Editorial

Citation

Proverbs, M.S.a.D. (2014), "Editorial", Structural Survey, Vol. 32 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/SS-06-2014-0022

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Structural Survey, Volume 32, Issue 3

Already we are at the mid-point of the volume and once again we have a varied selection of interesting and topical papers to discuss in this issue. Before these are described we would like to draw your attention to new developments in the UK Government BIM arena that is surely going to affect the role of many property professionals – PAS 1192:3 2014.

So what is PAS 1192:3 2014? It is a “Publicly Available Specification” to manage information for the operational phase of assets using building information modelling. It provides a roadmap for asset managers to manage the information on any asset in their organisation from a simple chiller unit to an estate of buildings. It has been written for the user to decide what an asset is.

Here is an extract from the introduction of the document:

“[…] the discipline of asset management allows organisations to optimise the whole life cost of managing portfolios of assets which can be complex and varied in nature, distributed over extensive geographical areas and may be subjected to differing demand/utilisation requirements. Integrating the management of information across the longer term activity of asset management (covered in PAS 1192:3 2014 – Specification for information management for the operational phase of assets using building information modelling) with the shorter term activity of asset construction (covered in PAS 1192:2 2013 – Specification for information management for the capital/delivery phase of construction projects using building information modelling) for a portfolio of assets should deliver real savings. These come about in a variety of ways, including:

• Reduced costs as a result of the automated transfer of accurate, complete and unambiguous information at asset handover and during transfer of operation from one service to another;

• Better awareness of the operational and maintenance needs of assets;

• Better decisions regarding operation and maintenance expenditure based on actual asset performance and status;

• Dynamic measurement and condition-sensing enabling poor energy performance, faults and impending failure to be identified;

• Better organizational and strategic planning from more complete and accurate asset information, for example in the development of the health and safety file required by the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations;

• Better information quality as a result of automation enabling an increased amount of verification.”

If we took a straw poll of asset/estate managers we suspect they would all like to see those benefits. Perhaps the frightening thing is that the nature of the property professional needs to change, and it needs to change very quickly. The professional institutions have so far not really embraced this change. There are isolated pockets of change in some forward thinking Higher Education Institutions trying to address this change, but more needs to be done in this area if the HEI's are to produce graduates with the required skills to work in the industry.

In hindsight Part 3 should have been produced before Part 2. Part 3 defines the higher level strategic needs for information from an organisational point of view – the so called “Organisational Information Requirements”. These are then taken into the “Asset Information Requirements”, this is “[…] data and information requirements of the organisation in relation to the asset(s) it is responsible for […]” which then define the “Asset Information Model (AIM)”. So is AIM going to be the next fad? In our opinion it should have been there from the beginning with BIM being a subset of it, but hindsight is a wonderful thing and we are stuck with BIM for the foreseeable future.

Figure 1 below summarises how the two PAS's are to be used.

It can be clearly seen the differentiation between PAS 1192:2 being used for a “Project” and PAS 1192:3 being used for an “Asset”.

The challenge for Industry and HEI's is getting this message across to those that can make the decisions to invest now to enable true savings in the future…we watch this development with interest.

Papers in this issue

The first paper in the issue is from Fiore, Uva, Porco and Mezzina and is titled “The assessment of structural concretes during construction phases”. The paper presents a case study about the construction works of a dam in southern Italy. The aim of the study is to investigate the reliability of the quality checks of the concrete used in the dam against the rules laid out in standards. The study uses a statistical analysis to ensure the rigour of the results found.

The second paper from Squires and Birch publicises research on “Building heritage in enterprise zones: the latest threat or opportunity.” The key questions this research asks is “[…] how heritage issues were being dealt with within the Enterprise Zone Scheme and whether changes or lessons need to be learned at this early stage in the rollout of the scheme in order for mutually beneficial long-term outcomes to be achieved, both economically and in terms of heritage protection”. The paper uses a literature review and case study to showcase the key issues, before verifying these issues using interviews.

Paper three in the issue is titled “The consideration of Trees in Rights to Light cases” and is authored by Defoe and Spence. The paper seeks to establish that there is an argument for considering trees as obstructions in rights of light cases and that there are now methodologies that will allow a reasonable assessment of impact. The paper is informed by the author's position as a practitioner in the field and the methodology therefore takes and insider-research perspective.

The fourth paper in the issue is authored by Au-Yong, Ali and Ahmad and is titled “Optimising maintenance cost performance with skilled technicians.” This paper aims to identify the aspects of skilled technicians in maintenance management, and to establish the relationship between the aspects and maintenance cost performance. The paper uses a quantitative approach using a survey approach. The findings show that there is a correlation between the skill and knowledge of the technician and the cost of the maintenance they performed.

The fifth paper is authored by Guerra-Santin, Tweed and Zapata-Lancaster and is titled “Learning from design reviews in low energy buildings.” The paper aims to determine the usability of design reviews to inform designers about low carbon technologies and building performance. Using case studies of both residential and commercial properties the paper shows that targets and intentions in the design process are not always compatible or reality checked in the properties studied.

The final paper in this issue is titled “Surface consolidation of natural stone materials using microbial induced calcite precipitation” and is authored by Richardson, Coventry, Forster and Jamison. In this paper the authors aim to investigate the effects of surface applied bacteria to reduce the rate of environmental weathering and other deteriorological processes through microbial calcite precipitation. Consolidation adopting precipitated calcite has a natural affinity for calcareous sandstone and limestone potentially making these techniques more philosophically defensible and technically appropriate than alternative approaches.

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

Mark Shelbourn and David Proverbs