Building construction
Research Topic
Language: English
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Research problems linked to this topic
- What safety-related interventions work most effectively and reliably to change industry behaviours, norms, and culture?
- How will new and emerging technology assist in reducing construction costs for road schemes?
- Are there health and safety challenges associated with growing industries including
the retrofitting of domestic and commercial buildings; installation of low carbon heat
solutions & installation of electrical infrastructure for electric vehicles?
- To what extent, and how, can regeneration drive productivity, including the contribution from physical and broader regeneration initiatives?
- What more can be done to quantify and/or monetise the costs and benefits of building safety regulatory reform? Are there existing systems which are relevant here?
- What are the opportunities and risks presented by Modern Methods of Construction (MMC), including its role in supporting greater energy efficiency in future?
- Is the housebuilding market more concentrated/less intensely competitive than other markets? How has this changed over time, and how does the UK compare in this respect with other countries? What are the implications of this?
- What are the opportunities and challenges in deploying off-road automation in construction?
- What are the wider costs of a major building safety incident? What might the impacts be on undermining resident, insurer and bank confidence in the construction industry and in the built environment? And what are the consequences of this e.g.in terms of property valuations, or ability to secure a mortgage?
- How can it be ensured that evidence is used appropriately for completing effective
safety checks, calibration and testing requirements for existing and new materials
and structures?
- What are the barriers to the building industry investing in better data management (generating information, saving it, and making it accessible) and how can these be addressed? What sorts of government incentives/interventions are effective to achieve digital transformation of the building industry?
- What is the role of the regulation of buildings in a COVID-19 endemic world? What does an ‘endemic-prepared’ building look like?
- What are the potential impacts of the latest emerging technologies on building safety? Which technologies present the biggest opportunities and what are the biggest risks?
- Influences: What influences construction activity in the sector, and which have the
most impact on a project’s health and safety management (both at the small and
larger project scale)?
- Building standards: What evidence is available to improve the safety and standard of
buildings and people in or about buildings to inform the evaluation of the Building
Regulations and the associated guidance?
- How should we measure whether the overall system enables redress if things go wrong? Are there effective routes for residents/leaseholders/others to be compensated for historic and new defects? And for those who design/build defective premises to be held to account?
- What are the interactions between housing quality, safety, and zero carbon? Where might synergies, tensions, or unintended consequences arise when tackling these priorities?
- How can housing quality interventions maximise the benefits of living in a good quality home?
- What factors increase the risk of gaps between design/modelled performance, and actual energy or other performance of buildings? Of these factors, which are the most significant in terms of the ‘performance gap’?
- What does evidence from other countries tell us about technical building safety issues, e.g. the key points of failure resulting in fire spread and/or risk of structural collapse in high rise residential buildings?
- What are the most effective ways to assess the health impacts of buildings, and what does this mean for the oversight of the thermal environment, ventilation, noise etc?
- Innovative design: Are there opportunities to improve worker health and safety and
building safety outcomes through inherently safer design that reduces risk through
the building life cycle from construction through occupation and refurbishment to
demolition?
- Where are the skills and capabilities missing within the infrastructure construction and maintenance industry to effectively conserve and enhance biodiversity and implement biodiversity net gain?
- What factors can lead to poor building industry compliance within the regulatory regime? And what is effective in motivating industry to comply (including in relation to energy efficiency)?
- How can any key long-term challenges and threats to the current ageing asset base
be identified?
- Benchmarking: What asbestos remains in the built environment, at what rate is this
currently being disturbed and how will industry trends impact on this?
- How should we measure the overall effectiveness of the regulatory regime? What evidence is there to show what an effective regulatory body looks like? How is the impact of regulatory interventions best evaluated, and what factors are key to it succeeding?
- A changing world of work: Are there significant implications for worker health and safety and for building safety of widespread adoption across this diverse sector of: Modern Methods of Construction (MMC); AI, Autonomy and the Internet of Things;
Robotics; Advanced materials and additive manufacturing?
- Metrics: What metrics provide the best leading indicators for building safety and
construction health and safety performance at both an industry and project-specific
level?
- How could modern materials and construction techniques be used to improve both the safety and, through weight reduction, the productivity of dangerous goods tanks?
- What is the role of commercial property development in supporting growth in places? And what does the evidence suggest about how this may change going forward?
- What are the most significant benefits arising from developing brownfield sites and can these be monetised for use in business case appraisals?
- To what extent have investments in buildings/infrastructure (new buildings, expansion/maintenance or repurposing for cultural use) led to social and economic regeneration of an area?
- Building competence: Is there opportunity to transfer knowledge into and across the
diverse construction and building safety sectors to build competence levels aided by
appropriate benchmark standards?
- Net Zero innovation: Are there significant implications from carbon reduction for construction workers health and safety and for building safety involving: retrofitting domestic and commercial buildings; constructing, altering or decommissioning high hazard infrastructure / plants; low carbon heat solutions; zero emission vehicles and plant; reduced carbon materials; climate adaption to existing buildings and infrastructure?
- Digitisation: How can digital innovation (e.g. digitisation of CDM) be harnessed to
improve building safety and to better structure, share and use construction health and
safety data to best inform health and/or safety decisions during the design,
construction and use of an asset or building?
- What are the international examples of effective interventions to regenerate town centres and cities? What does this show us about the roles of the public and private sectors, the type of investment required, and in different contexts?
- What explains the sub-regional variation in poor quality housing? How does this vary across the UK?
- How can transport investment release additional land for housing and deliver wider economic benefits?