Design economics for dual currency management in construction projects.

Victoria, Michele; Perera, Srinath; Davies, Alan

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature on design economics and deduce relationships between Capital Cost (CC) and design variables; and initial Embodied Carbon (EC) and design variables by collecting data of 10 office buildings in the UK. Design variables are major determinants of cost of a building and the theoretical stance of the relationship between design variables and cost is already established. However, design economics becomes more interesting when dealing with dual currency - cost and carbon. Also, the knowledge of design economics becomes significant for dual currency management as there is a growing concern to reduce embodied carbon economically. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to review the literature on design economics and deduce relationships between Capital Cost (CC) and design variables; and initial Embodied Carbon (EC) and design variables by collecting data of 10 office buildings in the UK. The relationships are explained through descriptive statistics and comparisons are made between CC and initial EC relationships with that of the design variables. Findings reveal building size, height, fa{cedil}cade area and no. of basements are correlated with CC and initial EC of the buildings. Also, a fair linear relationship was evident between CC per Gross Internal Floor Area (GIFA) and EC per GIFA of the buildings which gives an indication that it is possible to reduce both CC and initial EC by concentrating on the outline design.

Citation

VICTORIA, M., PERERA, S. and DAVIES, A. 2016. Design economics for dual currency management in construction projects. In Proceedings of the 2016 Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors construction, building and real estate research conference (RICS COBRA 2016), 20-22 September 2016, Toronto, Canada. London: RICS.

• Conference Name: 2016 Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors construction, building and real estate research conference (RICS COBRA 2016)
• Conference Location: Toronto, Canada
• Start Date: Sep 20, 2016
• End Date: Sep 22, 2016
• Acceptance Date: Feb 6, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Sep 20, 2016
• Publication Date: Sep 20, 2016
• Deposit Date: Feb 6, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 6, 2018
• Print ISSN: 2398-8614
• Publisher: Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)
• Series ISSN: 2398-8614
• ISBN: 9781783211609
• Keywords: Capital cost; Correlation; Design economics; Initial embodied carbon; Office buildings
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/2727