The Three Dimensions of Sustainability

Question:

Discuss about the Sustainable Building Construction Guidelines.

The definition of green building can be given as a structure which has no negative impacts and effects on the environment or on the human society. Every aspect of the building’s formation starting from design, construction to execution and completion of the project are economical and beneficial to both the human society as well as the ecology.

Certain strategies that can make at least some aspects of a building sustainable are reduction in the level of energy consumed conservation of water resources and recycling and reusing of waste materials.  These small steps will ensure sustainability without decreasing any of the creature comforts of the inhabitants of the buildings. People living in sustainable buildings have been found to live a healthier and happier life. (Green, 2016)

There are three dimensions of sustainability and these are known as economy, ecology and socio – cultural aspects. These three dimensions consist of several components and these are written in the below table:

Figure 1: (Guidelines for sustainable building, 2002)

Scope

Qualities and dimensions of sustainable building:

It refers to the natural environment and this quality has two protective goals that are known as protection of natural resources and protection of the eco – system. These two are explained below:

Protection of natural resources has several objectives and these are written below and it includes the reduction of land use, the reduction of resource demand that are related to the building and construction work, use of rain water or grey and reduction of consumption of the fresh water. It also includes the use of the construction materials that can be recycled or reused. This approach tends to reduce the demand of energy during the phase use. It also uses the regenerative energy. On the other hand, protection of the eco – system has different goals and these include the protection of the global environment. It is generally supported by the “Integrated energy and climate programme”.

In order to analysis the eco – balance of the building three types of analysis can be done and these are known as eco – balance, material flow analysis and ecological risk analysis. Eco- balance contains the assessment of life cycle (LCA) of the materials used in the construction and their impacts of the environment. On the other hand, material flow analysis is capable of providing a balance between the input flow and output flow. The analysis known as ecological risk analysis is capable of assessing the ecological application compatibility for the data that are not reliable. Though this method is capable of executing assessments, but it is capable of qualitative results in a better way than quantitative results.

The economic quality of any building contains protective objectives and these are known as optimisation of the life cycle costs, protection of capital and the value of the building and enhancement of the resource productivity using economic efficiency. These are explained below:

Analysis of life cycle cost includes the costs of construction, operations used in the construction, costs that are related to maintenance, cleaning and services, cost for replacement, and the costs of disposal and demolition. On the other hand, economic efficiency is capable of explaining the economical benefits that are related to the construction of the building.

Protective Goals of the Natural Environment

Figure 2: (Guidelines for sustainable building, 2002)

Figure 3: (Guidelines for sustainable building, 2002)

The objective of value stability s to protect the assets and the economic capital and these two are known as protective targets in the dimensions of sustainable development. The economic value of a property can be defined in several ways but the most proper economic value can be defined as its present market value. The factors that are related to buildings are known as space efficiency, durability, resilience, energy characteristics, adaptability and flexibility.

Socio – cultural and functional quality:

It includes all the factors that are capable of making an impact on the socio – cultural and functional identity. These factors include the functionality, quality of design, satisfaction to the users, health and comfort. Functionality can be defined as the capability of the property in order to complete the definite functions which depends on the requirements that are given. There are some crucial parameters and these include head room, break down of space such as floor area, circulation area, and other parts. It also includes the access cores and design, technical utility shafts, spatial structure, partition walls for transferring loads and similar aspects.

Designing quality (Archive.epa.gov, 2016):

Generally the public sectors and the buildings made by it are visible to the ordinary public. Therefore, they have to consider the quality of the design while constructing the building. In order to maintain this quality the architectural design is known to be the key strength and it must be maintained. The principles of “ Design Competition Guideline ” must be maintained as it is capable of maintaining proper frame work to the construction quality. Health, satisfaction of the user and comfort must also be maintained. It must be taken care that no hazardous substances can be generated in the construction site in order to maintain the health and to reduce the health risks f the workers. The materials must not emit any type of hazardous substances so that the users do not suffer from health problems. In order to provide comfort to the users, proper and pleasant indoor atmosphere must be maintained and it must include the aspects like visual comfort, thermal comfort, acoustic comfort and other similar comforts. The degree of safety for the users must be maintained at proper level. Safety is an aspect that can also control the comfort of the users. If proper safety is not provided to the user then even after giving all types comforts the users may not feel comfortable due to the lack of proper safety. Arrangements of insulating heats must also be provided.

Process quality (Rosales, 2015):

There are several process qualities and these are known as quality of preparation for operation, quality of the construction of the building, and the quality of the process of planning. Quality of planning must be maintained as this is known as first process in the construction and it is done before designing.

Figure 4: (Guidelines for sustainable building, 2002)

Economic Quality of Sustainable Building

There are some factors that are capable of determining the quality of a building and these are listed below:

Construction quality that are monitored by planners and architectures

Degree of the construction site

Control of cost

Construction method and co – ordination

Quality management system of the contractor

Project management services’ quality

Assurance of the project

Project integration

Proper training

Specific Requirements

Assessment and evaluation of the construction procedures and building design can be done through the utilization of certain effective tools. Various tools can now be availed to perform comprehensive designing and planning and also gauge certain factors pertaining to sustainability in the construction industry and real estate sector. These tools help in determining and analysing a particular structure’s life performance throughout its estimated life cycle. Cost of construction, structural properties and environmental effects of construction methods & of the building as a whole are obtained with proper utilization of these tools.

Various information portal sites, databases, sustainable building assessment techniques, documented rules and guidelines help in eth implementation and integration of sustainable measure into every aspect of a construction project such as designing, planning, execution of plans etc.

Many information systems dealing with sustainable building construction methods provide a wide range of tools for life cycle analyses of structures and are useful in performing a complete assessment of each and every aspect of the building.

These information portals are obviously connected with large databases where different and wide varieties of data related to sustainability in construction industry are categorically arranged. Certain examples can be given in this respect. The “ökobau.dat” is a database that stores large volumes of data pertaining to maintenance of ecological balance and tools that can assess whether said balances are maintain at construction projects. WECOBIS information systems are another type of database management system. This particular database deals with data about health, safety and ecological effects that construction products have. (Jong-Jin and Brenda, 1998)

A building’s sustainability can be understood and determined using certain guidelines and strict rules that are applicable regarding the usage of the assessment systems in gauging the sustainability factor of a project or building. These assessing systems are used as a standard method of verifying sustainability. The guidelines state that design competitions amongst different construction projects should take into consideration several aspects like urbanization in the immediate surroundings, architectural blue print qualities and deign criterions, in addition to many sustainability criteria like economic, environmental, social, cultural and technical aspects.

Constructional management rules should always be laid down in proper documentation as it’s the basis of proper & successful management of the project and involved operations. A number of vital details and facets should be documented in writing, for example, design plans and blueprints with detailed descriptions ; gradation details of construction materials according to their quality; manuals and guidelines that cover every aspect of servicing & maintenance; all necessary certificates of all levels of energy consumption.

The data obtained from databases related to sustainability assessment must be analyzed and arranged accruing to the respective conventions and rules for interfacing, in order to make sure that said data can be successfully used and imported into primary federal databases. This helps in properly assembling and organizing all relevant data related to sustainable design actions and plans, as well as virtual simulations where new innovative construction procedures can be tested for their sustainability factors.

Socio-cultural and Functional Quality

New construction modules of BNB have been developed to enable a complete and comprehensive assessment of the sustainability of building construction methods. There are mainly two modules and their criteria are based on the national directory of the Federal Building Ministry that has been developed with assistance from German Sustainable Building Construction. This system helps in identifying any exceptional design or planning feats that have been achieved in the construction sector and thus helps in introducing fluidity and transparency in all associated processes. These assessment procedures have a scoring and rating system that assigns scores for various criterions according to some laid down rules in the modules. The final results of the scores are obtained from each individual criteria score that are given according to the weighting of each group of factors related to eth construction process.

Any building can be assessed many times during its complete life cycle. A sectioned and modular structure of this building assessment system is very useful in this regard. A number of modules have been derived by properly dividing & categorizing the entire involved assessment criterion. Proper application of all these modules requires correct and perfect decision making capabilities in any kind of situation. The modules are as follows: – Development Phase; Regular Phase of Operation; and finally, the Adaptation phase.  The development phase module deals with assessing of new project that re in eth design, planning and early construction phase. The development phase model is applied as a measure to manage quality of methods and materials to maintain sustainability. (Margareta et al., 2014) The adaptation phase module is involved with the refurbishment processes of existing buildings and deals with the monitoring the various impacts and effects of the refurnishing procedures.

Conclusion

The guidelines laid down by the federal authorities will help in proper evaluating and understanding whether the construction procedures, materials and techniques used in development of a particular project adhere to the set sustainability guidelines. Assessments can be done in various different ways and done multiple numbers of times during a building’s whole life cycle. Different buildings have different criterions through which they are judged regarding their sustainability factors. These assessment tools are useful in assessing various vital qualities of a building like ecological quality which deals with sewage & waste management, economic quality which deals with cost effective techniques useful in maintaining sustainability, socio-cultural quality and technical quality.

References

Green, B. (2016). Build Green: Definition. [online] Buildgreen.co.nz. Available at: https://buildgreen.co.nz/definition.html [Accessed 24 May 2016].

Jong-Jin, K. and Brenda, R. (1998). Sustainable Architecture Module: Qualities, Use, and Examples of Sustainable Building Materials.

Margareta, W., Jutta, L., Helena, J., Tommi, K., Martin, E., Anna, P., Ola, W., Pascal, S., Anke, O., Ole, H., Harpa, B., Stefania, B., Thomas, F. and Andreas, J. (2014). Environmentally Sustainable Construction Products and Materials – Assessment of release.

Archive.epa.gov. (2016). Green Building |US EPA. [online] Available at: https://archive.epa.gov/greenbuilding/web/html/ [Accessed 24 May 2016].

Guidlines for sustainable building. (2002). Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building, and Nuclear Safety.

rosales, i. (2015). Green Building Concepts | Green Building Concepts supplies information exchange on a more resource and energy efficient lifestyle. [online] Greenconcepts.com. Available at: https://www.greenconcepts.com/ [Accessed 24 May 2016].