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.
Tension is mounting for three teams of architects and engineers who are competing for the design of the new British Antarctic Survey (BAS) Halley Research Station. The winning team will be announced on Tuesday 19 July.
The Jury Panel and technical advisory team have a difficult choice to select just one from three stunning solutions. Each proposal is designed to withstand Antarctica’s extreme environment. Each scheme is elevated above the ice to avoid burial by snow; and is capa
New Florida homes withstood last year’s four hurricanes better than their older counterparts — thanks in large measure to continued improvements in the state’s hurricane building code, say University of Florida engineers.
UF engineering researchers have completed one of the most extensive studies of how homes built before and after Florida’s latest building code held up against Charley, Frances, Jeanne and Ivan.
Their conclusion: Homes built under the Flor
TERREAL of France, a leading manufacturer of terracotta construction materials, specialises in terracotta facades for commercial and residential buildings and is currently looking for distributors. The company has demonstrated its international expertise by advising architects in Spain, England, the USA and China. TERREAL will be showcasing its latest product lines at various trade shows in the coming months.
TERREAL’s expertise is a major advantage in the terracotta cladding
EUREKA project E! 2797 FACTORY MSETC (Mobile Self-Erecting Tower Crane) has successfully combined the technologies of mobile and self-erecting cranes to create a single crane that can do the work of five. The new crane features an anti-sway device which makes it safer as well as more efficient.
The Belgian lead partner, Arcomet NV, has developed self-erecting tower cranes for the building industry for many years. “These cranes were mounted and remained in a fixed position on
An automatic sprinkler system significantly increases a person’s chances of surviving a dormitory fire, according to a report issued recently by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Three NIST experiments,* supported by a U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) initiative for fire safety in college housing, compared the hazards of fires in smoke detector-equipped dormitories with and without fire sprinklers in the room of fire origin. Researchers started fires
An exciting find has been made by decorators working at A-listed Lilybank House, which belongs to the University of Glasgow. Hidden beneath layers of paint the decorators discovered colourful original stencilling work which experts are sure date back to 1863, when this addition to the house was designed by Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson.
The University of Glasgow immediately called in Historic Scotland’s conservation experts to investigate and manage the conservation process.
Courtyard houses and terraced houses are the central topics of a newly released publication on the forms of horizontal densification in domestic architecture. Besides the history of these building types, the various types, quality criteria and their implementation within the purview of the numerous concepts of urban development are dealt with in detail. The book, published in German with the aid of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), thus offers a unique review of a residential building type that –
An American engineer has produced a mathematical model explaining the elegant shape of the Eiffel Tower that was derived from French engineer Gustave Eiffel’s writings regarding his own fears about the effects of wind on such a structure.
University of Colorado at Boulder Associate Professor Patrick Weidman said Eiffel, one of the premier structural engineers in history, was determined to build the world’s first tower reaching 300 meters, the nearest metric equivalent to
Hundreds of thousands of earthquake fatalities could be averted if building contractors and homeowners were alerted to elementary construction principles, especially in the world’s six deadliest earthquake countries led by Iran, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder seismologist.
Roger Bilham said Iran, Turkey, China and the Caucasus states run the highest risk among developing nations, while Japan and Italy are the most hazardous industrialized nations in terms of eart
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