Historical perspective

Historical Background

Contents

             1. Introduction

              2. Forms of Temporary Accommodation

              3. Concept of a Construction Village

              4. References

1. Introduction

The construction industry has always been a very labour intensive industry and the nature and location of the works contracted often means that suitable locations for health and welfare facilities are often in short supply. Many linear construction works (usually road, rail and canal works) often have sites that stretch over many linear miles, distances which cannot easily or efficiently be travelled on foot meaning that replication of facilities is not unusual. Canteen facilities, office facilities, meeting rooms, toilet blocks and shower rooms are often spaced around linear construction sites with centralisation of construction facilities into a construction village being a relatively recent phenomena. The numbers of workers required on construction sites has fallen markedly over the years 1970 to 1980 due to the results of automation of even the smallest mechanical process required in construction works. The numbers of workers currently employed in the United Kingdom (U.K.) construction industry is probably close to the minimum number that could be utilised to complete the contracted works, there are unlikely to be any more great leaps in efficiency savings through process automation save for the one exception in industrialised system building (ISB). Very few construction works use poured in situ concrete except where there is little alternative (mass concrete structures are mainly limited to dam and road works). Almost all building work in the U.K. is now constructed using prefabricated steel structural members or pre cast concrete members and as a result most new building work can be considered as some form of industrialised system building. These structures are often clad with innovative and unusual materials that help the engineering industry avoid the “East German School of Architecture” criticisms that are often directed at the engineering professions involved in the construction industry.

This (even now) labour intensive industry must provide reasonable facilities for a wide range of workers involved in working outside (sometimes in very poor weather). Shelter should be warm, weatherproof and have a range of facilities therein. Workers as diverse as an unskilled labourer to managing directors of multinational companies must be provided with suitable temporary facilities (TF) and it is often a condition of the contract documents that the facilities must be of an agreed standard with an agreed range of facilities. The recent move from competitive tendering separation of the design and the construction process to the modern “Design and Build” approach means that large construction companies have realised the economic benefits of maintaining their own plant departments (sometimes even separate plant companies). This realisation has included an appreciation that ownership of moveable TF carries significant economic benefits and one of the main thrusts of this research has been to quantify what the economic benefits of improved energy efficiency measures in TF owned and operated by large construction companies could potentially be.

2. Forms of Temporary Accommodation

Prior to the availability of the generic form of “portacabin” shown being delivered to site in the figure below, most temporary accommodation was in the forms of treated canvass tents and marquees. This tented accommodation had many disadvantages, it was cold, wet, draughty, caught fire easily, privacy was limited and it tended to blow down in severe weather! Not surprisingly better TF were always well received by construction workers. For works where the contract duration was over one year it was not unusual to use sacrificial wooden shelters. These shelters were often open to the elements on one or more sides and were not considered pleasant places to be in the outdoor climate of western European winters.

Many modern forms of construction works (inner city work and façade retention work being two examples) often allow facilities to be centralised into construction villages with the TF sometimes being in place for a number of years (although the majority of construction works have contract durations of between one and two years (Sadeghpour et al 2004) the cost of poor physical layout or poor energy consumption characteristics in the TF is significant from an environmental as well as an economic point of view.

Whilst TF on construction sites are not covered by the Scottish Building Regulations it is instructive to examine the Scottish Building Standards on Energy conservation in non-domestic buildings (based on Scottish Building regulations) which have the following points to make.

The construction industry has a major part to play in the conservation of fuel and power. Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are said to contribute to climate change and energy use in buildings is a significant source of emissions. Increased energy efficiency and the promotion of renewable energy are an important element of Scotland’s strategy to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Portacabin

The intention of Section 6 of the Scottish Building Standards for non-domestic buildings is to ensure that effective measures for the conservation of fuel and power are incorporated in a building. This document contains energy conservation provisions for the building fabric and the building services.

However these standards still do not apply to temporary accommodation used on large construction sites. According to Regulation 3, Schedule 1 of the Building (Scotland) Act 2003 “a building used only by people engaged in the construction, demolition or repair of any building or structure during the course of that work” is exempted from the Building Regulations. Construction Villages therefore are not required to conform to standards for energy efficiency. Nevertheless there is a large amount of sound guidance given in the regulations and it would be unwise for any person engaged in the design and construction of TF to ignore this.

3. Concept of a Construction Village
According to Elbeltagi and Hegazy (2001) the layout of temporary facilities on a construction site is a complex and experience based process that has been analysed extensively since the 1960’s. The work done in the industrial engineering and operations research communities has helped to inform the work done in the construction research field but the unique nature of the construction industry has meant that a number of (initially, purely mathematical) models have been developed. Over time the concept of construction village layout and efficiency has developed from these crude models dealing with simply the weighted travelling time for goods and manpower between TF. The figure above shows an excellent example of a modern construction village placed on a congested, space limited site.
	Exciting and up to date modelling using neural networks and knowledge based methods are covered elsewhere in this technical investigation but it is fair to say that the complexity of site layout modelling has now been enhanced by the addition of rules based knowledge networks so that concepts other than simply travelling time are dealt with. Site safety constraints and energy efficiency constraints can now be included in knowledge based modelling systems and the overarching concept of the construction village as a whole can now be investigated. It has been proposed that environmental and sustainability considerations could also be included in such work and these developments hint at an interesting future direction for research in this field.
Example of a modern construction village.	Back to Top

4.- References

ELBELTAGI, E. and HEGAZY, T., 2001. A hybrid AI-based system for site layout planning in construction. Computer –Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, 16, pp 79-93.

ELBELTAGI, E., HEGAZY, T. and ELDOSOUKY, A., 2004. Dynamic layout of construction temporary facilities considering safety. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 130(4), pp. 534-541.

HARIT, S., 2004. Application of IE techniques in laying out construction sites, IIE Annual Conference and Exhibition 2004, May 15-19 2004, 2004, Institute of Industrial Engineers, Norcross, GA 30092, United States pp4379-4392.

HEESOM, D., MAHDJOUBI, L. and PROVERBS, D., 2003. A Dynamic VR System For Visualizing Construction Space Usage, Construction Research Congress, Winds of Change: Integration and Innovation in Construction, Proceedings of the Congress, Mar 19-21 2003, 2003, American Society of Civil Engineers pp997-1004.

JANG, H., KIM, S. and RUSSELL, J.S., 2003. Manage Space for Construction Facilities on High-rise Buildings, Construction Research Congress, Winds of Change: Integration and Innovation in Construction, Proceedings of the Congress, Mar 19-21 2003, 2003, American Society of Civil Engineers pp925-932.

LUTSKANOV, S., 2003. Saving fuel with efficient crown insulation. Glass International, 26(6), pp. 26.

OSMAN, H.M., GEORGY, M.E. and IBRAHIM, M.E., 2003. A hybrid CAD-based construction site layout planning system using genetic algorithms. Automation in Construction, 12(6), pp. 749-764.

MA, Z., SHEN, Q. and ZHANG, J., 2004. Application of 4D for dynamic site layout and management of construction projects. Automation in Construction, 14(2), pp. 369-381.

SADEGHPOUR, F., MOSELHI, O. and ALKASS, S., 2004. A CAD-based model for site planning. Automation in Construction, 13(6), pp. 701-715.

SADEGHPOUR, F., MOSELHI, O. and ALKASS, S.T., 2006. Computer-aided site layout planning. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 132(2), pp. 143-151.

WAKILI, K.G., BUNDI, R. and BINDER, B., 2004. Effective thermal conductivity of vacuum insulation panels. Building Research and Information, 32(4), pp. 293-299.

ZHANG, J., CAO, M. and ZHANG, Y., 2005. 4D construction management system based on IFC standard and engineering information model. Gongcheng Lixue/Engineering Mechanics, 22(SUPPL), pp. 220-227.