaps as the future research directions in the applications of smart buildings supporting cognitively declined occupants.
- Introducing Organizational Intelligence to the Construction IndustryJung, Younghan; Mills, Thomas H. (2010)The construction industry, which is inherently multidisciplinary, has adopted intellectual and technical business improvements from many other industries with the intent to optimize productivity. Therefore, there is a need to implement new managerial strategies that incorporate standardized and structured repeatable procedures. As part of the effort to establish a better understanding of management from organizational resources through final construction, this paper introduces a new theoretical approach for Organization Intelligence in Construction (OIC) that is based on the procedural ability of an organization to efficiently process, support, measure, and reason through management issues. Organizational intelligence is applied in all organizations to enhance the understanding of managerial processes and assets/resources within the organization. The measured performance of a managerial process depends on the capability and quality of resources that are available within the organization and/or the acquisition and management of resources that are outside of the organization. This paper suggests a mechanism to standardize construction processes by identifying the role of relationships in an organization's operation and the organizational cognitive abilities that subsequently determine the effective and efficient use of resources to aid in successfully completing an operation. A case example provides the foundation for a replicable template that reveals how construction processes, personal and organizational knowledge, skills, and resources contribute to managerial activity functions.
- Owner Initiated Modernization of Bridge Safety InspectionsMills, Thomas H.; Wakefield, Ron; Bushman, William (2004)This paper reports on an “asset management” research program that is applicable to both the private and public sectors. This work presents the strategies and endeavors initiated and driven by a public sector owner in an effort to modernize their current asset management practices. The Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Transportation (VDOT) is attempting to modernize a bridge safety inspection processes that requires over 14,000 bridges be inspected at least once every two years. The research effort involved investigating the capability to transform and replace paper-based inspection practices with advanced mobile computing practices. A series of owner-agency initiated research proposals are discussed and the impacts each would have on the procedural processes directed at transforming current work processes with newer mobile handheld computing processes. Ultimately the DOT selected a phased proposal and activated the first phase. This first phase research approach is presented, as are the results. The research determined that field inspections are readily transformable from one that relies on field marking paper reports and then returning to the office for semi-manual reporting to one that is electronically assisted in the field by using handheld computers. Identifiable areas of assistance are field data capture, automated asset inventory updates, and semi-automated report production. From this analysis a series of strategies and recommendations were identified. The owner-agency’s decision to abandon a controlled phased study in favor of an ad-hoc in-house development process is then presented and discussed.
- Transformation of Information Flows and Work Processes for Field SuperintendentsMills, Thomas H.; Lewendowski, Lisa; Wakefield, Ron R. (2002)This paper addresses field information flows and work processes of one of America’s largest residential homebuilders. This residential contractor currently uses a combination of; 1) web based scheduling, allowing subcontractor to self schedule, 2) an e-order process for material procurement, which allows field superintendents to make simultaneously orders for multiple houses, 3) web based subcontractor payment authorization and 4) a mobile phone network internal to subdivision contractors to help deliver a portion of the parent company’s 50,000 houses a year. The objective of the research investigation is to understand which real time information in which format, will best assist construction supervision. The information mapping process for a sample of residential field superintendents is documented. Differences between the corporate workflow and information system and the system actually used by the field superintendents are highlighted. These differences guided the development of a revised information system and workflow that better serves the needs of the field superintendents. The basic field communications mechanisms and connections to the corporate database are documented. Observed ready, set, go points that connect information processes to field task initiation are also, identified within the paper. The reconfiguration of these established trigger points is addressed and identifiable information gaps are discussed. The information exchange techniques to ultimately self-activate work processes are also explored and presented.
- Virginia’s Public Procurement of Design-Build and Construction Management ServicesMills, Thomas H. (1999)Both the Commonwealth of Virginia and its local governments have embarked upon a process of using Design-Build and Construction Management services as an alternative to procuring capital projects through competitive sealed bidding. In pursuit of alternative project delivery methods all states, including Virginia, must comply with public procurement acts aimed at obtaining high quality goods and services at reasonable cost. This has typically resulted in public procurement through competitive sealed bidding. Virginia’s state legislature has experimented at achieving the best from creative project delivery options through “fixed price, not to exceed price design-build and construction management contracts.” This paper illustrates Virginia’s legislative strategy; its determination and evaluation process; and explores issues faced by securers and providers when choosing and defending project delivery using Design-Build and Construction Management services. Readers are provided an opportunity to discover how Virginia is approaching its goal of achieving cost and timesavings in procuring capital projects by using Design-Build and Construction Management as project delivery options.