Editorial

Citation

Shelbourn, M. (2009), "Editorial", Structural Survey, Vol. 27 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ss.2009.11027daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Structural Survey, Volume 27, Issue 4

This issue of Structural Survey once again brings together four papers from the area of surveying and the construction industry. Mansfield continues his writings on sustainable refurbishment and its effects on commercial stock by “…highlighting the gap in the international energy efficiency and carbon emission targets in relation to existing commercial real estate…and provides commentary on some of the measures that are being introduced to support sustainable refurbishment in the legacy stock”.

Work conducted by undergraduate students here at NTU on second year courses has detailed issues similar to Mansfield. Using the new Code for Sustainable Buildings published by the UK Green Building Council in March 2009, the students were asked to decide whether the UK construction industry actually needs the code. Opinion was divided on a 60/40 basis. Those who thought it was a good idea were in the majority, whereas the 40 per cent felt that there was enough legislation out there that we did not need any more!! The students were shown the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth; maybe this swayed the students in their thinking. Perhaps if we had shown them the opposite film The Great Global Warming Swindle, by Martin Durkin, then their thinking would have been different. This is something that will be investigated in the academic year 2009-2010.

Hassanain continues to study the implications of health and safety in hotel facilities. Previous papers have identified evacuation routes in hotels when fire breaks out. This work identifies approaches to fire safety risk assessment and approaches to eliminate hazards and meet the requirements of current legislation. The main findings from the paper are that “…hotel facilities are a high-risk type of facility … ”. A risk assessment tool, with 76 items that need to be considered, is provided in the paper.

This paper is particularly relevant to the newsbrief – First centre to offer Awarding Body of the Built Environment (ABBE) Certificate in Fire Risk Assessment. The BRE has become the first training centre to be approved by the ABBE to provide courses and qualifications in Fire Risk Assessments.

Chynoweth continues his support for this journal with a paper that provides an interesting debate on the research knowledge base in the built environment. Chynoweth uses established literature on the historical approaches to knowledge categorisation to develop a theoretical approach to aid decision makers in research and training in the built environment. The model defined the built environment “…as an applied, but theoretically coherent, interdiscipline with a common epistemological axiomatic”.

Murphy, McGovern and Pavia explore how the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can aid in the surveying of existing buildings through Building Information Modelling (BIM). This is of particular interest to me as the data they record could be inked to a project extranet and used by any member of a team working on refurbishing that building – i.e. collaborative working.

Although collaborative working has been established in the construction domain for many years now, it is still a relatively new ideal for the surveyor. This provides an area for further research as there is little evidence that surveyors are linked in to the design and construction process where they could have a significant input. Buildings are increasingly being altered and having an electronic record of that building – a BIM – would make this process simpler. The work described here by Murphy et al. will provide the information for those wishing to alter the building.

However, as ICT becomes more prominent in the UK construction industry this raises a number of key issues. The technology is only 20 per cent of the effort required. More important are the “business” and “people” aspects each having an equal share of 40 per cent of the effort. All too often these are forgotten by many organisations.

Finally, once again I would like to thank all the authors for their contributions to the journal.

Mark Shelbourn