Building & Investment (Sep - Oct 2015) | Page 57

News & Events investment programmes becomes more challenging … fluctuations in commodity and currency markets, along with wider economic trends, may also affect the ability of these markets to fund projects or attract Public Private Partnership investment.”

Summit Agenda Aside from the outlook for 2015, and beyond, other key issues deliberated at the Summit included impact of foreign participation in domestic projects, manpower and skills shortages, Government policies and procedures and transformation of the industry( performance-based and productivity-driven).

Singled out here, for ingenuity and impact, is the Singapore experience-“ Sustainability for Environment – Recycling of Construction Waste” – as presented by Dr Nyok Yong, Samwoh Corporation Pte Ltd. Having had to grapple with limited natural resources, reliance on imports and demand for aggregates and other building materials, it was imperative to explore, research and develop alternatives, including:( i) construction waste + demolition waste( 2 million tons of crushed concrete, waste masonry, glass);( ii) copper slag / grit, residue from sandblasting works at shipyards;( iii) by-products, pulverised fuel ash or fly ash from power stations;( iv) asphalt pavement waste; and,( v) scrap tyres.

A viable outcome is the processing of construction and demolition waste, previously destined for landfill and / or temporary roads, into re-cycled concrete aggregate( RCA) for the production of concrete. Subsequently, a pilot project to build using concrete with high RCA content and rational mix design method resulted in Samwoh’ s Ecobuilding, i. e., for main structural elements( columns, beams, slabs, lift cores and staircase cores) with internal non-structural walls, dry walls and hollow core walls of fine RCA.

Outlook 2015 and beyond In the final reckoning, the prognosis is that“ despite the changing nature of the economy, it can be expected that construction investment in ASEAN will sustain strong growth during 2015 and construction in the key emerging markets and cities, in particular, is expected to grow over the next few years, providing significant growth opportunity for all parts of the construction industry in ASEAN. Housing is expected to support the ASEAN construction sector and the infrastructure market to show even higher growth in the next few years.” �

International seminar and industry appreciation awards

GLOBALLY, FROM 2007 to 2013, there has been increasing use of Building Information Modelling( BIM) in the building construction industry, averaging from 28 % to 71 %, with a high percentage of contractors adopting digital technology in the construction sector. In ensuing years, the said percentage is projected to expand to, for example, 79 % in the U. S. in 2015, 73 % in Brazil and 71 % in Australia, France and Germany, with the UK and Canada trailing a trifle behind. Here at home, notwithstanding that a little than half of Malaysian contractors are aware of BIM, the take-up or implementation rate is somewhat wanting, i. e., 5.2 %( Source: CIDB), a disparity that the Construction Industry Development Board( CIDB) aims to remedy.

International Seminar on BIM In driving home the BIM message, CIDB’ s initiatives, past and on-going, have included promotional campaigns, nationwide road shows, workshops, training sessions and international conferences, case in point, National BIM Day 2015, organised in conjunction with International Construction Week. The day-long event, themed“ Cradle to Cradle Construction Through Building Information Modelling” and officiated by Deputy Minister of Works, YB Datuk Rosnah Abdul Rashid Shirlin, is the second in its series and featured prominent speakers sharing their experiences in deploying BIM for rapid delivery of cost-effective and environmentally-friendly projects. Case studies presented included residential projects in the UK and restoration / refurbishment works in Hong Kong and, more importantly, benefits accruing from utilisation of BIM as opposed to dated and / or conventional

“ BIM has allowed architects, contractors and sub-contractors to eliminate the cumbersome, and sometimes inaccurate, two-dimensional technical drawings, replacing them with five-dimensional( width, depth and length plus time and costs) scaled models that enable work to be carried out more quickly and efficiently”

Extract from CIDB publication“ Heights”

Building & Investment | www. b-i. biz 53