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Master of Science in Building Construction and Facility Management
Master of Science in Building Construction and Facility Management
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ItemIdentifying The Impact of Socioeconomic Status on The Sleep Quality of Aging Adults With MCI: A Comparative Study(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-12-15) Ismail, AliaaAging adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are underrepresented in built environment research, specifically studies that mainly focus on low socioeconomic status and racial minorities. Part of this thesis is a part of a larger study conducted by the Cognitive Empowerment Program that is investigating the built environment of aging adults with MCI. The aim of this thesis is multifold: first, to provide a clearer understanding of the differences in the sleep environment related to socioeconomic status in aging adults with MCI and investigate if these differences affect their sleep health. Second, this thesis also aimed to evaluate which home environment factors, such as lighting, noise, temperature, air quality and housing insecurity affect sleep health for aging adults with MCI. Lastly, this thesis aimed to empower underprivileged aging adults with MCI and give back to this community that is not represented enough in research. Affluent and underprivileged aging adults with MCI were surveyed in Atlanta Georgia, using mental health measures, cognitive health measures, sleep quality measures and a built environment survey that asks questions about their sleeping environment. This study was able to suggest an association between socioeconomic status with sleep quality, depression, and stress. The findings of this study also suggest a relationship between sleep health and the satisfaction with the current living arrangement, homeownership, wanting to move out of current living arrangement and moving frequency. Lastly, this study was also able to identify gender differences in sleep health. This study is a preliminary investigation on the home and sleeping environments of underprivileged aging adults with MCI. Since there is a lack of literature about this presented topic, future research should investigate the indoor environmental conditions and its relationship with sleep health of racial/ethnic minorities, low socioeconomic status groups, and cognitive aging adults to allow these vulnerable populations to age-in-place in their homes peacefully and independently.
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ItemUse Of XR Technologies to Trigger Interest in High School Students in a Construction Management Career(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-12-08) Oliveira Spitzer, BarbaraThe construction management skilled workforce in the United States is shrinking as a big number of its employees approach retirement and are not being replaced quickly enough by younger generations. According to the literature, pre-college educational programs can help address this issue by attracting a broader and more varied pool of students into Construction Management and related programs. The literature also indicates that the application of Extended Reality (XR) modalities generates student benefits such as increased engagement and self-efficacy that could be derived from bringing these modalities into educational settings. These benefits, in turn, help recruitment efforts for these domains. Georgia Tech’s School of Building Construction developed a Building Construction Summer Camp in 2022 using the Model of Domain (MDL) educational framework and its theory on triggering situational interest in students, to recruit students to the Bachelor of Science in Building Construction program. To trigger interest, memorable situational activities must be incorporated. As such, all camp activities were carefully selected to be engaging and memorable and included hands-on activities such as building a masonry wall with professional masons and use of advanced technology, such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology such as REVIT and Masonry iQ, infrared cameras, laser scanners, and various XR modalities. Pre- and post-surveys for the entire summer camp and shorter surveys after three specific activities using XR modalities were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the camp in triggering interest in the participants into pursuing a career in construction management. This thesis summarizes the evidence-based research results on the impact of these specific activities that used XR modalities as well as the overall camp on triggering situational interest in students. The post-camp survey results show a significant increase in the participants’ interest in a career in Construction Management after the camp. The findings contribute to the body of knowledge regarding the use of hands-on and XR-technology-based educational activities, specifically in the context of a summer camp for student recruitment purposes. Moreover, the findings provide an empirical foundation for developing a pre-college educational program to intrigue high school students' interests in the construction management domain. Analysis of the results also presents findings and recommendations useful to academia with respect to proper selection of XR modalities when different educational objectives and priorities are considered, such as student comfort. A limitation of the study is the small sample size, but data from future camps will be used to verify these findings.
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ItemNet-Zero Water Buildings & the Air Force(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-09-06) Lambert, Jacob L.The Department of Defense has tasked the uniformed services to make a percentage of their installations net-zero waste, water, and energy. The purpose of this study is to determine if United States Air Force can make 10% of their large sized installations net-zero water installations and what building types are best suited for net-zero water operations. To accomplish this, existing building floor plan data for 14 different building types on Air Force installations was collected and replicated in Building Information Modeling software. These models were then analyzed in software to determine estimated water usage and the amount of rainwater harvested per building. The models were tested for four different installations in the continental United States to account for different climate areas. The results of the 56 tests were then analyzed for trends to determine which installations and building types were most relevant for net-zero water operations. It was found that installations that experience higher average rainfalls each year are more likely to have successful net-zero water buildings. Installations in the Atlantic Ocean & Gulf of Mexico coastal areas are installations to target. Additionally, with the parameters selected for the procedure – it was found that 8 of 14 building types simulated at Eglin AFB, FL, are net-zero water positive as they harvest more rainwater than they are estimated to use. With additional floorplan data for all buildings on an installation, it would be possible to completely verify if an entire installation would be net-zero for water operations – however, the tests ran are a good indicator if net-zero water is possible or not.
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ItemBarriers and Potential Solutions to Gender Diversity in the Construction Industry(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-08-04) Washington, Candace H.The construction industry faces significant challenges filling vacant jobs to match supply with demand. With 20 percent of the construction workforce not returning after the pandemic within a booming housing market and the "Great Retirement" of the baby boomers, the construction sector's current and forecast labor shortage has worsened. Making the construction-related jobs more attractive and welcoming to women and other demographic groups underrepresented in the industry is imperative for the construction industry's future workforce. However, there are persistent barriers to achieving such diversity. This research focuses on the factors influencing women's decision to enter the construction industry. Female middle and high school students aged 11-17 were invited to participate in the survey. The survey questions and results were structured to categorize responses into five categories: Career, Perceptions, Diversity & Mentoring, and College Interest. Survey results with indicators above 50 percent were considered outliers and more significant in understanding females' perceptions and barriers to entry into the construction industry. Based on the survey findings, recommendations to establish a framework for developing strategies for attracting and retaining women into the construction industry focuses on the following: 1. Female students aged 11-17; 2. Academic institutions 3. Female practitioners. The recommendations further suggest that early intervention and introduction of construction management in STEM programs in elementary and middle school programs would demystify the negative perceptions and helps visualize and provide paths for viable career and educational options. In turn, academic institutions can identify strengths and weaknesses inherent in recruiting and retaining female students in construction management programs. Additionally, implementing strategies of industry mentors and role models for new female entrants into the construction industry and the students in construction programs in higher education can strengthen the pipeline of women in construction.
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ItemAnalyzing the evolving trends of the sustainable built environment(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-05-03) Zeng, QinghaoSustainable buildings have been accepted as one of the most effective solutions among stakeholders in the construction industry to achieve the goal of promoting environmentally friendly, economic responsible and social harmonious built environment. Throughout the approximately thirty-year-evolving period, the notion of sustainability in building design has shifted from simply focusing on dealing with environmental issues to not only handling with energy, resources, and materials insufficiency but also fostering people’s well-being by accomplishing net-zero energy goals and promoting human-building interaction. As a result, numerous sustainable building assessment standards and rating tools have been created in the United States. As various differences existed among those certification standards and tools, it is of great necessity to conduct research targeting at analyzing the evolving trends of these significant tools and establishing a decision-making support framework to ease the standard selection process for responsible stakeholders, which are the two main research goals for this thesis paper. Besides, predictions of several sustainable building assessment standards and tools are summarized in this thesis, served as the forecasting vision for futuristic development of sustainable built environment.
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ItemIndustry 4.0 And Short-Term Outlook for AEC Industry Workforce(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-12-13) Quintana, EmilioTechnology is uniquely transforming our society to a significant degree. This transformation has been described as Industry 4.0 and encompasses machine learning, computerization, automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Industry 4.0 is currently impacting the United States’ workplace and is projected in continue uniquely changing our society over the next twenty years or so. Looking specifically at the AEC industry, this paper researches how the AEC industry workplace could be impacted by Industry 4.0 over the next several years. The hypothesis that jobs more at risk for automation should see low or negative growth and lower wages over the next several years was tested by using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) occupational wage data and growth projections to create an opportunity value for each occupation, and then evaluating the relationship between the opportunity value and probability of automation. A statistical significance was found between the two variables. The hypothesis that certain skills are particularly associated with high growth/high wage jobs versus low growth/low wage jobs was tested by scraping important skills/qualities from the individual occupational webpages hosted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and then comparing the approximately top 80% of skills scraped between the two groups. Certain skills/qualities were found to be particularly associated with each group. Finally, the occupations associated with the AEC industry were compared with the findings from the first two hypotheses. The discoveries were that the AEC industry is potentially more susceptible to Industry 4.0 than other industries. This research is of significance because research into how the AEC industry workplace will be impacted by Industry 4.0 over the next several years was not found in the research background, and it has implications on potential career choices, skill requirements, and areas of research and development. Recommendations for future work include utilizing new data sources, Monte Carlo simulations, cohort analysis, and cluster analysis to make more specific forecasts on Industry 4.0’s impact on the AEC industry.
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ItemMitigation of Business Risk Exposure in Public Higher Education Facilities Management Using Key Performance Indicators: Analysis of the University System of Georgia(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-05-25) Maddox, Anthony J.The post-secondary education sector has sustained significant student growth, which has led to the expansion of institutional buildings and infrastructure. With increased growth and expansion experienced in previous years, appropriate operational funding has not always matched growth. This lack of funding can cause an increase of deferred maintenance and capital renewal, which results in an increase in Business Risk Exposure (BRE) to the organization. The objective of this study is to examine the facilities operational and capital funding of the University System of Georgia institutions. Funding will be compared to counterparts within a Facilities Performance Indicator (FPI) report in order to understand if operational funding is adequate or below comparable institutions. This report is comprised of educational institutions across the United States volunteering current facility information, created annually by the Association of Physical Plant Administrators (APPA).
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ItemConceptual framework for incorporating access for maintainability considerations in BIM coordination(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-05-05) Sierra Aparicio, Monica VivianaAccess to perform maintainability tasks has been addressed by facility managers as one of the common struggles they face once the construction project is delivered. The development of Building Information Modeling (BIM) has proved the potential to foresee, identify, and remove the physical barriers for maintenance teams in order to allow a better compliance of their tasks and to ensure that equipment is timely and effectively reviewed. Also, rule-based software might enhance the revision of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance checks, easing the decision-making process in regard to end-user accessibility. Tools such as Solibri have rule templates for a few ADA checks. Yet, there is not a framework that can provide complete operational constraints and foresees the avoidance of accessibility concerns during the design phase. The objective of this study is to develop a proof of concept that addresses access for maintainability requirements during the coordination procedure, ensuring a welcoming and equitable environment for everybody. In order to introduce accessibility preconditions to an automated rule generator, the interpretation and reduction of the regulation needs to be done first. Afterward, the decoded restrictions are introduced into a Dynamo script, which will make them visible on the clash detection tool during the coordination procedure. Later on, the proposed framework will be tested on a case study. The proposal might contribute to the reduction of the project’s lifecycle costs by considering maintainability restrictions earlier in the design process. Moreover, inputs related to disabled individuals’ daily struggles might be further developed by fining tune the proof of concept. Therefore, those issues might be included as a driver, following a human-centered design process. Furthermore, the incorporation of those constraints will contribute to the execution of a resilient building, capable of satisfying its occupants displacement requirements.
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ItemChanges in quality management approaches for design-build highway projects(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-27) Lee, Jung HyunThe purpose of this study is to determine changes in quality management approaches of design-build (DB) highway projects compared to those in design-bid-build (DBB) projects. Identifying the existing challenges in the quality management procedures in DB environment requires conducting a content analysis. This involved reviewing regulations, FHWA policy documents, quality manuals, and state DOT solicitation documents. To obtain a deeper understanding of the state of the practice in state DOTs and to identify best practices in handling the identified challenges, this study conducted structured interviews of DOT personnel and industry experts. The results indicate that responsibility for quality assurance is being transferred to design-build teams. The findings of this study show six areas of changes in DB highway projects: (1) acceptance approaches; (2) selection criteria; (3) independent assurance procedures; (4) non-conformance reports; (5) cost mechanisms; and (6) pay factor adjustment.
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ItemLost to lucrative: A study of the Atlanta BeltLine(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-27) Foster, AmandaHow does a designer know how to transform a lost space into a place that people will revisit? This study explores the revitalization of lost spaces into public trails by using the Atlanta BeltLine as a case study. Over 100 people in the Atlanta area were asked general questions about their experiences of the Atlanta BeltLine and perceived safety questions. Additionally, some respondents submitted photos of things they liked and disliked about the trail. The data gathered regarded the Atlanta BeltLine East trails. Environmental measurements were taken to help interpret the results of the survey. The study results showed that wide, permanent pathway material, adequate lighting, opportunity for social outings, and interest pieces such as art or scenic views all play a part in providing the perceived safety needed and reason for a person to revisit a space that was previously lost or abandoned.