Architecture and Construction

Higher standards of insulation and control of air leakage in buildings is called for in the forthcoming revised UK Building Regulations. In particular, Part L of the Building Regulations has been reviewed with a brief to make new buildings more energy efficient and to tackle climate change. The revised changes will be enforced from April 2006.

This will mean new buildings will need to be better insulated and use more efficient heating systems. And importantly, for the first time the rev

The Technologies Research Centre, Ikerlan, is leading the Var Trainer European project, which consists of developing training simulators for handling machinery aimed at workers in the construction sector to avoid risks in the workplace. This initiative is promoted by associations of construction companies and manufacturers from six European countries.

Accidents in the workplace, particularly concentrated on the construction sector, are a cause for concern for public and private agents

The University of the West of England (UWE) and Management Process Systems (MPS) have been awarded a grant of over £68,000 from the Department of Trade and Industry to form a new Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP). The project’s aim is to develop an innovative way of calculating the costs and benefits of collaborative and workflow IT business support systems in the construction industry.

The construction industry is worth £57 billion in the UK alone, but many construction project

The best response to a building emergency is a fast and informed one. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is working with the building industry as well as the public safety and information technology communities to achieve both objectives.

NIST researchers are studying how “intelligent” building systems can be used by firefighters, police and other first responders to accurately assess emergency conditions in real-time. One of the biggest problems faced by

An automatic guard has been developed to check that houses or other buildings do not sway, or move away from their true vertical position. If dangerous degrees of tilt are found, the device immediately notifies engineers. This spatial meter, called PIKiN-03, has been designed by Moscow engineers to measure vibrations and tilts in three dimensions.

Such measuring devices designed by engineers of the Conus (Cone) company are capable of around the clock checking that the permissible

Researchers at the Universitat Jaume I of Castelló and at the University of California have devised a system to reduce the damage caused by earthquakes in bridges. Installed between the piers of a bridge and their respective foundations, it is a flexible device that helps to mitigate the effects produced by the movement of the Earth’s surface, working in a similar way to the shock absorbers in cars. The study has been published in the journal Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics.