Engineers Forum

The construction sector, while still in decline, is showing further signs of easing, with the monthly Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) showing a figure last seen in April 2008.

The figure of 45.9 recorded for May is the highest for 13 months, and is edging ever closer to the figure of 50 – which would show no market decline.The figure has risen from 30.9 in March to 38 in April.

The number does however show that market decline has now been recorded for 15 consecutive months – the longest period of decline in the 12-year history of the index.

Director at the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply, Roy Ayliffe, said: “After appearing to be in freefall in February, we are starting to see the construction economy show some signs of life and steer itself back onto the road of recovery. Latest PMI data showed the slowest rate of contraction since April 2008, with murmurs of a possible upturn in house-building activity.

“This data suggests that, while the construction sector may be out of the intensive care unit, it’s still some way from making a full return to health and there is always danger of a relapse.

“Firms are still operating in an extremely tough business climate. Purchasing managers voiced concern as new contracts remained scarce and competition is rife, leading to increasingly competitive quotations in a bid to secure business. More unfortunately, we’re still seeing staff culled at a severe rate in an effort to maintain tight cost control,” he said.

While market confidence is improving, competition for business remains fierce. “Average prices paid by UK constructors declined in May for a seventh successive month and at the second-steepest rate in the survey history.

“Companies reported that suppliers were reducing charges given falling demand for inputs. Purchasing activity amongst UK constructors fell for a fifteenth successive month. Reduced buying in turn led to a steep improvement in average vendor delivery times,” read the report.

Senior Economist at Markit, Paul Smith, said: “The latest construction survey further adds to growing evidence of an improving macro-economic landscape in the UK. The sector has been hit particularly hard by the credit crisis, registering unprecedented declines in all types of activity in recent months. However, the underlying trends in the key demand and activity indices are now clearly upward and consistent with much a much slower rate of industry contraction.

“Particularly eye-catching was the record points increase in the Housing Activity Index, which has now moved up considerably on the series lows seen during the second half of 2008. This augers well for improvements in house-building and house price data going forward,” he said.

Source: http://www.nce.co.uk/

Europe’s largest operating onshore wind farm, Whitelee, was officially switched on May 21st 2009 by Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond.

Site owner Scottish Power has also won planning permission to increase generating capacity at the £300M, 322MW windfarm in East Renfrewshire by a further 130MW.

The planned extension will enable the wind farm to harness its comparative and competitive advantage in wind generated energy within Europe. It has the infrastructure, the expertise and the capacity to continue to develop in the future.

In addition the granted 130MW upgrade, Scottish Power is carrying out scoping work on a potential second extension, which could add a further 140MW. It is anticipated that an official planning application will be submitted for this later in the summer. This would mean a total capacity of near 600 MW at Whitelee.

In its position 370m above sea level, 15km to Glasgow, there are over 500,000 people living within a 30km radius of Whitelee. This is one of the first major windfarms to be constructed close to large population centres, and an ever increasing supply of renewable energy has been fed directly into these areas since the site first started exporting power in January 2008.

As well as the physical construction of the turbines, the £300M project has also seen the creation of a 90km floating road network and the connection of over 970km of cables to link the turbines to the national grid. A £2M state-of-the-art visitor centre is also in the process of being completed.

There is now almost 6GW of renewables capacity installed, consented or under construction around Scotland.

The Scottish Government’s Energy Consents and Deployment Unit is currently processing 28 renewable project applications – 23 wind farms and five hydro projects.

In addition it has determined 28 energy applications, including approval for 22 renewable and one non-renewable project since May 2007 – more determinations than over the whole of the previous four years, in which 19 projects were determined.

Abstracts from Source: http://www.nce.co.uk/5202398.article

Engineers are considered the backbone of any country’s economy and development playing a major role in development of infrastructure and other planning. But where they are deprived off from their fees or salaries by the government or state agents, then you can imagine the economy of that country. A recent Analyst claims in Dubai that state backed property developer owes UK engineering firms £200M.

The news published on www.nce.co.uk reports that ” Leading UK consultants were this week struggling to recover hundreds of millions of pounds in unpaid fees from Middle East clients.

Analysts believe Atkins, Mouchel, Scott Wilson and WSP and other UK firms are owed a total of £200M by Nakheel, the state-backed developer of megaprojects like the Palm Jumeira, World and Universe Islands.

Atkins said last week that it was chasing £25M in unpaid bills in the Middle East. “Cash collection has become more difficult, especially in the Middle East where there has been a worsening of approximately £25M in the past three months. We expect that cash collection will remain challenging for at least the next few months,” it said.

Earlier in the year consultant Mouchel also highlighted payment problems. “Sums due in the Middle East totalled £31.6M of which £23M related to contracts in Dubai, with the vast majority being due from the local state backed development companies.”

Scott Wilson recently announced an exceptional charge of between £4M and £6M caused by unrecovered debts.

WSP has yet to release numbers, but a recent statement said it was making “appropriate and prudent provisions in respect of potential impairment of trade receivables and unbilled amounts due on contracts” in the Middle East.

Nakheel’s mega-projects have helped drive GDP growth of up to 16% per year in Dubai over the last decade. This growth has recently given way to a spectacular crash as the credit crunch hit last year, and analysts now claim Nakheel is teetering on the edge of insolvency. As one insider put it: “The company sells property off-plan at the front to fund construction at the back. Speculators invested heavily in property that created a bubble that has severely overheated as a result.”

As the credit crunch hit last year investment funds dried-up, hitting the developer hard and limiting cash for ongoing projects. “We believe Nakheel is not paying consulting engineers,” said Charles Stanley Securities analyst Geoff Allum. He estimated that the developer owed consultants around £200M in unpaid fees.

The Dubai government recently raised a £13.7bn bond issue, with neighbouring Abu Dhabi buying half. But it is unclear whether Nakheel will benefit from these new funds. Nakheel refused to comment”.

Now you can imagine the current economy of Dubai?

The alliance concept is similar to the design build project delivery system. However, it is denoted by a special form of partnership between the owner and the design-build team, where the owner is very involved in the project. This type of delivery systems is gaining popularity as many infrastructure projects require the owner to order materials ahead of time, before engaging the design-build team in the project. As in design-build, the selection of the engineer-procure-construct (EPC) team depends not only on the price, but also on qualitative factors. This paper lays out the framework that facilitates selecting the best alliance team for a project by quantifying the evaluation factors and combining them into a single score. Using a Monte Carlo simulation and varying all the factors relevant to the decision problem can reveal biases present in the evaluation to assist in making the best possible decision. A case study dealing with a large utility project illustrates this methodology.

Abstract of Research Paper of Mounir El Asmar, Awad S. Hanna, M. ASCE; and Chul-Ki Chang, Research Assistants, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2256 Engineering Hall, 1415 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI 53706, E-mail: elasmar@wisc.edu.

Source: http://scitation.aip.org/

Developing countries which invest in better education, health care, and job training for their record numbers of young people between the ages of 12 and 24 years of age, could produce surging economic growth and sharply reduced poverty, according to a new World Bank report launched at the Bank’s Annual Meetings in Singapore.
With 1.3 billion young people now living in the developing world-the largest-ever youth group in history-the report says there has never been a better time to invest in youth because they are healthier and better educated than previous generations, and they will join the workforce with fewer dependents because of changing demographics.
However, failure to seize this opportunity to train them more effectively for the workplace, and to be active citizens, could lead to widespread disillusionment and social tensions.
The report says that young people make up nearly half of the ranks of the world’s unemployed, and, for example, that the Middle East and North Africa region alone must create 100 million jobs by 2020 in order to stabilize its employment situation. Moreover, surveys of young people in East Asia and Eastern Europe and Central Asia-carried out as research for the report-indicate that access to jobs, along with physical security, is their biggest concern.
Far too many young people–some 130 million 15-24 year olds–cannot read or write. Secondary education and skill acquisition make sense only if primary schooling has been successful. This is still far from being the case and efforts have to be reinforced in this area. In addition, more than 20 percent of firms in countries such as Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Estonia, and Zambia, rate poor education and work skills among their workforce as ‘a major or severe obstacle to their operations.’ Overcoming this handicap starts with more and better investments in youth.
“Most developing countries have a short window of opportunity to get this right before their record numbers of youth become middle-aged, and they lose their demographic dividend. This isn’t just enlightened social policy. This may be one of the profound decisions a developing country will ever make to banish poverty and galvanize its economy,” says
Emmanuel Jimenez, lead author of the report, and Director of Human Development in the World Bank’s East Asia and the Pacific Department.
Source: www.worldbank.org

The age-old cry of engineers has been that they’re underpaid and overworked and generally unappreciated by the rest of the world. Particularly in the UK. And particularly by the chattering political classes.

Well, one hates to disillusion, but engineers probably couldn’t ask for much more than they’ve got in a report out today from the House of Commons select committee on innovation, universities, science and skills. The report, called Engineering: turning ideas into reality, suggest that not only have MPs got to grips with what engineering is about, but they also recognise that it’s got a lot to offer that isn’t being taken advantage of.

A blog isn’t the right place to go into detail of what the report does and says, so we’ll put up a truncated version – just the summary of what the committee is about and its conclusions and recommendations – that you can reach by clicking here. There’s probably somewhere on the parliament.uk website where you can get the full version of 135 pages.

To my mind, good bits include the fact that the MPs weren’t waylaid by the constant gripe from government that the profession is fragmented: it’s multi-faceted, they said, so there are bound to be lots of different aspects, and besides, the profession didn’t have a problem presenting a pretty united front to the committee.

It’s good, too, that they gave the DIUS minister John Denham and the government chief scientist John Bennington a pretty rough ride about the degree to which government has good engineering advice on tap. Neither Denham nor Bennington wanted to have a “government chief engineer” post; oh dear, that’s just what the committee thinks would be a really good idea.

There’s lots more sound stuff inside this report on the generalities of engineering in the UK and its relations with decision-making, and on specifics such as nuclear power, geo-engineering and plastic electronics. I suspect you’ll find yourself nodding in agreement with much of it.

But that is, of course, all very well. What one would like to think is that this report might have some influence outside the engineering profession. And that’s maybe where you and I come in.

I haven’t read all the national newspapers today, but so far I’ve spotted only one small item on this report, in the FT. There’s a strong likelihood that the committee’s conclusions will bounce around the engineering profession for a while, but not outside. Newspapers will ignore them, government will probably slip out a toe-curlingly anodyne response on Derby day or some other time when attention is elsewhere, and most MPs and decision-makers won’t know anything about any of it.

So it’s up to engineers to keep this high up on the agenda. What are you going to do about it? And if the answer is “Nothing”, then you really do have to stop using that age-old complaining cry of the unappreciated engineer.

BY JOHN PULLIN Source from http://www.profeng.com/PEBlog.htm

Engineers must start rolling out solutions now if we are to meet the tough low-carbon targets in the timescales required. That was the strong message ICE director general, Tom Foulkes delivered to delegates at the Business Council for Sustainable Development’s 10th anniversary summit.

Held jointly with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the summit explored what a future, low-carbon world will look like by 2050, what new skills and new business models will be needed, and what commercial opportunities are likely to arise.

Foulkes said: “ICE was created in the early 19th century by a group of engineers dedicated to responding to society’s needs following the industrial revolution. Today’s summit will address a challenge of an even greater scale, identifying how we must move to a low-carbon world. Once again science, engineering, and business must unite to meet the greatest challenges of our time.

“For engineers, these are exciting times, with huge opportunities in offshore wind, retrofitting our ageing building stock, new high speed rail networks, and using “waste” as a raw material and source of energy. The time, though, for academic debate has passed. To deliver change in the timescales required we must start rolling out these solutions now.”

Foulkes explained how ICE is playing its part in preparing future engineers for the challenges they will face, through initial and continuing professional development, as well as focussing on developing low-carbon engineering solutions in all aspects of ICE policy and public affairs work.

Later this year the Institution will be publishing a major inquiry on low-carbon infrastructure and work is also being done to press government to create a political environment which supports business in delivering a low-carbon environment.

Anyone wishing to submit evidence to the inquiry can do so by visiting the ICE website.
Source: www.ice.org.uk

Thermal mass, particularly when used as part of a passive solar design strategy, is increasingly being used to reduce heating and air conditioning energy consumption and bills. Both benefits are of interest to housing associations wanting to build sustainable homes that reduce both their environmental impact and the potential for fuel poverty.

The ability of thermal mass to reduce overheating problems is increasingly recognised. Perhaps less appreciated is its ability to save heating energy when used in passive solar design (PSD). Consequently, it is possible for concrete, masonry and other heavyweight dwellings to exploit their inherent thermal mass on a year-round basis. During the summer, heat is absorbed on hot days, helping to cool the internal temperature and prevent overheating problems. The stored heat is then removed by night ventilation. During the winter, the thermal mass will absorb solar gains through south facing windows, and slowly releases the heat at night. This process is effectively the same as that which occurs on summer nights, the only difference being that during the winter the stored heat is beneficial, so windows and openings are kept shut to minimise heat loss. Shutters and blinds used to prevent overheating in the summer can also help minimise heat loss during the winter.

Useful levels of thermal mass are found in medium and heavyweight construction, which in practice is most easily provided by concrete in the form of blocks and precast or in-situ floors and panels.

The use of concrete often raises questions regarding its embodied CO2, which can be slightly higher than that associated with alternative materials, but in reality the difference is relatively small when compared to lightweight systems. And, when you evaluate this in whole-life terms, the operational CO2 savings provided by the heavyweight solution is actually much more significant over the long-term. This point can sometimes be overlooked in the drive to specify the greenest materials available, but should to some extent be redressed in the forthcoming revisions to Part L1 of the Building Regulations, which will take greater account of thermal mass in the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) calculation.
To establish the facts of embodied versus operational CO2, The Concrete Centre commissioned research to examine the embodied and operational CO2 emissions of a simple semidetached house built using a typical lightweight frame, with that of several heavyweight versions built using varying levels of thermal mass. The embodied CO2 for each option was calculated and thermal modelling was undertaken to see how each performed across the 21st century, taking account of the likely impacts of climate change. The results showed that a typical masonry house with a medium level of thermal mass, has around 4% more embodied CO2 than an equivalent lightweight frame construction, but that this could be offset in as little as 11 years due to the energy savings provided by its thermal mass. Increasing the mass through additional concrete elements, such as precast upper floors, resulted in a longer offset period, but ultimately led to the lowest whole life CO2 emissions of all the options, with a saving in CO2 over the 21st century approximately six times greater than the difference in its embodied CO2 when compared to the lightweight frame solution.

Due to the predicted increase in summer temperatures resulting from climate change, the lightweight home was found to need air-conditioning by 2021. This compared with 2041 for the medium-weight home and 2061 for the medium-heavy and heavyweight homes.

Thermal mass is of course only one of the steps needed to adapt homes to a warming climate. Effective ventilation and shading are also of great importance in all types of housing, particularly in the south of the UK where overheating is likely to be greatest. Traditionally, shading has not been a major feature of UK housing. However, this is likely to change, particularly if tougher overheating rules appear in the Building Regulations. There are many shading options, but the most effective at minimising solar gains are externally located, such as overhangs and louvered shutters. The latter has the advantage of also providing secure night time ventilation in the summer.

In addition to having a medium to high level of thermal mass the key design requirement for capturing solar gains during the winter is to locate a large proportion of the glazing on the south elevation, or within about 30° of south. This will allow the low winter sun to shine directly into the home, passing underneath any fixed external shading overhangs. There are no hard and fast rules for window size in passive solar design; the objective is to optimise solar gains during the winter without incurring summertime overheating problems. This typically leads to a glazed area that between approximately 20 and 40% of the façade area. Glazing on the north façade should be restricted to the minimum area needed for adequate daylighting, since over the course of a year this will have a net heat loss.

Incorporating these all design features can help to maximise a home’s year-round passive thermal performance thereby reducing both CO2 emissions and energy bills.

The potential of using a building’s thermal mass to reduce its ongoing heating and cooling energy requirements is being increasingly recognised. How to successfully realise this potential is often less understood but is explained in new technical guidance from The Concrete Centre.

Until recently, the use of thermal was often disregarded in favour of a largely services-based solution for the heating and cooling of buildings. However, the wish to reduce the on-going energy consumption of buildings both in terms of carbon dioxide emissions and energy bills has led to a re-evaluation of the contribution that thermal mass can help to achieve a more sustainable built-environment.

“Exploiting thermal mass so that it helps to reduce heating requirements in the winter and cooling requirements in the summer is not difficult. However, it does need to be considered at the outset of the design process when the building’s form, fabric and orientation requirements are being determined”, said Tom de Saulles, building physicist, at The Concrete Centre and author of the report ‘Thermal Mass Explained’. “Get it right and you can have significant energy savings and carbon savings over the life of a building with less need for expensive low carbon technologies”.

Thermal mass, in the most general sense, describes the ability of a material to store heat. For a construction material to provide a useful level of thermal mass it must have a high specific heat storage capacity, be of high density and have moderate thermal conductivity so that heat conduction is roughly in synchronisation with the daily heat flow in and out of the building.

Timber has a high heat capacity but a low thermal conductivity. This limits the useful heat absorption rate and so provides a low thermal mass. Steel also has a high heat storage capacity but it also has a very high rate of thermal conductivity which means that heat is absorbed and released too quickly for any meaningful thermal mass efficiency. Concrete and masonry, with their high heat capacity and density but moderate thermal conductivity offers a good balance. They steadily absorb heat and store it until the ambient temperature drops causing stored heat to migrate back to the surface from where it is released. Heat moves in a wave like motion alternatively being absorbed and released in response to the variations in day and night-time conditions.

“The absorption and release of heat enables buildings with thermal mass to respond naturally to changing weather conditions, helping to stabilise the internal temperature and provide a largely self-regulating environment”, explained de Saulles. “This action helps to prevent summer overheating and reduces the need for air conditioning. It can also reduce the need for heating during the winter by capturing and later releasing solar and internal heat gains”.

During warm weather, much of the heat gain in heavyweight buildings is absorbed by the thermal mass in the floors and walls thereby reducing the risk of overheating. This heat is then removed by allowing cool night-time air to ventilate the building. This daily heating and cooling of the thermal mass works relatively well in the UK as the air temperature at night is typically 10 degrees less than peak daytime temperatures during the summer.

“The benefits of thermal mass, which is well understood in warmer parts of Europe, will become increasingly recognised in the UK as climate change results in hotter summer temperatures”, said de Saulles. “As well as cooler internal temperatures, these benefits also include reduced heating bills in the winter as instead of purging the day-time heat gains with night-time air, the stored heat is allowed to radiate back into the building”.

For the winter, thermal mass works best when it is used as part of a passive solar design strategy (PSD). This approach seeks to maximise the benefit of solar gain in the winter, using thermal mass to absorb gains from south facing windows, as well as internal heat gains from electrical equipment, cooking and lighting. These gains are slowly released overnight as the temperature drops so helping to keep the building warm and reducing the need for supplementary heating. Applying simple passive solar design techniques can result in fuel savings of up to 10 per cent. This saving can increase to 30 per cent if more sophisticated passive solar techniques such as sunspaces are adopted.

“The need to design and build for higher levels of energy efficiency and to mitigate the effects of climate change means that the performance requirements of building materials continue to increase. Meeting these challenges requires a whole-building approach where the materials, structure and systems work in unison to maximise the building’s overall performance. The thermal mass of concrete provides a useful constituent of this whole building approach”, said de Saulles. “Efficient use of thermal mass used in conjunction with orientation, solar gain, ventilation and shading can do much to reduce the whole-life carbon footprint of buildings”.

Source: http://www.concretecentre.com/

Jonathon Porritt, Founder Director of Forum for the Future, has applauded the concrete industry for its initiative and commitment to become a leader for sustainable construction.

Speaking at the launch of ‘The Concrete Industry Sustainability Performance Report’, Porritt commended the industry saying that: “I am genuinely impressed at the progress that has been made and the quality of the leadership shown. The industry is to be congratulated upon the journey that it is taking”.

Forum for the Future has been working with the concrete industry to develop and implement a sustainability strategy. The launch of the first industry-wide Performance Report marks a milestone for the concrete industry. It examines the challenges being faced and provides a statement of achievement. Importantly, the report provides industry data across 14 performance indicators against which the concrete sector has committed to be benchmarked against and to improve upon.

The performance indicators are wide ranging and include the implementation of environmental management systems, reduction of waste and carbon emissions, improved energy efficiency and the provision of locally sourced materials. In addition, there are commitments to enhance the environment and create sustainable communities. The report will be followed up on an annual basis so that ongoing sustainability improvements can be measured.

To download the report, visit www.sustainableconcrete.org.uk