Search

Structural mass timber has been used more often in buildings over the last 5 years, given its potential to be a sustainable alternative. However, concerns still exist around the fire safety of mass timber structures, and current mass timber building designers must consider a variety of fire protection strategies, including but not limited to noncombustible protection and design for sacrificial char thickness. This research focuses on better understanding how prescriptive code fire protection strategies affect the sustainability goals that have partially driven mass timber use. This paper studies how decisions during early design can reduce embodied carbon (EC), the initial energy use of a structure's construction. Five structural floor system types were modeled parametrically for various levels of fire protection. System types included timber–concrete composites, cross-laminated timber (CLT)–steel hybrids, and all-timber systems. The resulting EC data analysis reveals that all-timber systems perform the best for EC when the fully protected option is used at shorter spans, when the combined approach option is used at midrange spans, and when the fully exposed timber option is used at longer spans. Across all studied systems, the shallowest possible depth occurred for the 10-ft (3.05-m) spanning CLT–steel hybrid systems at 11.5 in. (292 mm) deep for the fully protected system, and the lowest possible EC was 10.5 lb CO2 eq/ft2 (51.3 kg CO2 eq/m2) for the fully protected 10-ft (3.05 m) all-timber system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A building project is completed as a result of a combination of many events and interactions, planned or unplanned, over the life of a facility, with changing participants and processes in a constantly changing environment. This paper defines a set of conditions or factors that, when thoroughly and completely satisfied on a project, ensures the successful completion of the facility. Success on a project means that certain expectations for a given participant were met, whether owner, planner, engineer, contractor, or operator. These expectations may be different for each participant. The factors that predicate success were initially derived from the Integrated Building Process Model developed at Penn State by Sanvido in 1990. These factors were then tested on sixteen projects and the results showed excellent correlation between project success and achievement of the factors. Finally, the four factors most critical to success are presented., Research on the critical factors for a successful building construction project is presented. The research also proposes a forecasting technique that permits the evaluation of a project's success. A mathematical model called the integrated building process model (IBPM) is used to simulate the different phases in project planning with the information needed in each phase. IBPM recognizes information and facilities that go together in the manage, plan, design, construct and operate functions.

The article discusses various reports within the issue including an examination of the wind uplift performance of architectural metal roofs, a discussion on hygrothermal modeling tools for assessing moisture response in exterior walls and on environmental improvements in design and construction.