In recent years, there has been a worldwide effort to reduce carbon emissions from buildings. Operational energy (OE) reduction has been the main focus of the Industry as it accounts for a greater proportion of carbon emissions throughout the building life and is easier than embodied energy (EE) to predict. However, as OE is reduced, embodied energy and carbon emissions become more significant. Further to this, early-stage design decisions are crucial as they determine a significant portion of a building's life-cycle impacts and cannot easily be amended later in the life of a building. Currently though, there is a lack of legislation and guidance relating to embodied carbon (EC) in buildings. This, together with the UK construction industry fragmentation, creates a significant barrier to dealing with embodied carbon at the design stage. The UK Government has mandated the implementation of collaborative 3D BIM for all public-sector projects. This step aims to tackle cost and carbon emission reduction targets by encouraging the construction Industry to operate more collaboratively thereby enabling greater efficiency. Since BIM empowers communications and stores information into one single digital model it has the potential to enable whole-building EC calculations. This can facilitate EC calculation to be included in early-design stage. This paper looks at literature that relates to BIM and EC's role in early-stage design and draws conclusions on how BIM can enable EC calculation inclusion to early-stage design. It establishes a correlation between the matrix of information required for BIM and the information required for whole-building EC calculations. This research aims to reveal the actors and processes involved in providing this information and suggest the project stages that EC calculations should take place in early-stage design. The future benefit is to inform practice and policy to enable EC reduction through BIM in order to meet overall carbon targets.
Promotion of flexibility and diversity in university education encourages courses to include distance learning and part-time students or students who spend large parts of the year away from the University on placement. In such instances, it is often difficult to facilitate meaningful student interaction, discussion and feedback or to enable successful student collaboration. This becomes particularly difficult for teaching that depends largely on physical and/or visual aspects; for example, fieldwork studies, laboratory work and project/design modules. Whilst a number of collaboration tools are currently available, their use is often at the early stages of implementation, with no cohesive pedagogical best practice approach for successful use of these tools. In response to this gap in the adoption of this new learning technology, this research aims to provide a process framework for streamlining the approach of more effective implementation of such online collaboration. It examines best practice through literature review and interviews with relevant stakeholders and includes findings from a case study where two online collaboration tools were implemented through a live run of a distance learning architectural project module with a diverse student mix. The findings of these studies are used to inform the development of the framework which suggests a stepped approach and evaluates its strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. The research has a pedagogical approach rather than a technological one as it considers pedagogy as the impetus that steers the teaching needs and technology as the tool to satisfy those needs. Therefore, the framework developed is not restricted to the application of the two tools used in the case study, but is adaptable to reflect an approach to the integration of such other tools which broaden access and facilitate larger discussions, collaboration and feedback. Similarly, although these results derive from research within a visual architectural distance learning course case study it includes findings which are relatable and relevant to other visual and practical subjects, and to other modes of learning.In the future, the researchers aim to further examine collaboration potential through use of an eportfolio in three different teaching scenarios, with evaluation of teaching requirements, use in practice and suggested improvements for future use.
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