Current Projects
The Building Commission in partnership with other organisations are conducting the following research projects:
Accessibility in the built environment
The Australian Building Codes Board and the Building Commission have jointly funded a research project to study options that could be used to plan for the future supply of housing that is accessible to persons with a disability. The research will evaluate whether or not there is a need for government intervention. If there is a demonstrated need, the research will identify a range of options to stimulate appropriate supply. In January 2005, Jaguar Consulting Pty Ltd was appointed to conduct the research. Jaguar Consulting developed a consultation paper that sought stakeholder input to inform the development of the research project during May 2005. View consultation paper.
CRC for Construction Innovation report
Dr Keith Hampson, CEO of the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Construction Innovation, provides an overview of industry research partnerships and projects for 2004. Read more.
Knowledge Management and Innovation Diffusion
To encourage a more innovative construction industry, this project looks at ways to manage information. The Knowledge Management and Innovation Diffusion project is developing a business guide and prototype template (an electronic wizard) that recommends best knowledge management practice including the diffusion of supporting information and communication technologies. The e-wizard, which will be able to be placed on an intranet or extranet for widespread access within an organisation, will provide easy access to available knowledge sources within a company to improve decision-making.
This research project both examines how knowledge creation and management is best pursued and studies methods for achieving innovation diffusion, particularly supporting IT infrastructure. Becoming more effective in applying innovation will allow the construction industry to manage any required change process involving knowledge generation and knowledge management.
Ethical behaviour in the construction procurement process
The research focuses on the promotion, management and diffusion of ethical practices in the construction industry and identifies ways in which these factors could encourage widespread cultural change. The research examines the differences between culture in regard to the ethical performance of individuals and organisations in the construction sector, in terms of organisational make-up, use of codes of practice, and a range of situational characteristics including organisational focus.
Benefits of this research for the industry will be to foster and promote the sound practice of business ethics; develop new perspectives on future development of ethical practices and to improve organisational efficiency through the adoption of best practices.
Environmental assessment systems for commercial buildings
The principal drivers for building design in Australia continue to be short-term cost related - not lifetime environmental factors. Most developed countries, including Australia, have now initiated voluntary environmental rating schemes for building design; however Australia is not yet meeting best practice standards in this area.
This project combines life cycle assessment, whole of life costing and whole of life performance assessment to develop a suite of CAD-integrated cost and environmental assessment ('eco-efficiency') tools for commercial buildings that can enhance the decision-making process among Architecture/Engineering/Construction professionals and deliver superior built environment outcomes. Benchmark data derived from this project will be applied initially in industry partner projects. It is expected that this eco-efficiency assessment tool and associated databases will become the nominated system for providing a rating assessment of commercial buildings in all Australian jurisdictions.
Automated Code checking
This project is a scoping study to assess the capacity of object-based CAD systems to support automated checking of designs for compliance against requirements and to test the comparative strengths and suitability of two different rule checking engines - EDM Model Checker and the Solibri Model Checker. The study involves the encoding of sections of the BCA relevant to access by people with disabilities (Section D3) and the deemed-to-satisfy provisions including AS 1428.1.
Linking Best-Value procurement to outcome performance indicators
This project is linking the development of a standard set of tender evaluation criteria based best-value (to which individual clients can attach their own weightings) with definition of Outcomes Performance Indicators (OPI) that would be required to be reported upon on completion of projects. This would provide an important link between the selection criteria and the means to evaluate how the project succeeded on a broader set of success criteria.
This project provides a set of direct cause and effect indicators that can be used as part of improved post project evaluation and assist in gathering a lessons learned knowledge base. Further, the OPI's identified could be utilised for use in broader balanced scorecard approach to performance measurement thus providing leading indicators of likely success or impending problems.
The Building Commission in partnership with the Australian Building Codes Board is working on the following research projects:
Timber framed Class 3 buildings
Provide information to support a change to the Building Code of Australia (BCA) - Specification C1.1
The Building Commission is sponsoring the following projects:
The Performance of Environmentally Sustainable Design Features in Commercial Buildings (CII - QLD University of Technology)
Research Sustainable Built Management in 2 buildings under development at University of Melbourne & benchmark them against other buildings without sustainability measures.
Safety Plus - Improving Construction Safety (CII)
Assess existing levels of safety awareness and understanding by construction workers & develop proposals to improve safety performance.
The EcoHome project - sustainable housing project (RMIT)
Investigate barriers to diffusion of sustainable design & construction technologies in the outer suburban housing market through an inter-disciplinary approach.
Approval of Performance-Based Design of Buildings (VUT)
Particular focus on transparency, accountability and consistency of approvals.
Improving the Performance of Regional Construction Firms (University of Melbourne)
Expanding a pilot study to recommend strategies to improve capabilities of regional contractors to participate in major public construction projects.
