Browsing by Author "Jayasinghe, SJARS"

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item: Conference-Full-text
Applicability of ICTAD Price Fluctuation Formula for Government Funded Intelligent Building Projects
(2015-08-20) Jayaweera, SC; Perera, BAKS; Jayasinghe, SJARS
In high inflationary situations, government fiscal policies etc., have an effect on price fluctuations in Intelligent Building (IB) projects which are funded by the Government. It can increase the cost of material, plant and labour, while increasing the risks that both the contractors and the clients have to face. The use of the ICTAD price fluctuation formula in construction projects of more than three months duration, especially those of the Government, will help to recover these unforeseen costs at least to a certain extent. The formula however has its own inherent constraints. The objective of this research is to identify these constraints and suggest solutions to overcome them. An expert survey and a case study were done towards achieving the main objective. The case studies comprised a document review and semi structured interviews. Code-based content analysis was used to identify the significant conclusions that could be made from the semi-structured interviews. The QSR. NVivo computer software was used to simplify the content analysis. The results emphasised that in the case of IB projects of the Government, there is a difference between the actual price fluctuations and the corresponding figures obtained using Institute of Training and Development (ICTAD) price fluctuation formula as the formula had its own limitations. Therefore there is a need to modify the way the ‘cost adjustment’ factor is determined in IB projects of the Government. By using reliable price indices while taking steps to improve the currently available norms, it will be possible to make available to future IB projects a better operating framework.
item: Conference-Abstract
Consideration of running costs : conventionalbuilding vs green buildings
Vinoba, K; Perera, BAKS; Jayasinghe, SJARS
‘Green Buildings’ aim at the efficient use of energy, water and material resources while reducing the impact of the buildings on human health and environment. Green Building reduces the Running Costs (RC) required for the operation and periodic maintenance of a building throughout its life cycles thereby providing significant financial benefits. In Sri Lanka, green buildings are being increasingly constructed, and the lack of understanding about the Life Cycle Costs (LCC) of buildings has resulted in several misconceptions and these contradict the research findings on RC of green buildings. Therefore, this study is aimed at identifying the savings from RC that can be obtained from green buildings, compared to conventional buildings. The research problem was approached through case studies, semi-structured interviews and a document survey. The findings were analysed using content analysis. It was revealed that the RC would vary depending on the function of the building, and that this cost is always less when compared with that of conventional buildings mainly due to the 78% saving on energy consumption cost. Furthermore, sustainable features in the building contribute to reducing energy cost during the running period. Consequently, it is essential to make the stakeholders aware of the RC of green buildings, to encourage them to move towards sustainable development.
item: Conference-Full-text
Labour Productivity Norms for Aluminium System Formwork in Low-Cost Housing Construction Projects in Sri Lanka
(2015-08-20) Jayasinghe, SJARS; Fernando, NG
In enhancing the living standards of the society advanced technologies can be used in gaining the labour productivity and competitive advantage. There the low-cost housing projects are facilitating a proper labour productivity adhering the effect of labour productivity factors. Thereby, Aluminium system formwork is a use of advanced methodology which enhance the labour productivity in low-cost housing projects while highlighting the significance and domain created within the industry. Meanwhile, tendency of poor performance in Aluminium System Formwork is observed due to improper planning in high rise building construction. Consequently when maintaining productive advantage, productivity norms are number of labour hours required to complete a particular task while facilitating the efficient evaluation of labour performance in enhancing the merits of the Aluminium System Formwork. Hence, deficiency of researches have been done to establish particular standards or norms, this research aims at investigating the realistic measure of the labour performance for Aluminium System Formwork in low cost housing projects. Accordingly, a case study was conducted using direct observations to prepare the labour productivity norms and collected data were analysed based on labour productivity factors. Finally conclusions were drawn and recommendations were put forward. Findings proved the combination and varying effect of weather factors, crew factors, management and projects factors, site conditions represent different labour productivity norms in each four different occasions. Meanwhile within each occasion the effect of structural elements towards the norms is highlighted and facilities the realistic measurement of the labour performance in Aluminium system formwork while embossing low cast housing concept.
item: Conference-Full-text
Labour productivity norms for aluminium system formwork in low-cost housing construction projects in Sri Lanka
(Ceylon Institute of Builders, 2015-06) Jayasinghe, SJARS; Fernando, NG; Sandanayake, YG; Fernando, NG; Karunasena, GI
In enhancing the living standards of the society advanced technologies can be used in gaining the labour productivity and competitive advantage. There the low-cost housing projects are facilitating a proper labour productivity adhering the effect of labour productivity factors. Thereby, Aluminium system formwork is a use of advanced methodology which enhance the labour productivity in low-cost housing projects while highlighting the significance and domain created within the industry. Meanwhile, tendency of poor performance in Aluminium System Formwork is observed due to improper planning in high rise building construction. Consequently when maintaining productive advantage, productivity norms are number of labour hours required to complete a particular task while facilitating the efficient evaluation of labour performance in enhancing the merits of the Aluminium System Formwork. Hence, deficiency of researches have been done to establish particular standards or norms, this research aims at investigating the realistic measure of the labour performance for Aluminium System Formwork in low cost housing projects. Accordingly, a case study was conducted using direct observations to prepare the labour productivity norms and collected data were analysed based on labour productivity factors. Finally conclusions were drawn and recommendations were put forward. Findings proved the combination and varying effect of weather factors, crew factors, management and projects factors, site conditions represent different labour productivity norms in each four different occasions. Meanwhile within each occasion the effect of structural elements towards the norms is highlighted and facilities the realistic measurement of the labour performance in Aluminium system formwork while embossing low cast housing concept.
item: Conference-Abstract
Preliminery project cost estimation model using artificial neural networks for public sector office buildings in Sri Lanka
Dissanayake, DMSM; Fernando, NG; Jayasinghe, SJARS; Rathnaweera, PHSB
Cost estimating is a critical due to incomplete project details and drawings and has become a similar issue in Sri Lanka. Since, cost of a building is impacted by decisions made at the design phase, efficient cost estimation is essential. Therefore novel cost models have identified as simple, understandable and reliable. Thereby, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have established having the ability to learn patterns within given inputs and outputs and the end result was developed as the preliminary project cost estimation model for public sector office buildings in Sri Lanka. To accomplish the above aim, the survey approach was selected and semi structured interviews and documentary review were conducted in collecting data. Then training and testing of the Neural Networks (NN) under ten design parameters was carried out using the cost data of twenty office buildings in public sector. The data was applied to the back propagation NNtechnique to attain the optimal NN Architectures. The empirical findings depicts that the success of an ANN is very sensitive to parameters selected in the training process and decreasing learning rate makes Mean Square Error smaller but with considerably larger number of iterations up to certain point. It has been gained good generalization capabilities in testing session achieving accuracy of 90.9% in validation session. Ultimately, NN has provided the best solution to develop a cost estimation model for public sector as accurate, heuristic, flexible and efficient technique.