Editorial

Mark Shelbourn (Department of Architecture & Built Environment, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK)
David G Proverbs (Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK)

Structural Survey

ISSN: 0263-080X

Article publication date: 13 April 2015

108

Citation

Shelbourn, M. and Proverbs, D.G. (2015), "Editorial", Structural Survey, Vol. 33 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/SS-02-2015-0015

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Structural Survey, Volume 33, Issue 1.

Welcome to the first issue of the 33rd Volume of Structural Survey: Journal of Building Pathology and Refurbishment. A new year brings revived enthusiasm and determination to write that journal paper … I hope the papers in this issue help you channel that enthusiasm.

This year the journal is supporting a number of key conferences and research meetings, but in particular we have teamed up with the RICS and the COBRA conference that is taking place in Sydney, Australia in July 2015; and the First International Symposium on Building Pathology (ISBP) in Porto, Portugal in March 2015. The research being presented by authors at both of these events has a chance of being reworked into a full paper for publication in special issues of the Journal in the next 12-18 months. David, myself and the Emerald team are proud to be a part of these (and other) events to promote the great work people are doing in the Building Pathology and Refurbishment areas.

Papers in this issue

The first paper in the issue is from Riley, Cotgrave and Kokkarinen and is titled “Prevalence of POE in UK higher education institutions”. The paper establishes how Post Occupancy Evaluations are understood in the UK Higher Educational sector in the first instance. It then goes on to describe its prevalence in that sector before exploring experiences of those HEI’s that have implemented POE’s in order to support user satisfaction in those institutions.

The second paper is the publication of a case study from a point of law. It has been written by Defoe and is not a full journal paper as is usual for the journal. The case study is entitled “Hannan and Hannan v Healey and Healey 2013 to 2014.” The case study discusses whether a window in an existing opening might or might not have acquired an independent right to light. The paper discusses the case and brings the readers attention to many of the key issues involved. This is a break from what I would call a “full” paper, but none the less is an issue that will be of interest to our readers.

Paper three in this issue is titled “Infrared thermography – evaluation of the results reproducibility” and is authored by Bauer, Freitas, Mustelier, Barreira and Freitas. The paper investigates the use of infrared thermography to diagnose pathologies of buildings, concentrating on façade defects. The paper then discusses the results reproducibility and how the equipment used affects the measurements taken. The methodology of testing is described. Results discussed showed “[…] the influence of the equipment on the results was of little significance […]” in a quantitative assessment of “[…] temperature difference between zones with and without defect […]” but for the “[…] absolute surface temperature […]” the difference in the results showed a difference of 1.8°C.

The fourth paper in the issue is authored by Wilkinson, Lamond, Proverbs, Sharman, Hellier and Manion and is titled “Technical considerations in green roof retrofit for stormwater attenuation in the Central Business District.” This paper has addressed two key questions in the research, these are: “[…] what are the perceived technical issues stakeholders and built environment professionals need to consider with green roof retrofit for stormwater attenuation? And, what is the perceived awareness of the economic, social and environmental aspects of green roof retrofit? […] ”. The authors discuss these issues and present some interesting findings.

The next paper in the issue is titled “Innovation in low carbon construction technologies: an historic analysis for obviating defects” and is authored by Forster, Walker, Fernie, Carter and Thomson. The paper has found that due to the sequential delivery of a construction project (this is discussed in the paper) it does not offer adequate opportunities to obviate defects. This has been shown through the analysis of the causal conditions found at each stage of the sequential process. The evaluation shows there is very little connection between the practice and knowledge that could be utilised to reduce the frequency and severity of building failure between different phases of a project. The paper describes a conceptual framework and it was used to explore the existing systems and their ability to reduce defects.

The final paper in this issue is titled “Lifecycle costing: evaluating its use in UK practice” and is authored by Higham, Fortune and James. In this paper the authors aim to establish the extent to which lifecycle costing (LCC) is used as an early stage project evaluation tool in the UK construction industry. The paper discussed previous work, and develops an appropriate research methodology from these findings. The paper found that LCC is rarely used across all sectors of the UK construction industry, with the health care and education being the sectors where it is mostly used.

Once again all the papers show the diverse range of activities/issues that face buildings, their maintenance and their adaptation. The journal is proud to continually support the efforts of industry and academia in reporting their interesting findings.

Mark Shelbourn and David Proverbs

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