Essay: Green Building Design In Australia - Sustainable Construction Approach.

In this group assessment, you are required to write a report which critically analyses the conceptual design phase of a systems engineering project. Projects might include designing a bridge, a dam, an environmentally-conscious building or a mechatronic system.

You might not have been involved in the project personally, but some connection with the project would make the analysis more meaningful. Choose your project carefully because in assignment 2, your group will need to analyse the preliminary design and detailed design phases of the project.

The report is to analyse the following phases of the 

The report is to analyse the following phases of the project:

• Needs definition

• Conceptual system design

To demonstrate your research skills and understanding, the report must draw upon relevant sources like journals, books or reputable trade publications in analysing the project. You must also present the case study in terms of the above two lifecycle phases and evaluate the proposed conceptual design against the identified needs / requirements. 

Critical Analysis of the Needs Definition for the System Analysis of the Construction Project

System Design of any project, be it a construction project or software development, defines every element of the entire system in such a way that the modules and components of the system, the architecture, the different interfaces involved in the component and all the data integrated in the system is thoroughly defined. The concept of System Design revolves around the systematic approach behind an entire construction of a project. It either takes a top-down or bottom-up approach in the process while going through all the steps of a System Design in any project (Blanchard et al. 1990). In this report as well, the System Design of the construction of the eco-friendly buildings, called the Green Buildings in Australia would be analyzed. Green Buildings are constructed as environmentally conscious buildings having state-wide developments and protruding as a new standard to mark buildings according to their environment-friendly nature in the entire continental country of Australia. This analysis will thus be characterized by the needs definition of the entire project, the entire conceptual design of the Green Buildings, the evaluation of the projects and finally concluding the analysis with an inference. The entire process would be conducted with a conceptually standardized system design and analysis process for any construction project.

Population growth has been extremely sustainable in the entire world. Nevertheless, in Australia as well, it has been increasing at an alarming rate. Therefore, it has been somewhat of a constraint on the construction industry in Australia to ensure the resident of Australia with the constructions providing a sustainable growth in the near future (Darko and Chan 2016). Since, the idea of system design for the development of the Green Buildings focuses mostly on providing the citizens of Australia with state of the art buildings that are healthy, productive and resilient; it has to follow the reasonable and standardized system design process infused with the innovative ways in which living standards could be heightened, keeping the rapid population growth in mind. Population growth does not only affect the living spaces for people, but also the environment. The consumption of natural contributors is high and this has a potential to create a huge problem in near future in the environmental prospects. Thus, sustainable buildings and communities has been innovated by the Australian government in the face of Green Buildings.

In the year 2016, the GBCA or the Green Buildings Council of Australia, had implemented the plan of introducing carbon positive industry in the system (Taranath 2016). To have an exact overview of the entire system, there has to be a critical analysis of the needs definitions of the construction project. The constraints of a needs definition for the system analysis of the construction project can be done in the following way:

Structure and behaviour of the system: The first construction idea for the Green Building was to innovate the way of traditional construction process that does little help to enhance the way of living for the people in Australia. The traditional buildings of Australia have been reported to emit almost 23 per cent of Green House Gas and have been reported to have consumed almost 40 per cent of the total energy output for Australia (Walker 2015).

Interconnectivity and Interdependence

The poor construction quality has also resulted to even poorer environmental quality that has reached to an estimation of 12 billion AUD at an annual rate (Dwaikat and Ali 2016). The structure of Green Building in Australia has been made to mitigate the problems with a revamped construction design for the entire process with a plan that would make the entire construction contribute only 8.8 per cent of the total green house gas emissions (Sabnis 2015). This has been made possible by reducing the consumption of electricity, which is major factor for contributing to the green house gases by these buildings. It has been reported, that 89 per cent of the total green house gas emissions from the traditional buildings are caused by the over consumption of electricity. This is a majorly handled property of the Green Buildings amongst others (Kibert 2016). The other factors that the construction design for the Green Buildings in Australia include operational energy applications for cooling, air handling, heating and lighting that account for almost 84 per cent of the green house gas emissions from buildings.

Interconnectivity and Interdependence:  Going by the standardized nature of the system design of a sustainable building, a proper interconnectivity and interdependence between the system components of the construction project should definitely exist. This means that the dependency of both design and construction with one another is essential given the latest innovative procedures for the green buildings. The interdependency of these buildings remains within the vertical and lateral movement of the construction as well as the strain issues related with the vertical and lateral movements as well (Jones and Kenward 2014). The detailing of the construction project, the challenges to the vertical transportation as well as the installation and fabrication of these buildings have been planned out much before the entire project has actually been started. Thus, the Green Buildings have allowance for all the standardized systems that needs to be infiltrated in the construction of a sustainable building.

Objectives of the subsystems and the organization: According to the standardized system design of any sustainable construction project, it is necessary that the objectives of the organization are given better priority than the objectives of the subsystems (Zuo et al. 2017). The properties of a system are the organization initiating the project itself, the corporate interactions, the interdependence of the system components, the integration of these systems and the central objective of the construction project. The subsystems are the fractions of these systems into organized frames of work, which comprises of the entire working systems of the constructions.

The Green Buildings in Australia has been initiated by the Green Building Council of Australia and this is a government organization. Being a governmental organization, the objective of the company was not only to set up sustainable building construction plans but also to set a standard that would enable the future construction projects to follow suit as well (Montgomery 2017). The initiation of the project has been in accordance with the system design of a standard construction following all the standards maintained by the environmental policies of Australia for sustainable corporate and residential structures, as well as all the compliances of the general laws for constructions in Australia. The subsystems for the constructions have been effectively adding up to the proper objective of the company as a whole, which fulfils the objective of the subsystems as well.

Objectives of the Subsystems and the Organization

Technology and technical systems: The technology that has been adapted by the Green Buildings in Australia, have the collective objective to reduce the creation of more greenhouse emissions. The purpose for this was to reduce the consumption of the natural elements in the environment including the generated energy (Eastman 2018). This changed the perception of the construction design of the traditional building constructions, since the technology had paved the ways for implementing eco-friendly innovations in producing more and more strategized innovations in the construction industry.

The ‘buildings of change’ had implemented biodegradable, recycled and sustainable materials during its construction and the technical systems that resulted in reduced energy costs. This has contributed in producing much less pollution during the process of construction. For example, a technology called the Mushroom Walls has been implemented during the construction of the wall insulations in the green buildings (Sha'ar et al. 2017). In addition to this, there home sizes for the Green buildings have also been reduced to a compact size. It may seem rebellious as a matter of fact, but in technical terms, having a small home implies lesser consumption of energy and a better utilization of space at a lesser cost.

All the homes and residential areas included in the green Buildings complex have energy saving technologies implemented in each of them. This includes the use of geothermal systems that either heat up or cool down the rooms with the help of piping systems insulated in the walls of the buildings or underground.

Thus, it can be said that, the system design for the Green Buildings in Australia has been effective in the system design for the construction process right from the inception of the planning stages to the start of the building procedures.

Conceptual design of a construction process depends on the planning of the buildings and the primary concept that has been the driving force of the entire system design of the project. The conceptual design behind the system design for the construction of the Green Buildings is to reduce the level of environmental consumption that the traditional systems behind construction projects possess (Azhar, Khalfan and Maqsood 2015). This was considered the first innovation by the continental country of Australia that had been taken forward for protecting the environmental consumptions.

Government had taken a vital role in the construction system design for the Green buildings, which had helped the entire system design to comply to the sustainability commitment it had imposed at the beginning of the proposed plan. This system design does not only include the basic design for the buildings and the technology and techniques adopted for the process, but also the drive that induced the introduction of the policies implied by the National Strategy on Energy Efficiency 2009-2020 Memorandum of Understanding or MOU into the construction designs (Dennis, Wixom and Tegarden 2015). These included the following concepts in the design phase of the Green Building all across Australia:

• Increased stringency for the energy efficient equipments were introduced in the system design for all the classes of commercial buildings that is included in the Building Code of Australia from 2010 (Buede and Miller 2016).
• The process included the building energy efficiency standards for the assessment and processing of all the constructions across the country to achieve a consistency nationwide.
• The system design had been published for a general feedback before implementation only to make sure that the construction process is having a unanimous appreciation and it would be a successful project even after the construction is completed.

Critically evaluating the system design behind the construction of the green Buildings all across Australia, it can be said that the constraints of the entire project has abide by all the system design constraints of construction as well as environmental legislations behind a construction project according to Australia.

If the traditional system design of a building is taken into account, the energy consumption as well as the building process had been very harsh to the environment altogether. However, Green Buildings have lived up to all the expectations of the sustainable building system design for the system science and engineering process as well as bringing the planning to life (Brightman 2018). The need identification has been effectively met since the Green buildings have now set a standard for the further construction projects in the whole of Australia. Australian building construction projects are now standardized by the Green Building Index, which refers to the environmental friendliness of a construction process right from the design implementation phase to the construction phase.

Conclusion

Thus, it could be concluded with the entire System Design analysis for the construction project of the Green Buildings in Australia that to a wholesome extent, the construction of the buildings has been feasible and sustainable according to the standardized System Design for an environment friendly construction project. The entire construction project has been critically analyzed as a whole to find out if the process of constructing the entire building models has been according to the standard system design process of Australia. For this method, the entire design of the Green Buildings all over Australia has been analyzed critically in a gradual manner with the help of a bottom-up approach, analyzing all the steps of constructing the green Buildings across the entire continental country of Australia. This analysis report has been characterized by the needs definition of the entire construction project, the conceptual design behind the construction project and its critical analysis and the evaluation of the entire process. With the help of all these and the theories and practises that have been studied along the entire course, the assessment has been made for the conceptual designing phase of the systems engineering project of the construction for Green Buildings in Australia.

References

Azhar, S., Khalfan, M. and Maqsood, T., 2015. Building information modelling (BIM): now and beyond. Construction Economics and Building, 12(4), pp.15-28.

Blanchard, B.S., Fabrycky, W.J. and Fabrycky, W.J., 1990. Systems engineering and analysis (Vol. 4). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Brightman, M., 2018. The sketchUp workflow for architecture: modeling buildings, visualizing design, and creating construction documents with SketchUp Pro and LayOut. John Wiley & Sons.

Buede, D.M. and Miller, W.D., 2016. The engineering design of systems: models and methods. John Wiley & Sons.

Darko, A. and Chan, A.P., 2016. Critical analysis of green building research trend in construction journals. Habitat International, 57, pp.53-63.

Dennis, A., Wixom, B.H. and Tegarden, D., 2015. Systems analysis and design: An object-oriented approach with UML. John wiley & sons.

Dwaikat, L.N. and Ali, K.N., 2016. Green buildings cost premium: A review of empirical evidence. Energy and Buildings, 110, pp.396-403.

Eastman, C.M., 2018. Building product models: computer environments, supporting design and construction. CRC press.

Jones, B. and Kenward, M.G., 2014. Design and analysis of cross-over trials. Chapman and Hall/CRC.

Kibert, C.J., 2016. Sustainable construction: green building design and delivery. John Wiley & Sons.

Montgomery, D.C., 2017. Design and analysis of experiments. John wiley & sons.

Sabnis, G., 2015. Green building with concrete: sustainable design and construction. CRC Press.

Sha'ar, K.Z., Assaf, S.A., Bambang, T., Babsail, M. and Fattah, A.A.E., 2017. Design–construction interface problems in large building construction projects. International Journal of Construction Management, 17(3), pp.238-250.

Taranath, B.S., 2016. Structural analysis and design of tall buildings: Steel and composite construction. CRC press.

Walker, A., 2015. Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.

Zuo, J., Pullen, S., Rameezdeen, R., Bennetts, H., Wang, Y., Mao, G., Zhou, Z., Du, H. and Duan, H., 2017. Green building evaluation from a life-cycle perspective in Australia: A critical review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 70, pp.358-368.