Construction Philosophy -Research Article Publication

Vol. No.01

Issue No. 10

Kochi March 2020

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Vol. No. 01 Issue No. 10

|

Kochi

| March 2020

Changing material world It is a changing world out there. And, meeting the requirements of a world that is in constant flux, has always been a challenge for the construction industry. Growth of the construction industry is dependent on the kind of sums that the government spends and the legislations and enactments that it puts in place from time to time.

Two recent legislative initiatives of the government are of great significance when viewed from this perspective. These are the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) Act and the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notifications issued by the Government of India. Although they might in the short term appear to be a drag on the industry, they cannot but have long-term beneficial effects as both these legislations have been brought forward with lofty goals of environmental protection and sustainability.

Development is not just building up endless number of structures. Built spaces must merge with the environment. Needless to say, the materials used for construction assume crucial significance here. Use of materials that do not add to the burden on the environment and deployment of machinery and technology that help avoid waste can play a big a role here.

In this issue of CP, we have focused on the wonder world of materials and their eco-friendly transformations over the past few decades. We hope that the new generation of construction professionals would devote their energies to environmentally sensitive construction practices using materials that leave whatever is left in nature intact for future generations.

Together let us raise our voice for quality.

Join our author family : Send your articles to Editor@constructionphilosophy.com to get it published in our upcoming volumes

Solar panels that radiate aesthetics Rooftop solar plants never merge aesthetically with the rest of the building. Solar roofing tiles became a reality when architects and designers began looking for new designs that would help harness energy without compromising on aesthetics, notes

Suresh Lal S.D.

Editor & Publisher Nebu Abraham Executive Editor Divya Divakar

India

Editorial Consultant C. Gouridasan Nair Sub-Editor Lizba Chandy Technical Coordinator Alan Christy Joshy Design & Layout KG Manoj

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Anil Joseph Managing Director, GeoStructurals (P) Ltd., Kochi

March 2020 COVER STORY

Material World

The world of materials has been changing, triggering changes in construction practices. The changes have also set the stage for several innovations.

Together they have resulted in structures that are landmarks in many urban centres in the world, writes Lizba Chandy

Choice of materials

Utility or Aesthetics?

Architecture is A Profession, A Practice, A Philosophy, A Preaching or the practioner himself, says Prof. K. Jaisim

COLUMN

Future of green building materials

Knowledge Management

There is an imperative need for quality certification for building products. Awareness about product certification, writes Selvarasu M. and

Knowledge management has a big role to play in construction project management, points out A.N. Prakash in his column

Nandana D. Kumar

India must address C&D challenge

Use of recycled C&D waste can go a long way in bringing down pressure on the country’s dwindling natural resource base, wries Mohan Ramanathan

Is your programme up to scratch?

Get the finish date wrong and your liability could run into heavy losses. The risks are very real so all the more reason to you’re your construction scheduled up to scratch, warns

Steve Edge Construction Philosophy is owned, printed and published

by Nebu Abraham and printed at Sterling Print House Pvt. Ltd., Door No. 49/1849, Ponekkara-Cheranelloor Road, AIMS, Ponekkara PO, Cochin-682041, Kerala.

Varghese A. Johns Vice-President (Technical), Geo Structurals, Kochi.

*

Responsible for publication of material under PRB Act.

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 5

JSW Cement awaits EC for Bilakalagudur unit expansion The project will entail an investment of Rs 420 crore Infra boost to construction Industry in Union Budget

JSW Cement is planning to expand capacity from 4.8 million tpa to six million tpa at cement plant at Bilakalagudur village in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh.

The project will entail an

investment of Rs 420 crore and include expansion of clinker capacity from 2.5 million tpa to 3.4 million tpa and establishment of a coal-based captive power unit with a

capacity of 18 MW. JSW Cement is awaiting environment clearance (EC). The work on the project is expected to commence by September 2020.

Cement manufacturers association (CMA) on Monday said the government's budgetary push for infrastructure, logistics and warehousing will boost the industry. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her over two-hour long speech announced the plans to set up five new smart cities on PPP model and 100 more airports to be set up by 2024 to support UDAN scheme and allocated Rs 1.7L crore to transportation.

Top IITs and IIMs launch Consortium to boost Indian Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Premier technical and management institutions in the country have joined hands to launch a consortium to boost Indian entrepreneurship ecosystem through high quality research in innovation, venturing and entrepreneurship.

Called 'Innovation-Venturing and Entrepreneurship in India Network (iVEIN),' its founding members are faculty at IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta and IIM Kozhikode. This network of institutions will leverage strengths

of the partners and would work with other stakeholders such as incubators, government and investors to generate and disseminate knowledge. iVEIN was launched on February 15, 2020, on the sidelines of 'Dialogue with Stakeholders' event held by SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship) at IIT Bombay.

The immediate activity that would be taken up by iVEIN would be

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to publish the India Innovation, Venture and Entrepreneurship Report. Conceptualized as a biennial publication, the first report would be published in 2020 with the theme: Creating Successful Ventures.

Institutes, organizations and individuals, especially policy makers, investment managers, practitioners and entrepreneurs with active interest in entrepreneurship, innovation and venturing are invited to join the network to facilitate and promote collaborative research.

No quick end to current fiscal crisis: Dr Christy Fernandez, Chairman, KSIDC There will be no easy walk over the current financial and social crisis, which is a temporary phenomenon.

The construction industry in the state is undergoing definitive make over and requires modern technological advancements to remain successful, he said.

One has to change prevailing attitude and adopt innovative measures to sustain in the market said Dr. Christy Fernandez, Chairman KSIDC. Those ideologies of last century may not work wonders to face challenges of this century he exclaimed during the inauguration of two day state conference of Builders Association of India (BAI) at Kochi.

anomaly in the handling of the controversial bridge at Palarivattom.

During the technical session at the state convention of BAI the builders discoursed the various aspects led to the misfortunate demolition of flats at Maradu as well.

They have called for clarity and transparency in the system for granting permission for new structures by adapting latest online technologies.

Dr. Christy Fernandez The builders from across the state have raised their concern and suspect

Prince Joseph, State Chairman of BAI, presided over the meeting. Chairman of Convention Committee Edward George welcomed the gathering and BAI Kochi Centre Chairman C K S Panikker offered vote of thanks.

189.6 km Goa-Karnataka border highway project commissioned The most important north-south highway, the Goa-Karnataka borderKundapur, linked on the western coast of India, stretching 189.6km is now part of NH-17.

The IRB Infrastructure Developers had bagged this project under the National Highways Development Project Phase-IV on a design, build, finance, operate and transfer basis, and had a viability gap funding of Rs 5.36 billion.

IRB Westcoast Tollway, the SPV of IRB Infrastructure Developers, has recently commissioned its 189.6 km four-laning highway project, now opened for the vehicular traffic. Built at Rs 34.47 billion, the project has a concession life of 28 years.

The project has service road of 61.26 km, nine pedestrian underpasses,

three vehicular underpasses, four flyovers, 39 small bridges, 14 major bridges, 23 intersections, 573

culverts, and three railway-overbridges and three toll fee plazas.

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HAPPENINGS Technical Colloquium at Sona College CARVE 2020, a two day national level inter college synopsium and one day pre workshop on 3D printing was organized by the Association of Civil Engineering at Sona College of Technology on 25th February 2020, in association with SA 3D solutions Chennai.

Ms. Divya Divakar, Director, Redine Enterprises Pvt Ltd., and Executive Editor, Construction Philosophy, Kochi, took part as a special guest and drove the young aspiring minds by giving awareness about the civil engineering disciplines.

Er. S. Sriram, Head Planning, L&T, Chennai was the guest of honor for the program The event was presided over by Mr. S. R. R. Senthilkumar, Principal, Sona College of Technology. Students from various institutions came to interact with the speakers. Dr. R. Malathy, Head, Civil Engineering, SCT, welcomed the gathering.

Fall in quality of engineering graduates rued "The number of engineering colleges is increasing, but the quality of graduates passing out every year is declining due to different reasons, Dr. J. Letha, Pro Vice Chancellor, Jain University and former VC, Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) has said.

Inaugurating Civil Talents.com, the first Academy offering specialized short term courses for civil engineering graduates at Kochi, she said civil engineers have to update their knowledge and skills, which was somehow not happening nowadays.

Inaugurating the consultancy service of Civil Talents.com, Er. John Thomas, MD, Noel Villas & Apartments, at the function, said it was high time to equip fresh graduates with the necessary skills to meet the demands of the construction industry and also to update their knowledge about advances in building technologies and software.

Er. Suresh Lal, Founder and CEO of the Academy, made a presentation about the vision and objectives of the Academy. He hoped that the hands-on skill transfer programmes being offered by the academy will benefit the construction industry and the graduates.

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MILESTONES

Ar. Jabeen L Zacharias becomes first woman president of IIID

F

or the first time in is history, the Institute of Indian Interior Designers (IIID) will be led by a woman architect -- Ar. Jabeen L. Zacharias from Kerala.

Ms. Zacharias was elected by the executive council as the 17th president of IIID at 'Vision Summit 2020' organized by IIID Kerala Regional Chapter.

A professional with more than three decades of experience in architecture, planning, project management, consultancy and training, Ms. Zacharias will steer the 32 chapters of IIID across India for the next two years along with the new team of office-bearers.

Ms. Zacharias was the first woman architect to be elected president of the Indian Institute of Architects (IIA-Kerala) and had served in that position from 2002 to 2004. She has bagged several awards and worked on more than 300 projects across India, USA and the Middle East. She is also a guest faculty at various institutions throughout Kerala.

The new official magazine of IIID 'Inscape' was also launched at the Vision Summit. The event was attended by over 600 delegates from all over India.

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Lizba Chandy

Material The world of materials has been changing, triggering changes in construction practices. The changes have also set the stage for several innovations. Together they have resulted in structures that are landmarks in many urban centres in the world 10 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

COVER PACKAGE

World T

here was a time in the construction industry when all blueprints were made by draftsmen who drew freehand, a crew had to build its own scaffolding for the upper-story work, and finding a foreman at the job site meant sending runners to look for him.

From the early skyscrapers, through the practical brutalism in the 1960s to postmodern and the contemporary structures today, competing factors have drastically changed the form and function of buildings over the last century.

Times have rolled. Traditional practices have replaced by newer design practices with the intensive involvement of technology and science. But the basics of building a house, a hospital, or any structure on earth, still remain the same.

The industry is drastically different these days, from the way it was 50 years ago, or even 25 years ago. Buildings look distinct, from both inside and out, and they are put together using more sophisticated methods and materials.

Convergence of engineering and technology has given architects and engineers more freedom in terms of the finished product. Some four decades ago, commercial

architecture was ‘simple geometric shapes, with very little ornamentation’. But, with the changing times, the look, feel and utility of every structure have evolved. Both the client demands and structural innovations have played a big part I bringing about such sweeping changes.

Open spaces as important as built up spaces these days.

Terry L. Powell, a builder and developer since the early 1970s, says that when he started, 1,500 square feet was considered a nice-size house. But, today, people want things bigger. And faster, to where a building that might have taken 18 months to do 20 or 30 years ago, they want it up and ready in 10 to 12 months.

New design practices with BIM

The biggest shift happened in the way a lot of buildings are designed with the use of BIMs (building information management systems), which essentially entail building a one-to-one digital model of everything in the building, including all the plumbing and the electrics. It will be a record of the entire building in all of its detail down to the March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 11

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COVER PACKAGE last screw, and in theory that model is supposed to be kept updated as the building goes through its life.

Material warranties are often about 20 years and after that point, if things go wrong, it gets much more difficult and much more expensive to repair them. In some ways, there is built-in obsolescence to modern architecture that isn’t present in more historic buildings. But it depends on the type of building or the purpose; you can design to different lifetimes. It is something that is part of the design process, thinking about long term maintenance, also how long the building is likely to be around.

Changing structural materials

From durable concrete used in ancient structures to steel used for bridges and skyscrapers, new and innovatively altered materials have shaped the way we build today.

Our world is built mostly with bricks, wood, steel, glass, and concrete. All of these substances are practical and versatile, and produced at a relatively low cost (though that cost is rising).

Through the ages, we’ve seen the construction industry undergoing a series of innovation in the building materials. From durable concrete used in ancient structures to steel used for bridges and skyscrapers, these materials have shaped the way we build today. They are key to some of the greatest architectural feats. While some materials have simply evolved over time (like concrete and marble), there are newer cutting-edge materials being developed every other day.

Despite its growth, the construction industry faces a number of challenges. The industry dogged by natural disasters, environmental concerns and inefficiency and must maintain its output despite all these. Building projects consume 50% of our resources from nature, often leading to added costs, delayed construction times, and wasted materials.

Materials are being engineered to be smarter, stronger, self-sustaining, sleeker, and easier on the environment. The BIQ House in Hamburg, Germany, provides a perfect glimpse of the future.

Built with living algae, the BIQ is able to harness its own electricity.

Breakthroughs such as reinforced concrete and metallic structures, for instance, have changed the way humans inhabit cities forever, allowing for new structures such as skyscrapers and large,

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Doors old and new

In the beginning, there was no door. For, in the cave homes of nomads, fire kept out animals in search of prey. Then came the age of human settlements and idea of homes made of stones, wood, palm leaves and diverse other gifts of nature.

As the idea of the home crystallised, structures began to be built using stones and lime and other bonding materials and the door became a part of it all. From the humble, wooden piece that served as door in the poor man’s home to the massive wooden doors that protected palaces, it became a part of life.

Today’s doors are of a wonderful variety. For long, they were creations of master craftsmen, who brought into their works intricate styling and clever niches to lock out the uninvited. Then came the electronically controlled ones which are a common sight these days.

One of the latest is the Evolution Door, invented by Austrian company Klemens Torggler recently. It has an assembly that rotates sideways without having a track. It is based on rotating squares. Consisting of two squares that can fold diagonally and are attached to each other with a spinning hinge at one corner.

The diagonal corner is attached to the door frame with another spinning hinge that allows the whole assembly to rotate. Just a gentle nudge is needed to close, and then momentum takes care of the rest.

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COVER PACKAGE

durable bridges. In the 19th century, the production of steel and the growth of cities resulted in the building of blocks of houses reinforced with pre-tensioned concrete and metal beams.

Materials have been a difficult sticking point from the moment the laws of elasticity were discovered. Before that, everything was simply a question of trial and error. Afterwards, it was all about scientific methods, trials in test tubes, and materials science. But it has only been in recent years that nanotechnology has allowed us to go deep into the heart of atoms, so that we have envisaged not just the material, but the shape of that material as an essential part of material’s behaviour.

Materials, machines and structures

Materials by themselves do nothing, yet without materials humans can do nothing. Nature itself is a self-ordered structure which developed over time through the utilization of the same properties of atomic hierarchy that humans preside over in their simple constructions, from the massive rolling mill producing steel rails to the craftsman hammering out a chalice or a piece of jewelry; from the smallest chip of an electronic device to the largest building made by humans.

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Aesthetics of change Humans have been painting to memorialize their lives since the Stone Age, using techniques that endure to this day. Some cave paintings drawn with red or yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide, and charcoal may have been made by early Homo sapiens as long as 40,000 years ago. One pound of colour ground in a horse-mill will paint twelve yards of work, whereas colour ground any other way, will not do half that quantity.

Paint was made with the yolk of eggs and therefore, the substance would harden and

adhere to the surface it was applied to. Pigment was made from plants, sand, and different soils. Most paints used either oil or water as a base (the diluent, solvent or vehicle for the pigment). Iron oxide pigments were highly valued for their durability, Paints form a solid film when applied on a surface. This film protects the surface from many dangers like corrosion, weathering, chemical attacks, etc. Timber or metal structures can extend their life by coating them with paints.

Unfinished success Some paints fail when used on certain building materials. One such example is the oil bound paints. A salt is formed when an acid and alkali react together. If the acid is fatty such as linseed oil, then the result is soap and water. Many building materials such as lime mortar and plasters, Portland

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cement and asbestos cement develop alkalies. If such surfaces are coated with oil bound paint particularly in the presence of even small quantities of moisture, saponification will take place. The paint may blister in a mild attack or develop slow yellow-soapy runs in a severe attack.

COVER PACKAGE

One of the hallmarks of modern industrialized society is our increasing extravagance in the use of materials. This expanding use of materials is itself revolutionary, and hence forms an integral part of the ‘materials revolution’ of our times.

A great new range of materials has opened up for the use of 20th-century man: refractory metals, light alloys, plastics, and synthetic fibers, for example. The enlarged consumption of materials means that we will have to cope increasingly with natural-resource and supply problems. Mankind is being forced, therefore, to enlarge its resource base, by finding ways to employ existing raw materials more efficiently, to convert previously unusable substances to useful materials, to recycle waste materials and make them reusable, and to produce wholly new materials out of substances which are available in abundance.

What does the future hold?

The future of construction is becoming increasingly unpredictable with the sweeping developments in technologies. Application of each technique is making construction practices easier, thereby reducing human labor.

In the near future, we will start constructing with

seven axis robots. The Mumbai international airport is a case in point.

Construction practices today must be sustainable, innovative and cost effective and construction materials must be light. The availability of materials is no more a question, but the quality is. Researches are going on to bring in newer materials so that construction practices can be sustainable and dependent in large measure on green products.

Labor dearth products too are getting easily available in the market. They will change the outlook of construction. Some of the building materials in future could be 3D-printed grapheme, bio-concrete, a self-healing material, a meta-material that reverses the hall effect, artificial spider silk, programmed cement, coral bricks and breathing buildings.

Given the high degree of specialization in the use of materials, a large number of different materials will probably be used even in the smallest building project, each aimed at solving a particular problem, giving them hitherto unseen aesthetic appeal and, best of all, that quality that will see them through several years, decades and, perhaps, centuries.

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Prof. K. Jaisim

Choice of materials

Utility or

Aesthetics?

Architecture is A Profession, A Practice, A Philosophy, A Preaching or the Person! What is reflected, responded, referred respected and reacted?

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COVER PACKAGE

FUNCTION and FORM—How significant is their role? SPACE and TIME integration in human life and culture, is it or not?

As an example, I shall reflect on my five decades of practice and my latest experience the other evening. I stay in my cottage in the Suvidha Village. Yesterday, a young architect, along with a number of her friends desired to visit it. I accepted their request and, as it was after sundown, walked them up to my cottage.

As with all Indians, they took off their footwear, in spite of my insistence that they can wear it, and walked in, opening the glass door. I requested them to keep the door closed as not just mosquitoes, but snakes my sneak in. That startled a few!

The cottage is a double unit and is a play of spaces and levels. It also has minimum of materials like granite steps, burnt clay walls and integrated clay filler slabs with wooden zigzag flooring and natural rocks.

Among them were builders, professionals and homemakers and it was obvious that they had never before seen a space like this and were walking around in wonder, a teenager among them clicking away on her mobile phone camera. I explained to them that the structure has been made of materials mostly made for other needs, applying one’s imagination and innovative skills. That is the reason why public buildings very rarely have creative responses; they only follow set norms as specified in the books.

The senses and the elements are the only materials and they have to be chosen consciously with movements in mind. The only holding criterion, as always, is affordability. The challenge to choose and change is one’s architecture. The style is a language that the architect speaks through the design of the spaces. Unfortunately, majority of architects try to speak through imitation. Even copying makes sense, but imitation without knowing the language of the time is absurdity.

These days, the words ‘green’ and ‘sustainability’ are sown all over the building community. What seeds will grow where no one comprehends. Like Moses and his experience, one hopes for the best, but very often the worst happens. Roses have thorns most weeds do not have. If one closes one’s eyes and chooses, weeds will win. And the smart weeds have also pretty flowers and thus get away.

Now to challenge the roses, one must define what March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 19

does one want?

Aesthetics and utility have their respective roles to play. Very often when one is amidst different professionals and discussing or having a dialogue, it is evident that communication becomes either a bridge or a barrier. But even a smile says it all. This art of communication becomes difficult and least comprehensible in the built environment. Very often, gibberish is confidently touted as style or philosophy of one’s design approach.

This is utter nonsense, but one must be careful when trying to question or comprehend the pattern before one passes a judgement. It is clear that as in normal language communication, when one is not aware or heard or read a language, comprehension is an impossibility. But when one takes time and observes the depth in each word spoken or written, a great understanding prevails. This happens when one has patience to listen or observe a pattern that is not just a repetition, but a play of spaces. And in this play, there is a sense of order. The chaos then becomes a communication.

The initial disturbance has many moods of expression. But the evidence of depth in that spacing in time brings a smile of great clarity. Learning a Language and appreciating it is the greatest form of LIFE. Very often no sense prevails in repetition only sound and noise is there. Often Music and talk is lost. The expression stated in professional bodies is that great architecture is frozen music. I

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would add, for greater clarity: Great and Timeless Architecture is Living Music and Art. Technology is one tool of artistic expression, but by itself, technology is just noise. Unfortunately, in the present scenario of built environment, technology has prevailed over sense. I must again stress here that allowing art to dominate is another form of murder. Architecture is a synthesi; of life and art and the technology available to express it.

This debate of sense seeking order in chaos can be an infinite one. But if one were to walk spaces of built environment with candid eyes and communicate with them with a sense of love, joy and happiness, or even sadness, raising the emotions rationally to levels that both the body and mind experience, the spirit spirit triumphs. Life is worth living in these expressions. A philosophy is born.

Nothing is born by itself. Infinity communicates with defined finite. This is design. What influences is a matter of comprehension by the individual.

History writes culture and often rides it. The dominant few rejoice with recognition, politics prevail.

The real creators are often buried, but in depths they do not care about. Happiness lies in the wisdom of knowing. The Individual is the source and the civilization and the expression of culture that evolves through generations. Nothing is True, Everything is True.

Prof. K.Jaisim FIIA FUWA www.jaisimfountainhead.com,

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Selvarasu M. Nandana D. Kumar

FUTURE OF GREEN BUILDING MATERIALS There is an imperative need for quality certification of building products. Awareness about product certification is low in India. Product manufacturers under the ‘Make in India’ category are also reluctant to venture into some of the environmental certifications 22 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

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lobally, the construction industry has remained dynamic and evolved continuously to meet the desires and expectations of the new generation. While the construction industry in India has been trying to catch up with trends in the rest of the world, especially developed countries like United States, Europe and Australia, as a nation with so many experts and expertise, we still have a long way to go.

With their voracious appetite for infrastructure development and building, China has been the leading global consumer of construction products and technology for the past several years. The sale of construction equipment alone recorded an 82% increase in China in 2017. However, in the last decade or so, we have seen more international brands come into the Indian market as well.

Usually when whenever international brands try to gain access to the construction industry in any market, they are likely to meet certain stringent standards set by the countries they have entered, be it the European Union or United States. However, due to the fact that India does not impose strict environmental laws on building material compliances, the international brands are not compelled to supply products that satisfy the international standards and requirements.

The guidelines on material selection that India follows, such as the National Building Code, for example, do not stipulate that the products have to undergo mandatory testing and verification to meet the environmental parameters of our country. What most of us are familiar with are the ISO standards, which has almost become ingrained as a standard for quality and safety in India, for both products and services from international markets.

It is essential that a globally recognized benchmark be set not only to ensure consistency and quality in the industry but also to provide assurance about the product. ISO Certification is a useful measure to add credibility and demonstrate that the product or service will meet the expectations of the customers.

The certification, which is available in many areas, is also focused on the environmental sector.

The standards included in the ISO 14000 family which focus on environmental systems are ISO 14001, 14004, 14005 and 14006. This cluster of ISO focuses on parameters like labelling, audits, life cycle assessment and climate change.

Being in the field of green building services for the last decade or so, we as consultants are aware of most of the trends and latest changes in the industry. When US Green Building Council released March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 23

the latest version of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Version 4 rating system in the market, it altered our perception of the building material array.

It was no longer a simple approach of utilizing sustainable materials in building construction.

LEED elevated construction requirements to an altogether different dimension, which was very novel for building products from the Indian manufacturer. In other words, LEED initiated a transformation of the building products marketing by creating a cycle of consumer demand and supply of environmentally preferable products.

LEED Version 4 rating focuses on the life cycle approach, which improves the product efficiency in terms of its environmental impact. This green building rating system requires building products to have certifications like Health Product Declaration (HPD), Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C), Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) and third party verified CSR reporting associated with the manufacturer and the product supply chain.

When researched, many of these products in the international market did come with the third party certification. However, this level of environmental awareness in product certification is low in India. It was also evident that product manufacturers who came under the ‘Make in India’ category were reluctant to venture into some of the environmental certifications mentioned earlier.

Globally, the footprint of green buildings has increased considerably in the last five years. And with that the demand for more efficient materials has increased. Contrary to earlier times, buildings are no longer only energy or water conservation

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oriented, rather they are also focusing on the life cycle impact. This means the kind of materials utilized in their construction need to have the least impact on the environment when considering the life of the building.

Product manufacturers are, therefore, voluntarily getting their products tested by third party means such as EPD, HPD, C2C and C2C Gold / Platinum level. This move not only puts a pressure on a global market but also drives other stakeholders to take up responsible manufacturing trends to be on par with the global environmental norms.

As the demand for products with international certification rises, Indian products or manufacturers supplying products to the Indian market would have to comply with the certification process. It is therefore, necessary that we begin to look at building products with a fresh perspective.

The next step would be to develop a database of products which can offer great potential for the Indian construction industry.

It is also essential to get as many products as possible certified and make them available in the Indian market which will, in turn, reduce the requirement to import products with such certifications from other countries.

Sources: Approachable Certification – www.approachable. uk.com www.meadmetals.com - What exactly is ISO Certified? And why does it matter?

LEED BD+C V4 Reference guide Selvarasu M is LEED expert and IGBC Fellow and Nandana D Kumar is an EDGE auditor from Sustainable Designs

Mohan Ramanathan

India must address

C&D CHALLENGE Use of recycled construction and demolition (C&D) waste can go a long way in bringing down pressure on the country’s dwindling natural resource base and help ensure that urban development takes place without hurting the environment.

I

ndian construction industry has been growing at the rate of 10% annually over the past 10 years. Indian real estate operations are estimated to reach a market size of $180 million by 2020 and about 170 million houses are expected to be built by 2030. Such rapid urbanization puts enormous stress on the environment as there is a growing demand for natural resources such as aggregates

in the construction industry.

Generation of waste during both construction and demolition are a part of this process of urbanization. There are wide variations in the estimates of construction and demolition waste generation in India: between 112 and 700 million tonnes a year. Recycling of construction and demolition waste, one of the sustainable solutions March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 25

Overflowing for managing waste, is gaining popularity dump yards of worldwide. However, very few recycling facilities Chennai city are available in India.

Gross underestimation

The Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) has reported that the quantity of C&D waste getting generated in India is around 10 to 12 million tonnes annually. Government reports also indicate that about 12 to 15 million tonnes of C&D waste is being generated in the country every year. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has estimates that 626 million tonnes of C&D waste has been generated in a span of 8 years (2005 to 2013).

Development Alternatives (DA), an NGO, has projected a massive amount of 750 million tonnes of C&D waste generation annually in the coming years. A research paper using materials flow analysis has shown that the generation of C&D waste in India could range between 112 and 431 million tonnes. Thus, the available estimates vary to a wide extent and reliability is lacking.

Pilot Recycling Facility

One of the biggest milestones in the country’s efforts to improve C&D waste management was the setting up of a pilot recycling facility in New Delhi. Out of the 4,000 tonnes of C&D

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waste, around 2,000 TPD of waste is being dumped in corporation-run landfills. The remaining waste gets dumped in unauthorized sites such as on river beds, low lying areas and roadsides, causing several downstream issues in the city.

Anticipation of huge quantity of C&D waste generation due to enormous amount of construction activities related to hosting Common Wealth Games had led the Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC) to realize the problem of C&D waste and its impact on the environment. In an attempt to solve this problem in a sustainable manner, DMC set up a pilot C&D waste processing facility under its jurisdiction.

Lessons learnt

The project met with several obstacles, both in the C&D waste recycling process and sale of recycled products. Market acceptance of the recycled aggregates was also low. Hence, various value added products were produced and sold as finished products instead of selling C&D waste as raw material. Concrete mix was done carefully to ensure that the quality of the products was not affected because of the use of recycled aggregates which are slightly inferior in quality as compared to quarried aggregates. The taxes on finished goods such as ready-mix concrete and other pre-cast

products also influenced the economic viability of the recycled products.

Indian Concrete Institute (ICI) has organized many sensitizing workshops about C&D waste recycling along with Central Public Works Department (CPWD) and IIT Madras. The first of the workshop series was held in New Delhi with the support of the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) and included a visit to the pilot recycling facility operating in the region.

IIT Madras did one of the pioneering scientific studies on C&D waste generation in India and proved that there is gross underestimation of the generation of C&D waste at the national level. It also worked closely with several local authorities and helped them draft C&D waste management plans for their jurisdictions.

National Initiatives

The Government of India launched ‘Swacch Bharat Mission’ in 2014 with an aim to clean up streets, roads and other infrastructure of India’s cities, towns and villages. It has become one of the massive sanitation campaigns, raising awareness about issues such as open defecation, littering in the public streets etc.

‘Clean Ganga’ project of the Government of India is another notable initiative in this direction. The Government of India also launched ‘Smart Cities Mission’ (2015) to develop 100 cities that are sustainable and

citizen friendly.

Demand The work of several organizations and for aggregates professional bodies in the area of C&D waste in India recycling has led to changes in the codal provisions that had earlier prevented the use of recycled aggregates for production of concrete for construction. IS 383 (Indian Standards for specifications for coarse and fine aggregates) was revised in 2016 to include recycled aggregates also as one of the sources of coarse and fine aggregates for concrete.

Urban challenges

One of the big problems we face has to do with the sparse data we have about quantum of waste generation and its composition. Lack of proper book keeping practices about C&D waste and reliable data from the cities raise doubts about the accuracy of the estimates.

Huge volumes of waste generation demands an explicit ‘C&D Mission’ to address and improve the situation before it aggravates further. The fact that almost half of the waste being generated in the Indian urban areas is being illegally disposed is also matter of serious concern.

Composition studies done in India indicate that the proportion of soil and brick masonry debris form a major part of the C&D waste and not concrete (as shown in the Figure 3).

This is in contrast to some other Asian and March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 27

Composition European countries wherein concrete waste of C&D waste in is one of the biggest constituents. Because India of this, the business model and output of recycling facilities need to be tailored to the local conditions.

The demand for aggregates in the Indian construction sector is projected to be about 2 billion tonnes of coarse aggregates and 1.4 billion tonnes of sand (fine aggregates) by 2020 (as shown in the Figure 4). Even if we assume that about 500 million tonnes of the entire C&D waste generation in the country is recycled, it can just partially substitute the demand that exists in the sector. Hence, if C&D waste recycling is not pursued, very high amounts of domestic resource extraction is the most probable response to meeting the growing demands.

The National Green Tribunal, playing the role of a watchdog, is very active and has made it clear that the natural resource (be it in quarry or in riverbed) cannot be exploited anymore and need to be protected. Since there is a huge demand in the construction sector and a large amount of C&D waste is being generated, C&D waste recycling seems to be a sustainable solution and could potentially be a partial substitute that can alleviate several problems of society.

The cost of quarried aggregates are close to

28 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

about Rs. 50 to Rs. 60 per cft and the cost benefit analysis in the literature shows that recycled aggregates could be produced at a much lower cost than quarried aggregates, provided a pro-recycling environment exists in the urban areas. Thus, utilizing recycled products makes sense not just from the environmental point of view but also economically.

Incentives such as tax credits for recycling and recycled products, providing land and other crucial resources for setting up recycling infrastructure at low rates could help the recycling environment to thrive.

Urban authorities must take this issue seriously and their response to public actions and demands should be watched closely to improve C&D waste management within their jurisdictions. The regulatory framework has evolved quite well and are supportive.

What is lacking is strict enforcement of the regulations and readiness on the part of the people to use recycled products. The carbon footprint reduction potential of recycled aggregate use should be factored into the equations while proposing incentives and other mechanisms to boost the recycling industry.

Mohan Ramanathan is a well-known demolition expert and President, Indian Demolition Association (IDA)

High strength cement !

Crack-free concrete !

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 29

Dharati Sote-Wankhade

CEMENT MORTAR AND READY-TO-USE MORTAR SLURRY Wet slurry has less resource consumption and has more recycling properties. It helps to eliminate inaccurate site mixing, reduces labour and increases material efficiency with lower resource consumption and environmental impact.

30 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

T

he assessment of environmental impact of materials is a crucial step in construction industry for sustainable development. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) plays a major role in the selection of building materials based on their properties and their impact on environment. The LCA takes into account the materials’ environmental impact during all their life, ie. ‘from cradle to grave’, considering many basic parameters, such as the Gross Energy Requirement (GER), the Global Warming Potential (GWP), the Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP), the Acidification Potential (AP), etc. Unfortunately, this approach is rarely applied in the actual building design process due to its complexity, poor consensus on the weighing system and difficulty in quantifying all the mentioned parameters (Sandrolini, 2010).

The objective of this study is to quantify embodied energy, water consumption, waste category, temperature required in production, and solidification involved in cement mortar and ready-to-use slurry used for bonding of masonry material. The consumption of waste, waste generation, temperature and solidification of mix, etc., depends on properties of the ingredients and mix-design ratios. The embodied energy is defined as the energy consumed for the production of a material from the raw materials extraction and transportation, the manufacturing process and the transportation to the building site, up to the construction, demolition and recycling (Sandrolini, 2010).

Mortar

Mortars are bonding materials that integrate brick, clay or concrete into a masonry wall, binding the masonry units into a single element.

Mortars are supposed to be strong, durable and capable of keeping the wall intact. Mortars also create a water-resistant barrier. The basic mortar ingredients include cement, hydrated lime, sand and water and it determines mortar type and performance.

Since the 1950s, the mineral binder within the mortar has gradually changed from lime to cement as a result of the easy availability of Portland cement. In order to improve the properties and performance, small quantity of liquid dispersion and plasticizer are also added to the mix. However, due to shortage of skilful workers and an increase in complexity of material applications, job-site mortar technology is not able to adequately meet March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 31

4 5 7

3 8 14 6 10 2

9

1

the demand for achieving specific performance and consistent quality requirements (MIA, 2018).

Consequently, with the development and availability of new chemical additives in powdery form, the dry-mix mortar technology is invented to overcome the deficiency of the job-site mixed mortars. Factory premixed dry mortars ensure binders, fillers and chemical additives of known quality are blended exactly in desired ratio, thus ensuring a high degree of product performance and consistency (MIA, 2013), (MIA, 2018).

Ready-to-use mortar slurry A case of build fast

Build Fast is manufactured by simple mixing of fillers and binders such as fly ash/bottom ash, silica (quarry dust/recycled foundry silica), emulsified resin, additives such as pH stabilizers, coalescent, thickening agents etc., and water in a simple mixer at room temperature. The raw materials are essentially sourced from graded industrial wastes and mixed at room temperature with polymers and water and additives and no effluents are generated and no emissions are created during this process.

The product is a wet mix slurry /composite, which is unloaded by gravity in 25 kg and supplied

32 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

13

DRY MIX

12

11

1. Sand feeding 2. Sand dryer 3. Bucket elevator 4. Sieve for several 5. particle sizes 6. 4-chamber sand silo 7. Sand batcher 8. Binder silo 9. Binder batcher 10. Additives “dose and blow“ 11. High turbulence mixer 12. Dry mix mortar pump 13. Bag filling 14. Palletizing 15. Bulk shipping

Table 3: Environmental impacts of Material mixes Sr. No. 1

Parameters

Cement mortar

Unit

Ready-to-use slurry

Weight

Density of material Kg/m³ 2200'

1500"

2

Embodied energy

Total consumption of energy from the extraction of raw MJ/Kg 1.1' materials until the finished product

4.74"

3

Water consumption

Liters/ 5 Kg

0.3 (consumed in product)"

4

Waste category Landfill

Landfill Landfill

Recycled as raw material"

5

Temperature

6

Temperature requirement in production

°C

Solidification

in ready-to-use status for bonding masonry walls.

The sealed material remains intact in bags for at least 120 days and, while using, the remaining material can be repacked and reused for further 15 to 20 days.

Comparison of Impact

In ready-to-use slurry, 70 to 80% ingredients used are industrial waste, which actually is redirected from landfills and used in production of wet slurry at factories. Table 1 shows the quantification of embodied energy, water consumption, waste category, temperature required in production and solidification for cement mortar and ready-to-use wet slurry, which helps in the comparative analysis for selection of material.

The Embodied energy involved in material is seen higher for ready-to-use slurry mortar due to use of resin material which are the only virgin materials in the product. While, fillers that contribute to approximate 70% to 80% are not virgin materials but industrial by-product which is thrown away or, say, needs to be arrested in the interest of environment The water used in ready-to-use slurry mortar production is consumed in slurry and there is no need to add water at the construction site before

Portland Cement – 1400 - 1500*

Ambient temperature"

Fillers and binders react with Portland Cement each other due to increase in Reacts with water pH concentration when water in a hydrating evaporates and forms solid process polymer matrix"

using the product. While in cement mortar, water and additives are added as per the requirements of design-mix proportion at the construction site.

The water used for washing machinery in factory is recycled and used again in the process. So, overall consumption of potable water in the product is very minimal in one cycle of manufacturing process.

The production of ready-to-use slurry mortar is at ambient temperature, thus eliminating any heating/ cooling activity and saving fuel. The cement mortar mostly goes to landfill at the end of life or after demolition. But, ready-to-use slurry mortar can be recycled completely and used as raw material in the next manufacturing process of product.

From this assessment and comparison of cement mortar and ready-to-use slurry mortar, it can be seen that wet slurry has less resource consumption and has more recycling properties.

It helps to eliminate inaccurate site mixing, reduces labour and increases material efficiency with lower resource consumption and environmental impact.

Dharati Sote is Assistant professor at MKSSS’s Dr. B. N. College of Architecture for Women, Karvenagar, Pune, India.

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 33

Exterior walls

Walls protect buildings, Let’s protect the walls

They are not just something that neighbours admire. More crucially, they protect your buildings!

Why water-proof exterior walls?

Exterior Walls are constantly exposed to changing weather conditions, which impact not just the paint but also result in cracks in the substrate. Exterior paints applied over the walls only add to their aesthetic appeal and can hardly resist the impact of rain and heat. Therefore, it is important not just to paint the exterior wall, but protect it too.

Why coatings?

The word ‘coating’ indicates that it is protective in nature, while paint implies aesthetics. A coating film with higher thickness, flexibility and breathable properties is much tougher compared to any conventional paint film and provides complete protection to structure from natural elements for a prolonged period.

This heavy duty film forming coatings create a protective layer on the exterior surface to protect it from moisture and as well as regular wear and tear. This coating system will prevent the ingress of water and give a decorative finish to the exteriors with excellent crack bridging ability. Penetrative primer coating in this system will seal the pores in plaster/concrete and suppress the alkalinity of the surface and making it efflorescence resistant.

An ideal waterproofing coating for exterior wall is a combination of film forming and penetrative coating.

DR. Fixit is introducing a breakthrough proposition in exterior coating “waterproof the wall before painting” with Dr. Fixit Raincoat Water Proofing Coating as undercoat with Dr.Fixit Primeseal as Primer and Dr.Fixit Raincoat Classic or Dr.Fixit Raincoat Select as Top coat.

This system is aligned with the present construction practice like usage of M-Sand etc., which will give assured protection in terms of waterproofing, anti-algae and anti-fungal properties with excellent crack bridging properties.

Products are available at all major paint and hardware outlets across the country.

34 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 35

Sibil Mathai

for lightweight construction T

he new era construction is nothing but a whole lot of inventions, combined together for better performance of the project. New methodologies have paved the way for innovations in design as well as material selection criteria. Quest for lighter materials has always been a priority for researchers as construction work involves mainly manual labour. The size of the sections of various components depend on the load of masonry

36 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

walls as well. Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) blocks are something of a revolutionary solution for many big challenges in construction.

General properties

AAC blocks are light weight, high-insulating and a very good load bearing building material and its durability is comparatively higher. They are much lighter than the red bricks. The flexibility and

Technical Specification of AAC Blocks and Clay Bricks Property

Units

AAC Block

Clay Brick

Size

mm

600 x 200 x (75 to 300),

230 x 75 x 115

Size Tolerance

mm

± 1.5

± 05 to 15

Compressive Strength

N/mm 2

3 – 4.5 (IS 2185 part 3)

2.5 to 3.5

Normal Dry Density

Kg / m 3

550 – 650

1800

Sound Reduction Index

Db

45 for 200 mm Thick Wall

50 for 230 mm Thick Wall

Fire Resistance

Hrs.

2 to 6 (Depending on Thickness)

2

Thermal Conductivity “K”

W / m-k

0.16 – 0.18

0.81

Drying Shrinkage

%

0.04% (Size of block)

-

workability and its higher resistance to fire and sound makes it unique from other materials. AAC increases the quality of any building and also reduces the cost and time of construction. Buildings constructed with AAC blocks are more reliable and safer under seismic conditions since the effect of earthquake is directly proportionate to the weight of the building. Handling and manipulation of AAC block is very easy even with an ordinary wood cutting tool.

Joints are the weaker part of any masonry. More the joints, the more weak would be the structure.

Continuous joints can lead to vertical cracks that can be vulnerable. The AAC blocks reduce joints in masonry since it comes in larger sizes.

Moisture resistance

Moisture resistance of AAC blocks is another property that needs to be highlighted. Sources of dampness, either external or internal, can always be a cause of damage. Internal source could be the condensation caused by humidity. External sources includes ground water percolation, rain, etc. Condensation usually takes place on the wall surface and also inside the walls. The macro pore (small air bubbles evenly distributed throughout the material) structure of AAC blocks reduces the

water absorption to a larger extend.

Environment

The main mix of AAC blocks contains lime, sand, cement and water with a bit of rising agents.

These materials are mixed and moulded and autoclaved under heat and pressure to create unique characteristics. AAC is a non-toxic product. It doesn't pollute air, water or land in any way. The waste generated during manufacture is recycled and mixed with fresh materials and used again for manufacturing. The volume of the finished product is more than three times the volume of the raw materials used for its manufacturing. It is thus resource efficient and the minimal consumption of energy makes it energy efficient too.

Autoclaving

The blocks are placed in an autoclave chamber for 12 hours. This is a steam hardening process, inducing pressure and temperature up to 190 degree Celsius. Once the pressure hits 8-12 bars, quartz sand reacts with calcium hydroxide forming calcium silicate hydrate. This gives the block high strength. AAC blocks are classified as light weight concrete blocks, as the temperature used for the manufacturing them is relatively low. The March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 37

Comparison between AAC Blocks and Clay Brick Parameter

AAC Block

Clay Bricks

Structural Cost

Steel saving upto 15%

No such saving

Cement Mortar for Plaster & Masonry

Requires less amounts due to flat, even surfaces & less number of joints

Requires more amounts due to irregular surface and more number of joints.

Breakage

Less than 5%

Average 10 to 12 %

Construction speed

Speedy construction due to its big size, Comparatively slow lightweight & ease to cut in any size or shape

Quality

Uniform & Consistent

Normally varies

Fitting & Chasing

All kind of fitting and chasing possible

All kind of fitting and chasing possible

Carpet Area

More due to less thickness of walling material

Comparatively low

Availability

Anytime

Shortage in monsoon

Energy Saving

Approx. 30% reduction in airconditioned load

No such saving

Chemical Composition

Sand/Flyash used around 60 – 70 % which reacts with Lime & Cement to form AAC

Soil is used which contains many inorganic impurities like sulphates etc. resulting in efflorescence

autoclaved product is good for immediate use at the site.

Strength

The average strength of an AAC block is 3-4.5 N/mm3. It is 25% stronger than other products of the same density. Roughly 80% of the volume of the block is air depending on the density. It can carry approximately 50% of the compressive load of regular concrete.

Finishes

The manufacturing process ensures perfect dimensions permitting direct POP application on the internal walls. This reduces the cost of plastering.

Origin

The Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) material was developed in 1924 in Sweden. It has become one of the most used building materials in Europe and is rapidly growing in popularity in many other countries around the world. It is now available in India too. Various brands are now manufacturing AAC blocks and it is now readily available in the market.

38 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

March 2020 | Construction | 39 Contact Us: +91 8281088729 / +91Philosophy 9447180911

Suresh Lal S.D.

Solar panels that radiate aesthetics Rooftop solar plants never merge aesthetically with the rest of buildings.

Solar roofing tiles became a reality when architects and designers began looking for new designs that would help harness energy without compromising on aesthetics.

S

olar based building materials are not new.

The technology for converting solar energy to electricity is a very old technique. We are aware that due to the extensive presence of solar power stations in Kerala, the State has been able to reduce power cuts. During day time, the solar power fed to the electrical grids helps ease the load on the hydroelectric power plants. This enables the State to maintain a safe level of water in the dams.

For decades, we were not able to utilize non-conventional energy resources like solar or wind energy effectively. Due to the popularity of the petroleum industry and later due to the strong influence of the petroleum cartel which discouraged innovative research in non-conventional energy, this branch has not developed to its full extent. The scenario is slowly beginning to change and current research is concentrated more on

40 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

clean energies like solar, tidal, wind, and biomass.

Utilization of solar energy has been incorporated in the Building Codes of many categories of structures. In KMBR (Kerala Municipal Building Rules), there is a statutory provision for the installation of roof top solar power units if the building is more than 500 sq. meter in plinth area. It stipulates that 5% of the total power consumption should be sourced from roof top solar plants.

Visible from a long distance, roof top solar plants, however, are a real eyesore. These units never merge aesthetically with the rest of the building no matter what the structure. As a result, architects and designers began looking for new designs that would make them appear an integral part of the building. However, the shape, the sloping angle, the colour and other aspects of the solar panels were never able to match the rest of the

Fig. 5. Value study and workshop steps

building. A breakthrough idea came about that if the solar units were made an integral part of the roof structure, it could solve the above-mentioned issue to some extent. This was how solar roofing tiles and structures evolved as a product.

In certain situations, the conventional solar panel itself could be used in place of the roofing sheet. By incorporating appropriate support structures like trusses along with the required slope

and roof pattern, it could be made to look aesthetic without compromising function or physical strength and remaining water tight. Nevertheless such roofs could never provide the rustic look of the traditional tile since the surface pattern of the latter was what made it so charming and a favorite choice of many.

Even though patents had been taken on the concept of integrated solar roofing tiles from March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 41

2007, it did not work out as a successful model for a long time and it was confined to the laboratory.

It never made it to mainstream use.

But times have changed and technological requirements have also changed. Natural calamities and related occurrences have also become very common in recent years. So people and governments have started to tighten rules so that construction of buildings are mandated to incorporate eco-friendly products. Today, a lot of the innovative materials that have become popular in the construction industry have done so because of their eco-friendly attributes.

The dependence on fossil fuels to generate energy for vehicles is also going to get reduced in the future. It is based on this premise that Tesla, an American company, concentrated on developing clean energy for running vehicles, and for operating household appliances.

In 2016, they started producing solar roofing tiles and gradually progressed to glass. Toughened glass with a rough surface can appear like natural slate.

Specially patented conductive joining compounds developed by Tesla allow the excess elec-

42 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

Tesla, the American carmaker, started producing solar roofing tiles and gradually progressed to glass. Toughened glass with a rough surface can appear like natural slate.

tricity that is generated from the solar tiles to pass on to the nearest tapping point in the grid, after the household needs are met.

Tesla's solar roof tiles come in several patterns like smooth, textured, slate and Tuscan. Cost wise, it is still quite steep for the common man - a square foot of the solar tile could cost Rs. 1,000 – Rs. 1,500. But the company gives a 25-year warranty.

Designed for new roofs or roofs that need to be replaced, the third generation of Tesla's solar roof tile today, comes with a separate roof-mounted solar system and features improved power density which means 50% fewer solar tiles are needed, bringing the cost down too.

In India, many companies have started manufacturing solar film impregnated roof tiles which are mainly used with Mangalore pattern clay tile with costs averaging Rs. 250 per sq. foot. Bangalore based ANU Solar Power Pvt. Ltd is one such company.

These solar roof tiles look much better than any contemporary roof tile. In addition to their aesthetic appeal, they also harness solar energy to power homes, thereby reducing dependence on conventional power supply. Costs will come down in due course of time.

If every home produced electricity, it could be a great achievement for the future. It would not only be a clean source of energy but we would be utilizing a source that was wasted all these years.

Secondly, power failures can be avoided and, in the event of natural calamities, we could still be connected. Finally, the very expensive and very risky conventional system of electricity transmission can be lightened.

Image copy rights to Tesla & Anu Solar Suresh Lal S.D. is founder of Civiltalents.com

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 43

Sibin Sabu

MUD MUD BRICKS BRICKS FROM FROM FLOOD FLOOD DEPOSITS DEPOSITS

44 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

M

ud bricks have several advantages over other conventional building materials in that they are naturally available, are simple to manufacture, are inexpensive and perform quite well under hot environmental conditions.

After the 2018 flood in Kerala, massive deposits of waste and clayey soil from the landslides accumulated in fields, wells, roads and over land that needed to be cleared before people could resume their life and activities. The sheer volume of these deposits and the herculean efforts needed to dispose that instigated student from the Marian College of Architecture and Planning in Thiruvananthapuram to think of a way the mud could be used as raw material for construction.

For the study, different types of blocks were prepared from soil taken from the Periyar area where most of the deposit had occurred. These were subjected to tests to find how strong the soil was and whether it was possible to make improvements to it to increase its durability. In the process, the endeavour would offer an effective means of disposing the mud accumulated by the flood.

After the soil samples from Periyar were collected, it was made into blocks and burnt in the kiln. On testing for compressive strength, it didn't show adequate strength as expected due to the higher percentage of organic content. The burning of the rich organic matter in the mud blocks was creating voids since the organic matter also got burned during the process in the kiln and the soil proved to be only medium in strength.

It was clear that by itself it didn't have enough strength to be used for construction work. However, if it was reinforced with any natural or artificial stabilizers there was a possibility. Hence, the soil samples were mixed with different natural and artificial additives to find out which produced the best strength. Fibres like coir and jute were chosen as natural additives while cement was selected as the artificial additive.

Preparation of the fibres

Coir and jute were chosen for the reason that

they were easily available as natural materials and both had very low moisture content. Five strands each of the fibres were picked and the average diameter of the jute fibre was found to be 0.1 mm and that of coir 0.2 mm. Jute strands were relatively thinner and found to break off easily as compared to coir fibres.

The fibres were then mixed with the soil in a specific proportion to get the maximum strength.

They were first cut into uniform pieces (stapled form) in a defined ratio depending on the diameter of the strands. The l/d (length/breadth) ratio for coir fibre was 80 and that of jute fibre was 45.

Therefore the jute and coir fibres were cut into 5 cm and 1.6 cm long pieces respectively, to satisfy the l/d ratio of these fibres.

Blocks made from this soil reinforced with the fibres were then subjected separately to tests for compressive strength and total water absorption.

The results of these tests to evaluate their strength and durability as construction blocks are shown in the figures.

With the addition of fibres, the soil showed an improvement in compressive strength. In the case of the soil mixed with coir, the mix was found to show maximum strength when 1 percent coir was added. In the case of the soil mixed with jute, the maximum strength was achieved with an addition of 1.5 percent of jute.

Once the ratio of the mud to the fibre was fixed, the next step was to take a proportionate mix of soil and jute/coir fibre such that each individual block after mixing weighed 3.5 kg. It was then shaped into moulds before sun drying.

The results of the tests done on the fibre reinforced blocks are shown in the figure below. It was clear that the strength and durability of the block increased with the addition of an optimum amount of fibre. The fibres helped to fix the pores in the moulded brick consequently reducing the level of water absorption of the block compared to other mixes.

Compared to normal burnt brick it was found that the block with cement as a stabilizer showed

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 45

Unconfined Compressive strength(kg/cm2 Sil Type/Mix

Unconfined Compressive Strength kgcm2

The Soil As such

0.632

Soil with 1.0% coir

0.934

Soil with 1.5% jute

0.989

Compaction test for mud-coir mix Percent of Coir

Maximu Dry Density (g/cc)

Optimum Moisture Content %

0.0%

23.2

1.49

0.5*

22.1

1.56

1.0%

20.1

1.63

1.5%

22.8

1.53

Compaction test for mud-jute mix Percent of jute

46 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

Maximu Dry Density (g/cc)

Optimum Moisture Content %

0.0%

23.2

1.49

0.5*

22.1

1.56

1.0%

20.1

1.63

1.5%

22.8

1.53

2.0%

20.3

1.50

Test Conducted

Obtained Value

Natural Water Content

Water Content Percent

62%

Specific Gravity

Density Bottle Method

2.53

Percent of clay-size Particles

66%

Percent of slit size particles

34%

liquid limit

70%

Plastic Limit

28%

plasticity index

42%

Optimum Moisture Content

23.2%

Hydrometer Analysis

Atterberg limits

Compaction Test

Maximu dry density

1.49

UCC value

0.632kg/cm (medium strngth Category IS Standards)

Shear Strngth

0.316 kg/cm2

Unconfined compressive strngth

Tests conducted on fibre reinforced block from flood deposits Dry comressive strength test

Block

Load applied (N)

Water absorption test

Dry Water compres- Dry weight Wet weight of moulded of moulded absorbtion sive 2 brick in kg brick in kg (%) (N/nm strength

Avarage value noted out ofthree experiments in each case Block using soil from Periyar+ 1% coir

80.50

3.15

1.45

1.84

27.03

Block using soil from Periyar+ 1.5% Jute

100.33

4.34

1.52

1.82

19.69

Block using soil from Periyar +5% Jute

155.33

6.00

1.96

2.32

18.17

higher strength (6.008 N/mm2). The strength of jute (4.34 N/mm2) and coir (3.15 N/mm2) was found lesser than cement. However, jute had better strength when compared to coir. It was also found that water absorption was least in the block with cement (18.17%) when compared to the

2

block with the jute (19.69%) or coir (27.03%).

The study showed that blocks made from the flood deposit by itself did not have sufficient strength to be used as a construction material and it required to be reinforced with some stabilizer, natural or artificial. The addition of fibres to the soil deposit, at a certain proportion, increased its compressive strength.

Another inference from the study was that the quality (in construction) of a clay-rich soil depended on the organic matter present in it. Lesser the organic matter, more the quality and strength of the block. Likewise, greater the percentage of organic matter, lesser would be the quality and strength of the block.

In addition, the research provides a waste disposal solution for the massive amounts of clay that was deposited in the aftermath of the 2018 Kerala floods while providing a cost-effective means to develop a building block that has enough strength for construction. From a sustainability point of view as well, using flood deposits for construction is an efficient method of recycling waste.

Sibin Sabu is student, Marian College of Architecture and Planning, Thiruvananthapuram

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 47

Aravind Mohan

Self-Healing

Concrete A

study by two Indian Universities on concrete embedded with bacteria provides promising results to overcome the problem of cracks in concrete.

Mankind has been seeking immortality since time immemorial. We not only desire to live eternally but also want to possess materials that are long lasting. It is in this quest that we started developing stronger and tougher materials and technologies. Gradually, earthen pots were replaced by ceramic pots and finally by indestructible plastic. Some of the transformations have been useful for humanity but others, like plastic, have turned out to be quite harmful.

The evolution of construction industry tells a similar story. Though the purpose was to provide shelter from natural calamities, it has evolved into tall, deep and wide fancy structures. Every engineer dreams of building a structure which will last many lifetimes, hoping it will help them make their mark in history.

Even though technology has not evolved enough to be able to predict the exact lifetime of a structure, many landmark structures have stood their ground against some of the worst of nature’s fury. Egypt’s Pyramids, the Roman Col-

48 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

osseum and Pantheon and Ingalls Building in Ohio, US, are a few examples.

They swore by Concrete. They built for eternity: Gunter Grass The story of concrete is so ancient that we don’t even know when and where it began. Today, the world is filled with concrete, from bridges and roads to tall structures. The earliest known usage of concrete is in the form of limestone, dating back 12,000 years to Gobekli Temple in modern day Turkey.

Much later, around 2,500 B.C., the Egyptians mixed mud, straw and lime to make a kind of concrete and used it in their pyramid building.

From then to now concrete has proved its might and worth every time. As more and more materials are being tested and added to concrete to improve its performance and durability, the quest continues to identify newer compositions that will make concrete better.

Even with all these endeavors, we still hear about cracks in bridges, dams and public buildings. Why only talk about public buildings? Look around your own neighborhood, and you will see cracks in almost all concrete structures around you, patched up with putty or gypsum, or left

open for a banyan sprig to sprout from.

Research in concrete technology have yielded various types of concrete like cellular concrete, air-entrained concrete, self-compacting concrete and so on. However, hardly any research has focused on the basic reason behind the failure of concrete structures - cracks.

Cracks in concrete are inevitable because it is one of the intrinsic deficiencies of concrete.

Moisture and other undesirable salts seep into concrete through these cracks initiating corrosion in the reinforcement and reducing their life.

The only way to circumvent costly, manual maintenance and repair is to incorporate an autonomous, self -healing mechanism into concrete.

Giving Life to Concrete

Similar to the physiology of the human body, if there was a component inside concrete structure that could heal the cracks by itself, similar to how fractures heal naturally with the help of osteoblast cells in humans, it could be the basis of research into an innovative new concrete called self-healing concrete. Called so, because it is almost like giving life to concrete.

The concept of self-healing paved the way for the discovery of several materials which can be broadly classified into four types: • Embedded Healing Agents • Microvascular Materials • Shape Memory Materials • Reversible Polymers Bacterial concrete is a type of embedded healing agent that is sustainable in nature based on the novel technique of bio-mineralization of bacteria inside concrete. This technique is highly desirable and sustainable because the mineral precipitation induced as a result of microbial activities is pollution free, natural and economical.

Researchers experimented with various bacterial colonies and proposed different types of bacterial concrete.

Along with colleagues at Amrita University, Coimbatore, and in collaboration with the Kerala Agricultural University, Mannuthy, an attempt was made to study a type of bacterial concrete by using the bacteria Bacillus Subtilis. Bacillus Subtilis is a soil bacterium found in grass or hay, as well as in our intestinal tract. A pure culture of this bacteria was isolated and cultured, and a controlled dosage of the cultured bacteria was added to the concrete during the mixing to produce bacterial concrete.

When a suitable medium with calcium source was provided, calcite was precipitated by the bacteria leading to a crystalline cell formation, eventually plugging all the fractures and cracks inside the concrete.

This being a preliminary level study as part of an undergraduate project, the primary focus was only on certain aspects of concrete like its strength, performance, workability and durability. Additionally, this study was intended to analyse the properties of fresh and hardened bacterial concrete that included a serial dilution test, a detailed analysis of its microstructure by Scanning Electron Microscope, the acid durability study, corrosion test and a fire resistance test.

The results were promising and it could provide avenues for further research.

The development of self-healing concrete opens up a plethora of applications and solves many of our routine problems with the material like the maintenance cost of concrete structures, especially in public buildings.

In addition to adding to lifetime, bacterial concrete can be useful in underground structures and retaining walls in critical locations where frequent maintenance is tough or impossible. It can also be utilized in durable and heavy structures like bridges, dams and extensive government buildings where maintenance and rework can be reduced. In short, the possibilities are unlimited and our researchers are still identifying new avenues for its application.

The research into self-healing concrete has led to a new class of intelligent construction materials, and the autonomous sensing and healing of fractures and crack repairs have opened up new possibilities in material design, including indestructability.

At the time of this project in 2010, we could hardly find any reference or publication related to the subject but now there is a substantial amount of research on it. From the current scientific progress, it is evident that self-healing concrete is the product of today.

It was a common bricklayer, Joseph Aspdin who, by stealing limestone bricks from paved roads, developed a cement mixture of his own.

He became the founder of Portland cement.

Similarly, research on the subject remains wide open for anyone to pursue and develop the next generation of intelligent construction material.

Aravind Mohan is Founder and Director, Archelite Construction Service, Hyderabad

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 49

Bhupinder Singh

For Digital Twins, Openness Wins Bentley Systems has made one of its most innovative technology available as an open source.Here's why

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W

hat if you could wave a magic wand and eliminate all the time and effort that you and your organization spent on transforming data, integrating data, and aggregating data? What if you could spend your time instead on generating insights and helping your team make decisions that can save you money and reduce risks?

When I began my career, our industry was going through the digital transformation of computer aided design or CAD, which was taking what we were doing on paper and moving it to the computer. The next disruption happened when the industry moved from CAD to building information modelling or what is known as BIM. Now, our industry is advancing beyond BIM to infrastructure digital twins, what we refer to as iTwins. These iTwins bring in the missing dimensions of context—the physical characteristics of where the asset is on the planet, the dimension of time (nothing is static in our world), as well as other types of data such as Internet of Things (IoT) and operational data. We have gone from a document-centric workflow to model-centric workflows.

And now, in the era of the digitally built environment, the next logical step is the move to data-centric workflows.

We are collectively becoming data-driven enterprises, and the organizations that are going to succeed are going to be those that can convert data into actionable information and maximize its value over the asset lifecycle.

Infrastructure data can benefit from network effects. This means that the more the people who use data, have access to the data and contribute to the data, the more valuable the data becomes.

Therefore, openness and connectedness are going to be the enablers for maximizing the value of data, allowing network effects to thrive in the infrastructure ecosystem at large.

The objective, therefore should be to capture data coming from different sources like engineer-

ing technology (ET), information technology (IT), and operational technology (OT) and bring it together where it can be viewed through a single pane of glass.

We have been speaking to many practitioners to understand the barriers that stand in the way of achieving this and one of the primary challenges in orchestrating this data aggregation has been the time and effort involved in transforming and aligning proprietary and incompatible data formats.

What is needed to solve this problem is an open platform that can extract all these different types of information and integrate them seamlessly. It is not just Bentley Systems that recognizes the need for an open framework for infrastructure digital twins.

In a paper titled ‘The Gemini Principles,’ the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) identifies “openness” as the central principle for achieving “effective information management of the built environment.” Their conclusion is that open source and collaborative models build trust, reduce costs, and create value better than any other approach.

For a digital twin platform to be ‘open’, we at Bentley think that it must meet three primary criteria. First—it must be vendor neutral with regard to the applications being used. Meaning, it should not matter whether the applications used are from Bentley or from any other vendors such as Autodesk, Graphisoft, Hexagon, Trimble or Aveva. The system needs to be able to extract all this information and make it available in an open context.

Second, the system must be open to where the files are located. It should not be expected that all the data that you need to work with should be in one homogenous, structured space or monolithic database. Connectors can be built to go find the data from where the data lives.

Third, the system must be open in terms of the seMarch 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 51

mantics of the data, with the possibility to take data in its native format and should be flexible enough to be opened in a standard format where the information can be queried, interrogated, and integrated.

In June 2019, Bentley Systems released version 1.0 of the iModel.js platform on GitHub. iModel. js is an open source platform for creating, visualizing, and analyzing infrastructure digital twins. iModel.js is open, flexible and built for the cloud, web and mobile world we live in today. It establishes an open platform for you and your supply chain to build upon and to connect so that you are able to derive value from the infrastructure digital twins across all your workflows. iModel.js is written using modern cloud and web technologies and is available for building your own solutions to visualize and connect with the rest of the digital world.

You might be wondering why Bentley is willing to take its most innovative and latest technology and make it available as open source. We have done this because we have a fundamental belief

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that, in the long-run, an open system will be more successful in creating a thriving digital twin ecosystem for infrastructure.

Complex infrastructure projects can only benefit from a thriving, open and interconnected ecosystem of data. Data should flow freely—in and out of infrastructure digital twins, and it should be transparent and easily understandable by users. We believe it should also be easy to develop workflows that access and take advantage of the data within digital twins.

The potential for infrastructure digital twins is truly unlimited, and openness will be a prerequisite for delivering digital twins that will advance our industry beyond BIM. It will help us derive greater insights during design and construction and ultimately deliver more sustainable and resilient infrastructure during operations. In other words, for digital twins, openness wins.

Bhupinder Singh is Chief Product Officer, Bentley Systems

SNIPPET

Cloud Collaboration Cloud collaboration is a new technology used in civil engineering and the tool is named as base stone. Base stone system allows the remote sharing of real time data on a construction site. It is predominantly a review tool for civil engineers and architects which digitises the drawing review process on construction projects. It allows for better collaboration.

The cloud-based collaboration tool is focused on the installation of everything from steel beams to light fittings. The system is used to add “snags”, issues that happen during construction, on to pdfs, then users can mark or add notes through base stone. Trials have revealed possible cost-savings of around 60 per cent compared with traditional paper-based review methods.

Letter to the Editor

Impressive performance A civil engineer is always on the lookout for the latest trends in the construction industry. Given the pace at which the industry has changed in recent times, it's all the more important to update oneself. This magazine correctly bridges that gap. It has something for everyone- be it a student, a professional or a teacher.

When it comes to practical aspects of civil engineering, this magazine helped me gain knowledge from experienced professionals. It has helped me a lot in gaining insights into what's trending. This magazine has meet a major need of the hour! I have a suggestion: it would be good to feature a question and answer segment or some fun puzzles/quizzes related to civil engineering industry to appeal to a younger audience. It would be good to feature student leaders/columns. Kudos CP! Best wishes for you to soar higher!

Neeraja N. Assistant Professor Civil Engineering Department FISAT

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 53

Dr. Christine Lemaitre

Sustainable construction in Germany, DGNB shows the way DGNB

or the German Sustainable Building Council, a non-profit organization in Germany, has been promoting a holistic concept to construction by more than simple, sustainable practices.

Similar to sustainability, the definition of green building varies widely around the world. For the DGNB or the German Sustainable Building Council, sustainable building means much more than creating a green façade or incorporating energy efficiency into the design.

With around 1,200 members, this non-profit or-

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ganization is Europe's largest network for sustainable construction and it has, through its academy, trained new experts in sustainable building practices in roughly 40 countries worldwide. As of now, more than 3500 people from over 40 countries have received official qualifications as experts in sustainable building through the DGNB Academy.

Since its foundation in 2007, it has insisted on a more holistic understanding of sustainability that affects not just the environment or the people but the economy as well. It is with this in mind that the DGNB has developed a certification system for

buildings, interiors and districts which promotes climate protection and the responsible use of resources.

The sustainability pillars

Central to DGNB’s holistic approach is a triad that includes the environmental aspect, the economic aspect and the sociocultural or functional aspects. This means, in addition to some of the most common ecological concerns like reducing carbon footprint and avoiding the use of toxic substances that cause pollution, responsible practices

even in resource extraction are taken into consideration.

While achieving environmental sustainability, care is also taken to ensure that cost of the products used in the construction, calculated over its entire life cycle, are kept to a minimum. All these factors are kept in mind along with careful consideration of the well-being of the people using the building or living in it. Sustainability can only be spoken of when all of these qualities come together in all the stages, including the planning phase, during construction and when the building is in use.

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Unlike other rating systems for green buildings, the DGNB's concept is modelled along these lines and, since 2009, it has been using certification to optimize the performance of a building. The manner in which sustainability goals are to be achieved is left to the building owners and planners, encouraging innovations and new thinking. In this sense, there is no direct product recommendation in the DGNB certification. The sustainability of a product will always depend on the context in which it is used. Following universal checklists is restrictive to inventive ways of thinking.

A building’s life cycle

Another cornerstone of the DGNB's understanding of sustainability is the life cycle concept, which implies that a building should not only be conceived in the planning and construction phase but rather over its entire life cycle. It starts with the manufacturing of the products used in the construction, and their ecological footprint. This is where the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, as part of the DGNB certification, comes into play.

Product declarations such as Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) ensure there is a transparent comparison of the environmental impact of each individual building material. It continues with the maintenance of the building and includes the expenses for cleaning, maintenance and modernization that the building will undergo over time. Many of these costs can be calculated in advance and kept low with the appropriate techniques during the construction. It goes even further to the dismantling stage of the building, so that only materials that can be recycled are used.

This aspect is also addressed in the DGNB system.

It is very clear that sustainability in buildings does not end with construction and commissioning. Rather, to be able to actually exploit the sustainability potential created in any new building, practical assistance and consistent monitoring of the actual consumption values ​​are required. For this reason, the DGNB has developed its own unique system for buildings in operation, which helps those involved in the operation or function of the building including owners, portfolio owners and building managers to achieve end-to-end sustainability.

Climate Protection and Circular Economy

Scientific evidence has long warned that carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced as quickly as possible and natural resources conserved. These issues have increasingly found its way into political

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decisions. However, what is essential are climate protection strategies and measures that can result in a circular economy.

An important aspect of DGNB is that it has recognized the critical role of the construction industry in climate protection. For instance, the construction and operation of buildings is responsible for up to 40% of the total greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and the sector consumes one third of global resources. Therefore, ingrained in the DGNB are systems to tackle climate protection and the circular economy.

The basic premise is that fewer the carbon dioxide emissions throughout the life cycle, including in the making of the building materials used, during construction, transportation as well as in the deconstruction of the structure, the better the end result. Circular economy refers to minimizing losses within the building and material cycles so that they are available for future generations, without much loss in function or value. By this, we are hoping that no more natural resources will be needed or at the least our dependence on natural resources can be kept to a minimum.

In addition to environment protection building norms, DGNB works intensely on the premise that carbon dioxide emissions can be saved, particularly in the operation of buildings through the import and on-site production of renewable energy as well as by using various optimisation techniques on the building substance and by using sophisticated system technology. For instance, buildings that make use of previously used materials or projects that need no or less building materials are awarded a circular economy bonus.

As part of an operational optimisation, a climate protection roadmap has been drawn up by the DGNB with the goal of achieving ‘carbon-neutrality by 2050’, if not earlier. It defines specific optimisation measures over time that will ensure that buildings produce zero carbon emissions by the turn of the century.

In 2019, the DGNB started recognising buildings as ‘climate-positive’ for their carbon-neutral operation. This means that these buildings have saved more carbon dioxide emissions than they had consumed. It must be understood that even though the construction industry consumes one third of global resources, there are also plenty of cost effective ways to reduce emissions through energy efficiency or the use of renewable energy.

The DGNB systems for buildings, interiors and districts also provide information on the extent to which the principle of the circular economy

has been put into practice. On the one hand, it is about minimising the resources used, or selecting them based on their origin and composition with the least environmental impact. On the other hand, a more structured and unmixed method is encouraged even in their demolition.

With the increasing demand for building materials, products that are locally available, building techniques that uses sustainable means and products that are recyclable are encouraged. Even those who use sustainable means to manufacture construction materials are promoted.

In essence, there is no need for anybody anywhere to suffer when resources are being extracted. This means resource extraction should never involve child labour or forced labour. Materials should not be illegally mined, or should not end up being a hazard to groundwater, for example.

The more developers use responsibly sourced raw materials or replace them with secondary materials, the higher the score they will receive.

Building as part of sustainable development

The DGNB's holistic understanding of sustainability in the construction and real estate industry has had an impact far beyond its headquarters in

Germany. In the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined by the United Nations, the DGNB takes a clear position by comparing the SDGs with the DGNB system. The comparison has shown that that sustainable building makes a significant contribution to sustainable development. Secondly, in line with the 17th goal, it has founded the G17 initiative with partners from Europe.

The concept of sustainability is already well understood in the construction industry and many organizations, initiatives and instruments have been put in place. However, the challenge today and in the days to come will be to address how to holistically integrate these principles into mainstream construction and into the existing projects so that they become impactful. The only way to attempt this is by linking people and projects, through dialogues and discussions, and by sharing knowledge and work experiences across borders.

The global challenges make it clear to us that sustainable development can only be mastered together.

Dr. Christine Lemaitre is the CEO of the German Sustainable Building Council

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 57

A.N.Prakash

Knowledge Knowledge management has a big role to play in construction project management

T

he need to manage projects well and to take one’s knowledge from one project to the next is of vital importance as the whole world becomes more and more ‘projectbased’. In practice, however, projects are often not reviewed at all for various reasons. Even if they are reviewed, there are no well-laid out methodologies that can help explain the complexity of each project in terms of either success or failure. This points to the need for a project-centred mechanism which captures knowledge and experience of project execution on a regular basis and shares it within the organisation to make it a very efficient, functionally learned one.

Knowledge Management (KM)

There is no universal definition of Knowledge Management (KM) as there is no agreement as to what constitutes knowledge in the first place.

For this reason, it is best to think of knowledge management in the broadest sense. Simply put, knowledge management is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, generating values from such assets involves codifying what employees and customers know and sharing that information within the organization and even with other companies in an effort to devise best practices.

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COLUMN

Management It is important to note that the definition given above says nothing about technology.

Even though knowledge management is often facilitated by IT, technology by itself is not KM. Projects are, by nature, temporary endeavours, and any learning that is accumulated from construction projects will largely dissipate at the end of the project unless attention is paid to the collection and dissemination of that knowledge.

Knowledge Management (KM) in projectbased organizations (PBOs) is often a complex task. This is because project teams often consist of people with diverse skills working together for extended periods of time. Indeed, a project team often includes members who have never worked together previously and may not be expected to work together again. Under these circumstances, effective knowledge management, though essential, is a complex process. Often, knowledge is created in one project and then misplaced or lost. The failure of many knowledge transfer systems is the result of cultural factors rather than technological oversights.

What is knowledge?

Before we go any further, we need to understand what ‘knowledge’ is. Kirchner has defined it thus: ‘Knowledge involves a person using his/her perception, skills and experience to process information, thus converting it into knowledge in the mind of individual’.

Knowledge is not ‘data’ or ‘information’.

Data is unprocessed raw facts. Information is meaningful aggregation of data. The process begins with ‘data’ being organized to produce ‘general information’. This ‘general information’ is sorted and structured to produce information that meets the requirements of a specific group

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of users. Individuals then absorb this information and transform it into knowledge on the basis of individual experiences, attitudes and the context in which they work.

Unless knowledge leads to an informed decision, the whole process is useless. Knowledge can be categorized into (1) Tacit knowledge and (2) Explicit knowledge. ‘Tacit’ knowledge resides in the perceptions and behaviour of human beings. It evolves from people’s interactions and requires skill and practice, whereas ‘Explicit knowledge is documented, public, structured, externalized and conscious. It has a fixed content that can be captured and shared through information technology.

Explicit knowledge are assets such as patents, trademarks, business plans, marketing research etc. As a general rule of thumb, explicit knowledge consists of anything that can be documented, archived and codified, often with the help of IT. Project management was traditionally regarded as a specialized management process with specific planning, monitoring and control techniques that were applied to the operations of a few construction projects. It is now regarded as an inclusive concept that can be integrated into a general organizational effort to provide better quality to customers through effective intra-organizational integration and optimal utilization of scarce resources.

Knowledge transfer

Knowledge management is crucial for efficient construction project management. The growing complexity of project work means that an increasing number of technical and social relationships/interfaces must be taken into account by project managers when adapting knowledge and experiences from earlier projects. Project team members frequently need to learn things that are already known in other similar projects which, in effect, means they need to acquire and assimilate knowledge that resides in organizational memory. How effectively this is done would determine their personal effectiveness, project’s effectiveness and ultimately the company’s effectiveness.

Normally, within functional organizations, there

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Simply put, knowledge management is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledgebased assets. are established departments and branches in which knowledge and experiences are acquired and stored. Project teams know that they can access this knowledge and experience from the documented records of a specific department, or by observing competent employees and their working processes.

It is somewhat different in construction projects because the team members of particular projects are the main conduits of knowledge and experience of daily work. In an ideal situation, knowledge from a completed project should get transferred to subsequent on-going projects.

However, this is not the case in most of the projects. More often than not, project information is infrequently captured, retained or indexed so that the people external to that project within the organization can share, regain and apply the captured knowledge in future projects.

At its simplest, a failure to review the finished project means that project errors are likely to be repeated. Construction project organizations can fail to learn from their mistakes without realising the importance of such knowledge.

The important pieces of data or knowledge that they require for subsequent projects are hidden in there somewhere, but no one has the time to peruse all the recorded material and locate the relevant data. Of what earthly use is the data that is not put to use at the appropriate time?

Project based companies should develop a system for collecting and collating data in a manner that is meaningful whole. The task of collecting data should not be treated as an unavoidable obligation in the process of project closure, regardless of the pressures and deadlines a project team has to meet. The team must consider it their duty to collate project data and preserve and utilise the same at appropriate times. Project based organizations must clearly

COLUMN understand the kinds of knowledge that should be included in an effective knowledge management system. Knowledge can be categorized under three heads: • An ‘organization knowledge base’, which includes the knowledge, specific to organizations and environments in which the projects are implemented.

• A ‘project management knowledge base’, which includes the knowledge of the theory of application of project management.

• A ‘project specific knowledge base’, which includes specific knowledge acquired during the implementation of a particular project.

Organizational knowledge relates to techniques, technologies, work-processes, cost, etc. that are involved in discipline-specific issues of the project. Project management knowledge relates to the methods and procedures required for managing the implementation of projects.

Project-related knowledge refers to knowledge about the customer and other people or stakeholders that are important for future business of the company. This knowledge which is previously held only by project team members now becomes the organizational knowledge in the memory of the company. Consequently, this is put to use by other project team members of the company.

Obstacles and hurdles

In a project-based organization, there are several obstacles and hurdles, which obstruct easy transfer of knowledge from one project to another. Reasons for this could be many such as: • Team members from one completed project will have to take over another project sometimes even with an overlap of time.

• Paucity of time and pressure of work takes precedence over necessity for review of a completed project and document the knowledge and experiences derived from it.

• Hesitation towards honest and open analysis of failures and mistakes.

• Socio-economic background that prevent clear communication and documentation.

• Lack of motivation to undertake a proper review of the problems.

• Lack of leadership within the organisation to promote knowledge sharing.

A project based organization should put in efforts to make this knowledge sharing / knowledge management a part of its culture, which provides norms regarding the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways of operation. Organisational culture stabilises a firm’s method of operation. The overall project plan for execution of the project should include ‘lessons learnt’ as a part of the project execution plan to be documented at the end of the project. Information Technology might help in collating this knowledge, but for proper transfer to take place, there must be open communication among people, especially the team leaders.

Benefits

There are a number of reasons why knowledge management should become a part of organisational culture.

• It helps project managers to manage experientially.

• It helps in risk analysis when planning the next project.

• It can be utilised to improve project management processes.

• It can be used to improve decision making, benchmarking and assess the performance of personnel.

It is very crucial for project-based organisations to make it part of organisational culture to accept, adopt and utilise knowledge transfer activities. We would do well to remember that knowledge sharing through various processes is crucial to survival in this age of innovation and competition.

References: Project Management Journal – March 2008 Post project reviews to gain effective lessons learned – Terry Williams, Phd. PMP A.N. Prakash one of the finest experts in Construction Project Management (CPM) in the country, is MD, A.N. Prakash Construction Project Management Consultants Pvt. Ltd.

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Dipak Kumar Sahoo

Accidents in Law – Revisited

Contextual uncertainties are aplenty in defining the term 'accident' in an industrial context. It is a seemingly simple word, but quite elusive when it comes to legal scrutiny 62 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

A

ccident is not an ordinary occurrence, but it is an ordinary word that apparently needs no further definition in common parlance.

A precise definition however becomes indispensable in law, particularly, when this word gets conditionally associated with some duty or right, such as, statutory reporting, inquiry or compensation.

Statutory reporting and inquiry

Section 39 of the BOCW Act, 1996 [1] dealing with statutory reporting of accidents in construction reads like this: “(1) Where in any establishment an accident occurs which causes death or which causes any bodily injury by reason of which the person injured is prevented from working for a period of forty-eight hours or more immediately following the accident, or which is of such nature as may be prescribed, the employer shall give notice thereof to such authority, in such form and within such time as may be prescribed. (2) On receipt of a notice given under sub-section (1), the authority referred to in that sub-section may make such investigation or inquiry as it considers necessary. (3) Where a notice given under sub-section (1) relates to an accident causing death of five or more persons, the authority shall make an inquiry into such accident within one month of the receipt of the notice.”

Rule 210 of the BOCW Central Rules [1] concerning this section enumerates a list of eight occurrences as ‘dangerous occurrences’ that are anyway reportable, even with no attendant death or disabling injury. Consider a case wherein a construction worker dies of cardiac arrest suddenly without any visible external occurrence. There being no accident causing this death and there being no dangerous occurrence, is the death reportable under section 39 of the BOCW Act [1]?

The moot question is: what decides the reportability – the disabling injury or the occurrence?

A careful reading will reveal that it is the injury that governs the reportability and the associated occurrence, if any, is needed by the safety authority to fix liability and give remedial orders for future.

The issue is pertinent with respect to section 88 of the Factories Act [2] as well.

Workmen’s compensation

Looking at compensation laws, for instance, section 3 of the EC Act, 1923 [3], which inter alia applies to construction, reads as follows: “Employer's liability for compensation – (1) If personal injury is caused to an employee by accident aris-

ing out of and in the course of his employment, his employer shall be liable to pay compensation in accordance with the provisions of this Chapter…”

Consider a case wherein a worker suffers sunstroke and is medically certified for rest for a period exceeding the statutory minimum of three days. Here, the disabling injury is due to an unsafe condition and not by accident. Is the worker entitled to compensation? Will it not suffice to obviate the superfluous term ‘accident’ in sub-section(1) and instead, say: “(1) If personal injury to an employee arises out of or in the course of his employment, his employer shall be liable to pay …” ? Isn’t the accident implicit here?

None of the aforesaid laws has defined the word accident. The courts have never found any help from the Indian Standard IS 3786 [4], which defines accident as: “an unintended occurrence arising out of and in the course of employment of a person resulting in injury.”

Moreover, unlike IS 18001 [5] and HSE [6], which include property damage, the IS 3786 definition is limited only to cases involving personal injuries.

The essential ingredients of IS 3786 accident are: (a) existence of disabling injury; (b) existence of an occurrence causing the injury; (c) non-intentionality of the occurrence; and (d) causal connection of the occurrence with the employment.

So, an occurrence, howsoever dangerous it may be, cannot be called an accident unless there is some personal injury. Ingredient (b) requires that an injury per se without an external occurrence cannot be termed as an injury by accident. On the contrary, the Gujarat High Court has held that an accident may be an event happening internally to a man wherein accident and injury coincide [Mrs. Tejubai and Ors. v. General Manager W. Rly. Bombay and Ors. (1983) LAB I.C. 119]. The court held that a heart failure accelerated by ordinary strain of ordinary work of an employment can be termed as an injury by accident. Such accidents have been long before held by Lord Atkins as ‘internal accidents’ [Fife Coal Co. Ltd. v. Young (1940) 2 ALL ER85(HL)]. Ingredient (c) highlights non-intentionality, which seeks to exclude designed accidents that are expected (suicide, alcoholism, intoxication etc.). Even when a worker on duty is hurt by an intentional act of another, the courts have quite rightly interpreted the intentionality and expectation elements from the view point of the sufferer [Varkey Achan v. Thomman Thomas (1979) ILLJ 373 Ker]. But leaving aside the compensation angle, to say that a violent incident is not an accident just because someone violated the rules or perpeMarch 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 63

trated the incident is not correct, at least from the viewpoint of statutory reporting. The ingredient (d) has a conjunctive word ‘and’ in the expression “arising out of and in the course of employment”, which being an intersection operator requires the twin conditions to co-exist, Figure 1, i.e., the occurrence must not only arise out of (due to) the employment but also happen in the course of (during) employment, establishing a complete causal connection between the injury or death and the employment in an unexpected way [Devshi Bhanji Khona v.

Mary Burno and Ors. (1985) ILLJ 70 Ker].

For example, if a workman slips on the floor of the factory canteen during lunch hour and gets injured, by the IS definition, it is not injury by accident because it had no proximate connection with his employment even though it was during the hours of employment. As a liberal and fair resolution in favour of the weaker side, replacing the word ‘and’ with ‘or’, which is a disjunctive or union operator, would mean that fulfilment of any one of the two conditions will be sufficient for the occurrence to qualify as an accident.

Lexical meaning

Dictionaries are not always safe for legal interpretations [Cabel v. Markham, 148 F.2d 737, 739, 2d Cir.1945; Collector of Central Excise, Kanpur v. Krishna Carbon Paper Co. 1988 SC AIR 2223]. While the literary dictionaries give some core meaning to the word without delineating the periphery, the law dictionaries [7-9] deal with its semantic nuances imported from judicial decisions which contextually differ from one another.

Safety manual

The US National Safety Council’s ‘Accident Prevention Manual [10]’, which is an authoritative treatise in the field of accident prevention followed worldwide, defines accident as: “That occurrence in a sequence of events that produces unintended injury, death, or property damage. Accident refers to the event, not the result of the event”. So, accident is that particular occurrence which causes the harm. It is neither the harm as such nor the events preceding or succeeding that occurrence which causes the harm. The object of the Manual being prevention, the focus is evidently on the occurrence (cause) rather than the injury (result). Such a definition is of limited use in

64 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

law because law deals with rights and duties directly springing out of the consequences.

Concluding remarks

From the foregoing, it is evident that it may be futile to attempt a definition that can fit in all cases. Similarly, trying to isolate indisputable common characteristics defining the word may be elusive as well. Given these impediments, a short and least controversial definition of the word accident might be: “an unusual occurrence involving potential or real physical injury or loss not intended by the sufferer.” Avoiding the qualifiers like ‘unforeseen’, ‘unexpected’, ‘not designed’, ‘resulting in injury’, ‘arising out of employment’, ‘in the course of employment’ etc. will serve to retain the simplicity and generality of the definition and offer wide scope for further qualifications wherever needed.

This basic definition can be further qualified according to the intent of specific laws. For instance, section 39 of the BOCW Act [1] and section 88 of the Factories Act [2] may specify to report accidents involving death or bodily injury disabling a worker for 48 hours or more, and section 88A of the Factories Act [2] may specify to report certain accidents of dangerous nature without attendant personal injury,

as may be prescribed in the Rules. In section 3 of the EC Act, the term accident, being implicit, can be better avoided. In insurance underwriting, the definition may be qualified as ‘accident involving loss of property’. In IS 3786 [4], the Bureau of Indian Standards may modify the definition of ‘accident’ as suggested above and add and define one more phrase, ‘personal accident in employment’, as: “an accident involving death or personal injury to an employee arising out of or in the course of employment.”

References

1. Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996; and Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Central Rules, 1998 2. Factories Act, 1948 3. Employees’ Compensation Act, 1923 (Formerly Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1923) 4. Indian Standard Code of Practice for Method for Computation of Frequency and Severity Rates for Industrial Injuries and Classification of Accidents IS 3786:1983 (Reaffirmed 1997), Bureau of Indian Standards, New Delhi.

5. Indian Standard Code of Practice for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems – Specification with Guidance for Use IS 18001:2000, Bureau of Indian Standards, New Delhi.

6. Hughes P. and Ferret E. Introduction to Health and Safety at Work, 3rd Edition, Butterworth and Heinemann – Elsevier, Burlington MA, 2007.

7. Black H.C. Black’s Law Dictionary, 4th Edition, West Publishing Co., St. Paul, Minnesota, 1968.

8. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law, Merriam-Webster, Inc., Springfield, Massachusetts, 2016.

9. Greenberg D. (Ed). Stroud’s Judicial Dictionary of Words and Phrases, 9th Edition, Sweet & Maxwell, London, 2019.

10.Hagan P.E., Montgomery J.F. and O’Reilly J.T. (Eds). Accident Prevention Manual for Business & Industry, Administration & Programs, 12th ed. National Safety Council, Itasca, Illinois, USA, 2001.

Dipak Kumar Sahoo is Professor, Department of Safety & Fire Engg., School of Engineering, CUSAT

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 65

Steve Edge

Is your programme up to scratch?

Construction programming is a dark art with really a few good practitioners and which calls for both an in-depth knowledge of construction techniques and methods and a high level of competency in the use of specialised software.

66 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

L

ook at your construction programme schedule and ask yourself these three questions:

Does my programme provide a logical list of all the individual tasks (trade by trade) which must be performed to build the project?

Does my programme link the dependencies of all the tasks to be performed, both with the tasks that precede them and the tasks that follow?

Does my programme assign the different tasks to the trade resources who will be performing the work?

only after they have collated these costs that they will add a margin for profit and overheads before quoting a firm price.

Obviously, there is a lot of science and effort riding on the price being right because that’s what they will get paid for. If they get the estimate wrong and under quote, they will have to bear the extra expenses and every rupee/ dollar in extra cost is a rupee/dollar of less profit. The contractor carries all of that risk and consequently does his best to reduce or eliminate it.

How long?

If the answer to any question is no, then you When it comes to the programme, things have a problem, if the often tend to get deanswer to all three quescidedly sketchy. ComGet the finish date wrong and tions is no, then you have pared to estimating, your liability could run into lakhs a big problem. construction programof rupees, if not more. The risks ming is a much darker are very real so all the more art with far fewer pracWhy does it matter? reason to reduce your titioners; and requires When you submit a both an in-depth construction project to exposure to it. knowledge of cona client, there are two struction techniques questions that you will and methods and a answer: high level of compe• How much is it going tency in the use of to cost (your assessspecialised software such as Micment of the price)? rosoft Project or Primavera P6.

• How long is it going to take (your The programme is the master assessment of the time needed)? plan that sets out how the project The answers you provide form will be built. It is a logical step-bythe cornerstones of the construction step breakdown of all the work to contract, and the implications are far be carried out in order to build the reaching. Underestimating either of project. As a result, it identifies the the points can cost you very dearly. relationships between the various Then, why is so much effort usually put tasks and calculates the time and into one and not the other? This article resources needed to complete the will demonstrate why you shouldn’t job. gamble your profit on blind guesses.

This then helps fix the expected due date for completion of the How much? contract. If the programme estiAs a matter of course, all reasonmates 50 weeks - in the absence of able, prudent contractors will spend any untoward variations or delays a lot of time working out exactly how - that’s how long your site running much it is going to cost them to carry (P & G) costs will be paid for. Any out the build. Their estimators careextension beyond this will be your fully study the plans to identify all the problem. In addition to this, if you work that needs to be done. They are late in completing the project then get quotes from sub-contractors the client is entitled to claim comfor the specialised works to be carried pensation from you (liquidated out and negotiate with suppliers for damages) for his loss of use from the best rates on the materials and the agreed date. equipment they will need to use. It is March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 67

Get the finish date wrong and your liability could run into heavy losses that can go up to lakhs of rupees, if not more. The risks are very real so all the more reason to reduce your exposure to it.

Unfortunately, although many project managers and site managers have a basic experience with programming software, there are very few who have any in-depth experience on it. And that’s where the problem lies.

Most users are self-taught and have learnt what they know informally by either watching others work on it or by trial and error. Most would not have specifically studied the subject.

The problem with this approach is that without guidance on the full use of the software or understanding the importance of structuring the program in a certain way; at best they will only be scratching the surface.

They are blissfully unaware of the depth of their ignorance as they are not specialists in the area. It is akin to asking the general practi-

68 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

tioner to carry out a specialised operation like open-heart surgery.

Writing a comprehensive programme is a time consuming and exacting work. Those who don’t have experience in doing it takes longer, and is more likely to overlook key information. Since time is usually in short supply, corners get cut and mistakes are made. As a result, the work that goes into the programme falls a long way short of the effort put into estimating the price.

Three Basic Mistakes

All too frequently the contractors’ estimate of time needed to build the project relies on a number of broad guesses on how long the job will take. There is very little analysis or thought given to the numerous tasks to be undertaken, the number of trades involved, or how they are going to interact with each other.

The sad fact is that many of the programmes that end up in adjudication have made no attempt whatsoever to assign resources. This

makes the ability to finish the program on time a very risky proposition.

Take a look at the real-life example of this kind of flawed approach given below.

This is the fit-out phase of an actual contract programme for a 40-unit apartment block. It has several issues but, for illustration purposes, we will discuss only three. Let’s look a little closer to see what is missing: Task dependencies: The first thing to note is that all the tasks are daisy-chained together, using a finish to start relationship with a negative overlap of generally 20 days. This means each task is fully dependent on the preceding task and is like an overlapping list. There is no meaningful critical path as all tasks are merely linked together one after the other, sequentially. As a result, all tasks are critical and adding one day to any task in the list adds one day to the finish date.

This alone has major risk implications. Work usually happens concurrently in multiple work streams with different dependencies and re-

lationships. In this programme, however, this doesn’t happen. Consequently, you will find it difficult to prove that your claim for a 5-day extension of time due to a variation on Heating, Venting & Air Con (HVAC) is more valid than, for example, being five days late for completing the wall framing even though in this model both events equally affect the critical path, and could extend the completion date.

Work to be carried out: Although there is some attempt to breakdown the work into logical steps, they haven’t really analysed the process of what needs to be executed to complete the work.

If it is a 40-apartment complex, it is logical that there will be other areas such as entrance lobby, stairwell and lift shaft, common hallways, plant room or basement car park. Each of these will have different work streams and task relationships, which will need extra days of work. But all of this has been ignored. The list of work to be completed is far too simplistic in its approach, and it is obvious there are March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 69

numerous missing links.

Services first fix has been mentioned but strangely there is no second fix. No insulation has been mentioned, either thermal or acoustic. Seal and first coat painting is fine, but there is no mention of finishing coats. There is also no note on kitchen or appliance installation or the fire sealing.

In order to complete a section of work, the process needs to be broken down into individual tasks under each trade. The position of each task in the sequence of work should be identified and set so that the relationships that define what comes next on the route to completion is clear.

A good example of this having been omitted in the above programme is the services first fix task. In this instance, the programme is saying that Plumbing, Electrical, Telecom, Security, Sprinklers & Fire Protection and HVAC are all going to get their first fix completed in 40 units as well as in the common areas like stairwells and service ducts in 40 days.

That makes it six trades - all with differing works, constraints and durations - all working in the same place at the same time, and all neatly encapsulated in one task. Note that no trade resources are mentioned or assigned to the work which means that the contractor is assuming that no matter how many men are needed to meet the timeline, they will be available as and when required. Unfortunately, this isn’t realistically possible.

How accurate are the durations: Looking at the work tasks in detail, let us make some broad assumptions and review what is required to achieve just one task like painting.

70 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

As noted, only sealer and first coat are programmed. Let’s assume that the specification calls for sealer plus two topcoats of acrylic on walls and ceilings, and an undercoat and two topcoats of enamel on the woodwork. For simplicity, let us also assign six days per apartment to complete all the painting. Then, it is reasonable to break it down to four days per apartment for sealer and first coats (for the walls, ceilings and woodwork) and two days for the finishing coats that were not taken into account.

Therefore, if there was one team of painters, 40 apartments would take 160 days to complete the sealer plus first coat. To achieve this in the 30 days that is mentioned in the programme, it would require six teams of painters, and all apartments would have to be ready to commence painting as soon as the painters were ready. This is a big task, even if the common areas are left out.

Likewise, the topcoats which have not been mentioned in the programme would require the same six teams of painters for a further 15 working days, just to complete the apartments (excluding the common areas). This is only the painting. The same applies to all the other tasks in the programme. Hence, there is no room for guess work here. If your programme isn’t up to scratch, it will always be like sitting in the backseat of a runaway car - sooner or later it’s going to hit a wall.

Steve Edge is Managing Director, Menlo Associates Ltd., New Zealand

Abraham P. Lukose

VE in public service delivery As shown by a waste management system developed for Bengaluru, Value Engineering or Value Methodology can contribute substantially to the development of a city’s public service.

E

verything around us can be thought of as systems, made up of smaller parts which work together to make bigger systems. For example, a cup is made up of its body and its handle but the cup is part of a coffee table, which is part of a room, which may be part of a house and so on. These systems exist because they serve functions that satisfy the needs, wants and desires of the stakeholders involved.

Similar to the cup, entire cities can be thought of as systems and the citizens its stakeholders.

Early humans required only food, clothing and shelter and lived in caves, but modern society has evolved to demand a lot more from cities than just bare necessities. This includes housing, transport, electricity, piped water, safety and culture.

The value of a city’s public service system is based on how well the requirements of its people are met, and is only good as long as its services are satisfactory for its citizens. Value Engineering (VE) is an attempt to increase the value of a system.

Public Service Organizations and Innovation

A report in the International Journal of Innovation

Science shows the relationship between value creation and innovativeness. The Value Creation curve, (Figure 1) is a non-linear pattern that appears to characterize the relationship between innovativeness and value creation (Stauffer, 2016a).

It is defined as the increase in value creation that occurs as the Innovation Index [of entrepreneur or venture] increases.

In other words, innovation in a public service context intends to achieve two things: • Increase the responsiveness of services to local and individual needs (Mulgan & Albury, 2003); • Keep up with public needs and expectations (Mulgan & Albury, 2003) There are 2 prerequisites for value creation: • The intent to innovate: Shown as support from senior management, a comprehensive policy statement and defining accountability for innovation practices.

• An approach to innovation: This is a management practice by which organizations retain its competitive advantage, increase profitability, and generate visible improvements to the top and bottom line.

Value Engineering as described by the Society of March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 71

Figure 1: Value Creation Curve (Stauffer, Climbing Innovation’s Value Creation Curve, 2016b)

American Value Engineers (SAVE International) addresses these prerequisites by the following: • To develop the intent to innovate within the organization, a Value Policy Statement (VPS) needs to be accepted by organization’s senior management. The VPS is a visible record of VE acceptance and signifies acceptance, endorsement and encouragement and defines the relationships with other departments.

• The approach to innovation referred to as Value Methodology (VM) is a systematic process used by a multidisciplinary team to improve the value of a project, process or product through the analysis of its functions. VM leads to innovation and improves creative ability. (Lukose, 2013).

Value Engineering and Public Service Organizations

Public Service Organizations looking to improve value for their stakeholders will find VM an ideal tool because of the following attributes of the methodology:

72 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

Stakeholder inclusiveness: Necessary because of the pluralistic nature of today’s cities Systems orientation: Necessary to incorporate the context of the public service Structured application: Simplifies implementation and increases acceptance in the organization Function orientation: Very useful to simplify and understand complex systems Proven methodology: Reliable approach to value creation.

Additionally, VM is a process to: • Improve the performance of a system • Identify and reduce unnecessary resources • Drive team consensus • Offer alternatives while assuring that quality, reliability, and other critical factors meet or exceed customer expectations.

There are a series of specific steps or phases, as they are called, which are used to analyze the product or system in order to develop alternatives.

One of the steps is the Function Analysis Phase which moves the focus away from the expected

Ensure Sustainability Improve QOL

Provide Infrastructure

Stimulate Innovation

Maintain Records

Upgrade Infrastructure

Recommend Improvement

Manage Manpower

Develop Resources

Monitor System

Maintain Infrastructure

Generate Awareness

Protect Environment Maintain Hygiene

HOW?

Engage Community

Stimulate Investment

Improve Dignity of Labour

Communicate Information

WHY?

Sustain Operations Support Operations

Monitor Operations

Collect Informations

Manage Waste

Manage Dry Waste

Facilitate Segregation

Collect Dry Waste

Generate Dry Waste

Procure Material

Dispatch Material

Broker Material

Regulate Market

Figure 2Dry Waste Management System of Bangalore City

Recover Material

solution and places the focus on the required performance or need.

Out of the two techniques that can be used for the Function Analysis Phase, is the Function Analysis System Technique, also known as FAST. It is an analytical, diagramming tool used to identify and analyze functions with intuitive logic to stimulate creative and innovative thinking with the primary objective of improving the value of a given project, product or process as defined by SAVE International & Miles Value Foundation.

FAST diagrams provide a platform for stakeholders to ask two questions: • How is the function being satisfied now?

• Is there a better way to satisfy this function?

How VM recently enabled the analysis of the Waste Management System of Bangalore, is explained by means of FAST (see Fig.) In the above figure, take for example the function Collect Dry Waste. It raises some pertinent questions namely:

• How is dry waste being collected now?

• Is there a better way to perform this function? (If it is currently being performed by push carts, can we look at the option of using vehicles, and so on) By breaking down the entire Waste Management System into independent functions, the team at ATINA Systems was able to offer a clearer understanding of the system to the participants, providing decision makers the opportunity to improve the system.

Similarly, FAST can be used in any public sector organization to show the logical relationship between different functions. It is important for governments to adopt Value Engineering primarily because it helps understand the needs, wants and desires of its citizens and secondly, because it helps create value for its citizens.

Abraham P Lukose is Associate Consultant , Atina Solutons, Bangalore. email: ablukose@gmail.com

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 73

A ceramic wonder takes shape in Dubai How to stand out beside the world's tallest building? That was the challenge that Dutch architecture firm UNStudio faced when it received a commission to build a new tower on Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road, directly opposite the 828-meter Burj Khalifa.

The brief was for a "strong, sustainable concept," recalls UNStudio founder and principal architect Ben van Berkel, and a building that would connect with the local area. But the client, state-owned developer Wasl, was not fixated on height, but on the concepts.

Wasl Tower will be complete in August 2021, and van Berkel is confident it delivers on those requirements, as well as a distinctive look.

The $400m, 302-meter skyscraper employs a twisting, asymmetrical design inspired by the "contrapposto" pose commonly used in classical sculpture, intended to give an effect of dynamic motion.

The building will also feature one of the world's tallest ceramic facades composed of clay-based materials, with an overlaid lacework of finshaped tiles. These are designed for energy efficiency and comfort, providing shade from the fierce Dubai heat that reduces the need for air

conditioning, and deflecting light into the interiors, according to the architects.

Ceramic materials also offer benefits outside the building, says van Berkel. Whereas glass facades reflect heat loads into the surrounding area -- with disastrous effects in some cases -- ceramic stone "protects the heat load going into the building and reduces the heat load in urban areas around the building."

The architect has other reasons to favor ceramics, which he says can be stronger than concrete and sufficiently malleable to allow for "fantastically innovative" shapes.

The shape and composition of the ceramic fins will reflect sunlight in rhythmic patterns to give the appearance of a building that breathes, the architects claim, being a striking feature. A similar effect will be produced at night by LED lights behind the facade.

Beyond ceramics, Wasl Tower will also showcase innovation in the form of a "vertical boulevard" running the full height of the building. This "open seam" effect of tower is created by a "stacking of outdoor balconies, forming a green vein along the building's silhouette."

A pedestrian bridge will connect the building to Burj Khalifa metro station.

Connecting to public transport infrastructure was partly a response to the client's request for a building that would appeal to long-term residents, says van Berkel.

"If you have too many short stay visitors it can hollow out the social glue of a city -- people leave the city centers and can't really use the cafes and restaurants," he says. "The areas around transport systems need life with the right programs where people see each other and stay in the area."

Smart building solutions from Conectis-Igor tie-up Effective immediately, Conectis customers can acquire Nexos, Igor’s smart building platform. Conectis will distribute Nexos as part of its Gigamedia IT solution set, a leading networking infrastructure technology.

U.S.-based Igor and France-based Conectis, (Des Moines, Iowa) – a subsidiary of Rexel, announced a partnership to improve access to industry-leading smart building technology throughout Western Europe. Effective immediately, Conectis customers can acquire Nexos, Igor’s smart building platform.Across nine European

countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Nordics, Spain and the UK), the total number of smart systems sold will nearly triple between 2018 and 2022, to reach over 8 million.

The stock of smart buildings in France alone is expected to reach 10 million by 2022.

Nexos is a universal, end-to-end Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) smart building solution that compliments Conectis’ expertise in cabling systems and network architecture.Most PoE-based solutions on the market today focus solely on intelligent

74 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

lighting, Nexos has a robust reach that touches the entire smart building ecosystem.

Building managers can solve a variety of problems from one platform.“We are excited about our partnership with Conectis,” said Steve L’Heureux, CEO of Igor. “Conectis is an innovative, agile company led by forward-thinking executives and with the strength of a 13-billion Euro corporation behind it. It has a wellearned reputation for excellence and a clear vision to lead in smart building implementations.

Kier to deliver £10.7m headquarters at DMS Whittington using modular constrution Kier has been awarded the contract to design and construct a brand-new £10.7m headquarters at DMS Whittington by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO).

The works will include the construction of a 2,600m² office building, as well as a new car park, which include an atrium that will provide not only an impressive backdrop upon arrival at the main entrance, but also create an informal meeting space for employees. The building will predominantly be two-storeys with some additional third-floor space creating new meeting rooms.

The building is designed to be constructed using a modular method, with modules of approximately 15.9m x 3m being constructed off site. Windows and internal wall finishes will be installed in the factory to minimise site work and core areas containing toilets will be finished in the factory to enable finishes to be carried out

in a controlled factory environment, leading to increased quality control and programme surety.

The project will start on site in summer 2020 and is due to complete in early 2021.Mark Pausey, managing director at Kier Regional Building Central,

said: “Using offsite modular construction will allow us to simultaneously reach key milestones both onsite and in the factory, leading to the project being delivered to the DIO as quickly as possible and providing us with a more consistent end result.”

UAE pavilion at Venice architectural biennale to be eco-friendly The UAE’s National Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – the Biennale Architettura 2020 in Venice – will present an experimental solution that showcases the use of salts and mineral compounds from the nation’s Sabkha – or salt flats – for the development of renewable and eco-friendly

construction material.

The exhibition, titled “Wetland”, will be curated by Wael Al Awar and Kenichi Teramoto, the principal architects of Dubai-based architecture and planning firm waiwai design, which was formerly known as Ibda Design.

The curators will experiment and

research the possibility of creating an environment-friendly technological equivalent of Portland cement from the crystalised salt and minerals found in the UAE’s salt flats.

“The cement industry accounts for 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions in its production of concrete, which is the world’s second most highly-consumed material. So, developing an alternative construction material without this high environmental impact is vital to shaping a sustainable future,” Al Awar and Teramoto said.

The 2020 Biennale is being curated

by Lebanese architect, Hisham Sarkis, under the theme, “How Will We Live Together?” and encourages curators to consider how architecture can address global challenges through coordinated action.

March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 75

International Conference on Materials Machinery and Structures (ICMMS 2020)

CWAB 15th CW Architect and Builder Awards 2020

Venue : Mumbai Date : 18th August 2020 Contact : prashant@asappinfoglobal.com, +91 7039029956

CarbonPositive'20 CONFERENCE and EXPO

Venue : Intercontinental Los Angeles Downtown Date : 2-4 March 2020 W : https://carbon-positive.org/cp20/venue/

BaumaCONEXPO Venue Date W

: New Delhi, Gurgaon : 3-6 November 2020 : info@bcindia.co.in

CWAB – 15th Construction World Architect and Builder Award Venue Date W

: Mumbai : 18th August 2020 : http://cwabawards.com/

SECON 2020

Venue : Albertian Institute of Science and Technology, Kochi Date : 14-15 May 2020 W : http://www.fisat.ac.in/event.php?evid=40

ICMMS 2020

Venue : NIT Calicut Date : 26-28 March 2020 Contact : +91 495 228-6211, 6204

NISDCE 2020

Venue : Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R&D Institute of

Science and Technology Date : 31st March – 1st April 2020 W : https://www.veltech.edu.in/icnisd-2020/

ICMMS 2020 will be held at NIT Calicut, Kerala, India, over 3 days during March 26-28, 2020. The objective of the conference is to have an update on the advancements in the fields of materials, mechanics and structures, by bringing together the global research community, students, faculty and practicing engineers to a single platform to share their knowledge. The organizing committee anticipates a participation of around 150 delegates from across the world.

RAEEM – Recent Advancements in Environmental Engineering and Management

Degradation of environment has become a common concern for humankind over the past few decades. The distinctive nature of the present environmental problems is that they are caused more by anthropogenic than natural phenomena. Unless urgent steps are taken to prevent the degradation of environmental components, the future of humankind will be in peril. Measures for environment protection and resource conservation and effective environmental management strategies will go a long way in preventing environmental degradation.

The training program on “Recent Advances in Environmental Engineering and Management” (RAEEM) sponsored by TEQIP phase III and organised by the School of Engineering, CUSAT focuses on the recent trends in pollution prevention and control, environmental impact assessment and the legal framework. The program is organized by Division of Safety and Fire Engineering & Division of Chemical Engineering School of Engineering, Cochin University Of Science And Technology on 2nd to 7th March 2020.

Indian Structural Steel Conference-2020

An international conference, organized by the Structural Steel Research Group, Department of Civil Engineering of IIT Hyderabad is the First Conference focusing on Structural Steel and its applications to be held from March 25-27, 2020 in Hyderabad. This ISSC 2020 conference is happening with an association of ASCE India Section and Springer Publications.

Beneficial to steel and aluminium structure designers and manufacturers, trade associations, design engineers, steel fabricators, architects, owners or developers of steel and aluminium structures, researchers, academics and post-graduate students.

ISSC 2020 conference aims at providing a forum where researchers, designers and construction engineers, structural steel manufacturing engineers and consultants, having explicit backgrounds but encountering similar challenges, joining together, in a friendly environment, to discuss and disseminate the most recent advances in the analysis, behavior, design, and construction of structural steel.

Web: https://www.issc2020.com/

76 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

SUBSCRIPTION FORM

ay

Y

a

1 year

12

` 2,400

` 2,100

` 300

2 year

24

` 4,800

` 4,080

` 720

3 year

36

` 7,200

` 5,940

` 1,260

43-1920-

r

682025

4113054271

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March 2020 | Construction Philosophy | 77

TENDERS TENDER DETAILS National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited TDR no. : 22506927 Tender no. : NHIDCL/ Assam/E-170377/DP Bridge/ NH127B/2019 Tender Brief : Construction of four lane bridge including approaches over river Brahmaputra between Dhubri on north bank and Phulbari on south bank in the state of Assam / Meghalaya On Nh-127B State : Assam Publish Date : 14/12/2019 Due Date : 30/03/2020 Tender Opening Date : 31/03/2020 Tender Value : INR 3548.50 Crore /Narmada Water Resources And Water Supply Department TDR no. : 21586004 Tender Brief : Engineering, Procurement And Construction (Epc) contract for construction of Bhadbhut barrage, Flood Protection Embankments and associated works across river Narmada near village Bhadbhut of Bharuch district State : Gujarat Due Date : 23/03/2020

EMD: INR 424519000.00 /Tender Value : INR 4245.19 Crore /Bhabha Atomic Research Centre TDR no. : 22049548 Tender Brief : Tender For Construction of Block-I 13, 107C, 108C, 125C Infiltration Gallery at Inrpc, Nrb, Barc, Tarapur.

State : Maharashtra Due Date : 23/03/2020 EMD: INR 55300000.00 /Tender Value : INR 543 Crore /National Highways Authority of India TDR no. : 22497474 Tender no. : NHAI/BM/VMEPhaseIB/2018/PKG VI Tender Brief : Construction of eight lane access controlled expressway from Km 217.500 To Km 254.430 of Vadodara Mumbai expressway Ena To Kim section in the state of Gujarat on Ham under Bmp I Pkg VI State : Delhi Publish Date : 14/02/2020 Due Date : 03/04/2020 Tender Opening Date : 04/04/2020 EMD: INR 152700000.00 /Tender Value : INR 1526.86 Crore /-

Qualification Pay

: B.Tech in Civil Engineering : Rs 50,000 - 160000

4. Afcons Infrastructure Limited Role Qualification Location Experience

: Execution Engineer : B.Tech/ B.E - Civil : Mumbai : 8-13 years experience in PQC, DLC, familiarity with MORTH, IRC specifications etc.

5. Bentley Systems 1. Company : Indian Aviation Academy Job position Maintenance) Qualification

:

Civil Engineer (Repairs and

: B.Tech in Civil Engineering and Masters in Civil Engineering or Diploma in Project Management Experience : 6 years

2. Sobha Ltd. Role : Number of positions : Location : Experience :

Quantity Surveyor / Billing Engineer 6 Bangalore, Kochi 4 years in Quantity Survey / Billing

Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation Role

: Assistant Manager

78 | Construction Philosophy | March 2020

Role : Software Quality Analyst Number of positions : 5 Qualification : Civil/Structural Engineering degree.

Location : Pune Experience : 2-3 years of professional Structural Steel detailing Desired profile

: Candidates must have sound understanding of basic 2D-3D geometry and math.

6. Bentley Systems Role : Product Engineer - STAAD Number of positions : 5 Qualification : Bachelors’ and Masters degree Civil/ Structural Location : Kolkata Experience : 3 years on hands-on tower analysis