Khalid S. Al-Gahtani

Modeling Sustainable Building Materials in Saudi Arabia

Green building materials are composed of renewable, rather than nonrenewable, resources. Green materials are environmentally responsible because the impacts of the product are considered over its life cycle. Depending upon projectspecific goals, an assessment of green materials may involve an evaluation of one or more of the following criteria: resource efficiency, indoor air quality, energy efficiency, water conservation, and affordability. Product selection can begin after the establishment of project-specific environmental goals. The main objective of this research is to develop a framework that uses BIM to select optimum sustainable building materials in Saudi Arabia. To this end, a cost model will be developed to take into account initial costs, such as construction costs, and all life cycle costs including the operating costs and energy consumption of a building. The framework integrates the expanded features of BIM technology with an especially designed green building rating system for Saudi Arabia.

Production of green concrete using recycled waste aggregate and byproducts

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight the sustainability benefits of using demolition and industrial wastes as a replacement for aggregates and cement in traditional concrete mixes. Design/methodology/approach Crushed concrete from demolition sites served as a replacement for fine and coarse aggregate in some of the mixes at various ratios. In addition, ground granulated blast furnace slag, metakaolin, silica fume, and fly ash each served as a cement replacement for cement content in the mixes tested in this research at various rates. Compression strength tests, permeability, and thermal expansion tests were performed on various mixes to compare their performance to that of traditional mixes with natural aggregate, and with no cement replacement. Findings The compressive strength results indicated the suitability of using such demolition wastes as replacements in producing green concrete (GC) without hindering its mechanical characteristics significantly. In addition, the results indicated an enhancement in the mechanical characteristics of GC when replacing cement with pozzolanic industrial wastes and byproducts. Originality/value The research assesses the utilization of sustainable GC using recycled waste aggregate and byproducts.

Tracking indoor air quality of buildings using BIM

Today, the demand of sustainable buildings is getting higher. The main purpose of buildings is to provide a comfortable living environment to their occupants, considering different aspects including thermal, visual and acoustic comfort as well as Indoor Air Quality. Life cycle assessments are related to many issues such as environmental concerns. Decreasing carbon foot print and energy consumption rates and increasing comfort level for the building users can help to achieve environmental improvements. This comfort level is related highly to Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). This research aims at improving environmental concerns using building information modeling. As-built BIM model is developed to act as a hub to allow transformation of information to an external database, extracted from the BIM Model in COBIE (Construction-Operations Building Information Exchange) format. The database is updated in a dynamic manner to reflect external environmental changes. The environmental changes are captured using sensors that can detect variations in temperature and humidity. Also, carbon emissions and energy consumption rates are reflected back on the model. A case study is presented to demonstrate the use of the proposed framework.

Addressing Scheduling Software for Analyzing Delay Claim

Currently available Scheduling Software is not an optimal solution for analyzing delay claims. Such software contains features that are primarily designed for project management; which may lead to inaccuracies while processing delay claims. As a result, it is difficult to apply Delay Analysis Techniques using current scheduling software. This paper will address inaccuracies that affect current scheduling software and suggest improvements in this area of application.