Figure 3 - uploaded by Abimbola Olukemi Windapo
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The GIS map showing the locations of timber manufacturers in the centre of the inner buffer and the distance of retailers within the three buffers
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This study examined the price of building materials and whether there are significant differences in the prices across South Africa and between retailers. The rationale stems from reports that there is a differential in building material prices across South Africa. However, it is not known whether location is a key factor in the price differentials...
Citations
... This signifies a crucial change in some readers' desirability of research outcomes on tender decision-support tools -an area that until recently produced a significant number of world-leading outcomes. Windapo and Moghayedi (2017) tested the assumption that location determines nuances in prices of construction materials. They found prices are not the same in different locations in South Africa and that some are not significantly different between retailers irrespective of their locations. ...
The desire to build bigger, better and faster has remained with our generation. It is the way of the future also. The construction industry must re-invent itself continually along this line of thought in order to keep up with the teeming needs of a fast-growing global population and the emergent pace of innovation from other sectors. This involves advancing the frontiers of new knowledge towards creating cutting-edge solutions that can trigger improved efficiency in how construction projects are designed and built, and managed during operations. Every stakeholder in the construction industry-project owners, financiers, contractors, consultants, workers, policy makers-is challenged to adapt into a new way of thinking in which new knowledge flows seamlessly into practice and teaching, such that actors are able to learn and improve continually and simultaneously. Normative commentators have described this as the way of the future, the future that has truly begun! They are also of the opinion that construction businesses or practitioners who are averse to continual change, or are unable reform their processes by upscaling with new knowledge and techniques continually, are unlikely to remain relevant for much longer (Grübler, 2003). New knowledge comes in the form of new technologies, management methods and operational methodologies. Many scholarly journals publish on these regularly. However, they also publish outcomes that are unrelated to practice, and sometimes they ramble and stagnate their efforts on research problems that are not too important to the commercial reality of present and future research and practice. For example, Ahiaga-Dagbui et al. (2015) made a point on this. They concluded that construction management research on some subjects-cost performance in particular-is stagnated, over-researched and has become ineffective for the problems they intended to address. Love and Ahiaga-Dagbui (2018) also articulate how a large of section of project management research has been misled consistently over many years due to bad science. Something must happen to trigger the much-needed change on this. There are several dimensions to the challenges confronting the construction industry along the lines of upscaling with modern-day knowledge and skills. An important aspect of the solution is that the industry must understand, articulate and advance its new knowledge appropriately from time to time. In the first quarter of 2017, the editorial advisory panel of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers-Management, Procurement and Law announced a themed issue on 'Recent advances in construction technology and management'. The purpose of the themed issue is to harness scholarship relating to new aspects of construction research and practice without replicating a conventional train of thought. Papers were invited from areas related to robotics, digital designs, smart materials, autonomous systems, renewable energy systems and zero-carbon dioxide solutions. Developments in these areas present significant legal opportunities and challenges, as well as opportunities and challenges for the procurement and management of design and construction processes. The themed issue call for papers was a success. Submissions came from virtually every continent on the planet-from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. Six papers were accepted, but were published as part of different regular issues; two in volume 170, four in volume 171. They all provide robust narratives about recent advances in technological and management research and practice. The areas for further research suggested by each of the papers are also intriguing.
Issuing the accurate information price of construction materials is an important responsibility of the administrative department of construction industry. This paper is aimed to measure and calculate the information price of commercial concrete and provide decision reference for the administration department. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method was utilized to determine the initial weight of three price channels originated from market entities, informants, and professional website. And then, the BP neural network method is applied to establish the calculation model to measure the information guidance price of commercial concrete. Furthermore, the empirical analysis was implemented, and the result shows that this method can accurately calculate the price of concrete, which is close to the market, which can provide cost management reference for the administrative department of construction industry.
Sustainable building materials are products with a relatively positive impact on economies, communities and the environment. Understanding the key indicators in developing sustainable building materials, which affect the economic, social and environmental aspects of buildings, is a critical perspective to aid their evolution. Research in sustainable building materials is relatively new, and therefore this study examined the existing literature on sustainable building materials in academic journals with the intent of identifying and clustering key indicators and proposing a conceptual framework for the development of sustainable building materials. This study employed a verifiable and reproducible systematic literature review of building materials, analyzing and scrutinizing 203 academic articles for the co-occurrence of keywords, using a mixed bibliographic and bibliometric method. It emerged from the study that the groups themed “Process”, “Material”, “Element” and “Technology” contained the greatest number of, and most statistically significant, indicators associated with sustainable building material. It was found that, in developing and evaluating sustainable building materials, sustainability, LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), embodied energy and recycling appear to be the predominant processes used; concrete, bricks, C&D (Construction and Demolition) waste, and fibre are the foremost materials; walls and roofs are the main building components; and composite, 3D printing, nanotechnology and prefabrication are the leading technology features. Also, the results of the analysis of interconnections between indicators revealed that a significant interconnection exists between embodied energy, LCA, concrete, composite and durability to the sustainability of building materials. Based on the taxonomy of indicators and the analysis of their interconnections, a conceptual framework for developing sustainable building materials was proposed in the paper.
