Sustainable Production, Design, and Supply Chains in Construction

On successful completion of this module a student will be able to:

1. Critically evaluate from a socio-economic, technical, and environmental perspective, the dynamics and dependencies of alternative innovative solutions for construction against
conventional construction methodologies

2. Apply the innovative concepts of sustainable procurement and supply chain management to the study of construction techniques and the assembly of buildings

3. Investigate and debate the principles of advanced manufacturing and green technologies with respect to production of building structures and envelopes

4. Evaluate alternative solutions with respect to the resolution of current technical and socio-economic problems

This assignment accounts for 80% of the total marks available for this module. The context of this assignment provides a vehicle for bringing together issues and themes raised in this module, in particular:

Sustainable Production/Manufacturing – Advanced construction materials (e.g. nanotechnology, recyclable materials, green materials etc.); Innovations, processes and managing the production process; Hybrid construction; Automation and robotics in construction manufacturing; 3D Printing technologies.

Sustainable design and construction – Sustainable refurbishment and retrofitting methodologies for the existing buildings; zero carbon and energy efficient buildings; recycling building materials and components; de-construction; modern methods of construction; sustainable construction waste management; Building Information Modelling and ICT Integrated design and implementation; Intelligent decision support systems.

Defect analysis - Total Quality Management systems; qualitycontrol processes; advanced methods of defects and errors and monitoring,e.g. Augmented Reality, Real-time BIM Models, 3D laser scanning, thermographic technologies, and sensor based systems in construction; Lean construction.

Project supply chains – Definitions; sustainable procurement approaches, e.g. Public Private Partnership; ICT supported supply chain integration and web-based supply chain management; design integration and Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) approaches; and tracking and managing the production process for new buildings.

Assessment Criteria

The following assessment criteria will be applied:

Evidence of critical understanding - concepts, theories and ideas developed;

Ability to analyse, evaluate and apply concepts in a professional environment;

Clarity of solution generation – focus, synthesis and academic rigour;

Capacity to structure a report and present findings clearly, concisely, and coherently (logic, accuracy, relevance, research limitations etc.).