Construction renovation projects increase the risk of structural fire, mostly due to the accumulation of combustible construction materials and waste. In particular, when the building remains operational during such projects, the redistribution of occupants and interruptions with access corridors/exit egress can exponentially increase the risk for the occupants. Most construction projects are, however, planned and scheduled merely based on the time and budget criteria. While safety is considered paramount and is meant to be applied as a hard constraint in the scheduling stage, in practice, safe evacuation considerations are reduced to rules of thumb and general code guidelines. In this paper, we propose simulation as a tool to introduce safety under structural fire, as a decision criterion, to be mixed with time and budget for selecting the best construction schedule alternative. We have used the BIM (building information model) to extract the building’s spatial and physical properties; and have applied co-simulation of fire, through computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and occupants’ evacuation behavior, through agent-based modeling (ABM) to estimate the average and maximum required safe egress time for various construction sequencing alternatives. This parameter is then used as a third decision criterion, combined with the project’s cost and duration, to evaluate construction schedule alternatives. We applied our method to a three-floor fire zone in a high-rise educational building in Montreal, and our results show that considering the fire safety criterion can make a difference in the final construction schedule. Our proposed method suggests an additional metric for evaluating renovation projects’ construction plans, particularly in congested buildings which need to remain fully or partially operational during the renovation. Thus, this method can be employed by safety officers and facility managers, as well as construction project planners to guide accounting for fire incidents while planning for these types of projects.
<p>Advanced Composite Materials, (ACM), have been used in civil engineering applications in Egypt over the last two decades. Significant progress has been made in the use of ACM in the form of fibre reinforced polymers, (FRP), to repair, rehabilitate and upgrade aging or damaged structures. Egypt has released its national code for design and application of FRP in construction fields addressing both externally bonded and internal FRP reinforcement in concrete elements. As a result, the use of FRP for repair, strengthening and retrofitting of structures have become a very well accepted practice in Egypt. The code has been issued after a series of successful rehabilitation projects and extensive studies at different research institutions in Egypt.</p><p>This paper highlights the Egyptian FRP code, which was approved by the Egyptian Authorities in December 2005 and became the first formalized design code addressing FRP in Egypt. In addition, field applications of FRP strengthening of special structures in Egypt are also presented. The paper presents selected projects utilizing ACM in the form of externally bonded FRP laminates to strengthen existing reinforced concrete structures. Historical buildings such as the Egyptian Museum and Kaitbay Fence were rehabilitated after distress/deterioration caused by corrosion of steel reinforcement and lack of maintenance. Strengthening of the dolphin piles in Abou-Kier harbour is also reported after cracking occurred due to ship hit. Design concepts and constructional details are presented for each project.</p>
Schedule assessment models were created to ensure the proper development of a schedule. The checks can be categorized into scheduling-related and constructability reviews. Most of the existing automated models are targeted towards twodimensional schedules, and not nth-dimensional, despite the emergence of building information modelling in the construction industry. The type, method and relations between stored temporal information for activities in nth-dimensional models differs than the typical two-dimensional schedules. Accordingly, this paper presents the adaptation of the existing schedule quality assessment criteria to evaluate nth-dimensional models, utilizing building information modelling and Industry Foundation Classes. The paper starts with a comprehensive review of previous assessment models, identifying the major checks performed, detailing out the needed activity information and evaluation techniques. The checks are then categorized as quantifiable and qualitative, to differentiate between the measures that can be fully automated and others which would require expert intervention. Afterwards, the paper presents the methodology for attaining the inputs required for the quantitative measures in nD models. The methodology revolves around using Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), as a standard data model for storing building and construction data. Accordingly, a technological review was conducted of the existing nD modelling software, to view the capabilities and limitations that could affect the development of a schedule assessment model. Initial Algorithms were developed to measure the wellness of schedule properties such as activity duration, criticality levels and accuracy of relationships. These developed algorithms were then validated and verified, by testing them versus different schedules with known errors Keywords-4D Modelling; Schedule health assessment; Schedule quality checks; IFC
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.