Appunti per esame di Tecnical assessment of built environment

Technical assessment of built environment

1. Introduction

Quality: the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics of an object fulfills requirements. (ISO 9000:2015)

Requirement: is a need or expectation that is stated, generally implied or obligatory (mandatory).

Monitoring, measurement and inspection are a way to measure quality.

Monitoring: the determination of a status, a system, a product, a service, an activity and so on.

The idea of monitoring is not only to measure something but to measure it on time scale, in order to give us the information about how the object keeps this status overtime.

Measurement: process to determine a value. According to ISO 3534-2, the value determined is generally the value of a quantity.

Inspection: is the process that leads us to determine the conformity to specified requirements (inspection or audit).

The result of an inspection is control conformity with the requirements. Conformity: fulfilment of a requirement and nonconformity: non-fulfilment of a requirement.

The problems come when the nonconformity is a defect: nonconformity related to an intended or specified use; the distinction between the concepts defect and nonconformity is important as it has legal connotations, particularly those associated with product and service liability issues.

Audit: it is the systematic, independent and documented process for obtaining objective evidence, evaluating it objectively to determine the extent to which the audit criteria are fulfilled. (ISO 9000:2015).

It is very important the independence of the one that checks the compliance, indeed the assessment may be done by 3 parties that are interested in the object:

• A first party assessment is made by a person that has an interest in the object and it is also responsible for the object itself (owner/seller).
• A second party audits are conducted by external parties having an interest in the organization (product), such as customers or by other person or their behalf (buyer).
• A third party assessment is performed by independent organizations (public body). (ISO 19011:2011)

2. Scope of work and scenarios

The assessment is normally applied as a tool to get information about the process which helps us in reducing the risk or at least in identifying risks associated with our process, so the more information we have the best is the risk management process we may apply.

These areas (scope) in which the technical assessment:

• Real estate trades (sales/acquisitions)
• Sale of business units
• Operation and maintenance contracts ("global service / facility management")
• Asset enhancement/requalification
• Communication to the public (e.g. real estate investment funds)
• Reorganization of the maintenance management
• Risk management 1

This was the areas of interest, so when I can do the technical assessment then there is ‘how can I assess a building’ and we have the following list of activities concerning the assessment:

• Real estate inventory (census)
• Due diligence review
• Building logbook
• Audit
• Technical diagnostics
• Specialized technical investigations

When I can do an assessment there was also the process of contracting out, so contacting to an external company, the operational maintenance activities of our buildings, we sign a contract with the company and the company is responsible for the operational maintenance of our building.

Global service for real estate maintenance: represent an integrated maintenance activities of constructed asset with full responsibility of the contractor on the results in terms of achieving or maintaining performance levels prescribed by the customer.

The standard basically asked the client to set up a document called brief document that is a document in which the client is expected to expose: all the characteristics of the real estate, so a quality and quantity survey; the analysis of the maintenance cost overtime; the assessment of the organizational chart of the company in terms of operational maintenance, organization their roles and responsibilities and the assessment of the resources that are needed to operate the building in order to achieve the performances that we need to do what we must do in the building.

Set up of BRIEF document requires 3 assessments:

• Technical assessment (how the building is made)
• Functional assessment (which function or activities are foreseen in the building and which are the required conditions to carry out those activities)
• Organizational assessment (which resources are needed to contract out the maintenance activities)

Every project should manage these 3 main issues: objectives, what do I expect from the project; constraints, like time schedule, legal constraints, the environmental constraints, climate or other existing infrastructure that may give constraint to my project; resources, like existing buildings, neighbors, budget.

→ In general, remember that the briefing process is a process of identifying and analyzing the needs, aiming and constraints of the client and the relevant and formulating any resulting problems that the designer is required to solve. 2

3. Classification of the built environment

The classification of the built environment is a tool to identify the main requirements that should be taken into account during the assessments step.

To assess something means to compare it against a set of requirements, so to start an assessment we need a set of requirements.

The requirement for the built environment normally comes from 2 major areas: the first one is the area of activities and functions related to the space and the second one is the presence of specific components or systems within the space.

Our first objective is to identify the correct requirements for our assessment, that are:

• Systematic approach in the analysis and assessment of buildings
• Uniformity in data collection by different assessors
• Traceability of technical information
• Traceability of administrative information

ISO is international standard, UNI is an Italian standard, ASTM is one of the most known standards in the world even if it is a local standard from American and there is also other standard such as OMNICLASS. What do these standards have in common? They are based on the idea of the breakdown of an item, so basically the idea is to start from the more aggregated item that is the building and to breakdown the building into systems and components.

UNIFORMAT II: This standard establishes a classification of building elements and related site work. Elements, as defined here, are major components common to most buildings. Elements usually perform a given function, regardless of the design specification, construction method, or materials used.

OMNICLASS system: is split into tables, every table is dealing with one specific issue in the classification system.

MASTERFORMAT: used standard in the North America, the primary purpose is to breakdown a facility for construction processes and cost estimates. It has a special part that is not included in the other classification system which is existing conditions for building or site assessment.

Industry foundation classes (IFC): is the industry foundation classes, is the system to define building elements basically in the BIM software.

ISO standard 12006: the keyword is information and organization. 3

4. Fundamentals of HVAC in buildings

For every type of HVAC system, when you are going to face an installation, the best way to approach it is to remember that every installation may be represented with a breakdown made of 4 parts:

• Feed, how the system is fed by a utility
• Transformation is the second step, quite often the first two parts are physically placed in the same area of the building, normally in the technical room
• Distribution, the distribution system is normally made of piping or electrical wires
• Once the utility has reached the area in which it will be used then we need to identify the terminals, so the last ring of the chain.

The goals in having an HVAC system in a building are:

• To create and maintain in the built environment specified conditions of air temperature and humidity related to the external conditions
• To control the air movement in the inhabited area
• To ensure the desired air quality thanks to the air changes and/or air filtration
• Check the air infiltration from the outside or unwanted air movement from a space to another space in the building

The term air conditioning has gradually changed, from meaning just cooling to the total control of: temperature, moisture in the air (humidity), supply of outside air for ventilation, filtration of airborne particles and air movement in the occupied space.

If we want to control the condition of the air, we are breathing we have five main processes to carry out: heating, cooling, humidifying, dehumidifying and cleaning.

Heating: the process of adding thermal energy to the conditioned space for the purposes of raising or maintaining the temperature of the space.

Cooling: the process of removing thermal energy from the conditioned space for the purposes of lowering or maintaining the temperature of the space.

Humidifying: the process of adding water vapor to the air in the conditioned space for the purposes of raising or maintaining the moisture content of the air.

Dehumidifying: the process of removing water vapor from the air in the conditioned space for the purposes of lowering or maintaining the moisture content of the air.

Cleaning: the process of removing particulates and biological contaminants from the air delivered to the conditioned space for the purposes of improving or maintaining the air quality.

Ventilating: the process of exchanging air between the outdoors and the conditioned space for the purposes of diluting the gaseous contaminants in the air and improving or maintaining air quality, composition, and freshness. Ventilation can be achieved either through natural ventilation or mechanical ventilation.

Air movement: the process of circulating and mixing air through conditioned spaces in the building for the purposes of achieving the proper ventilation and facilitating the thermal energy transfer. 4

5. Performance assessment of the built environment

To assess something is to acquire information, to look for information about something, to compare it with a set of requirements. Information is the value that allows us to make these comparisons.

How can we define the term asset? There are different terminologies. The same standardization bodies, for instance ISO, gives more than one definition of the same thing, so between the different terminology consider the following.

→ Asset: something that has potential or actual value to an organization (ISO 55000). Value means or to get profit or to be able to use the asset to do something, for any functional purpose. Value can be tangible or intangible, financial or non-financial.

Asset: whole building, structure or unit of construction works, or a system or component or part thereof. (ISO 15686)

The factors which influence the type of assets that an organization requires to achieve its objectives, and how the assets are managed, include the following:

• The nature and purpose of the organization
• Its operating context
• Its financial constraints and regulatory requirements
• The needs and expectations of the organization and its stakeholders

Asset management decisions may be technical, financial and operational and they enable the achievements of the organization objective. We must manage our asset in a good way in order to achieve our objective. This includes the implementation of risk based, information driven, planning and decision-making processes.

Need: what is required for the proper conduct of a user activity or a technological function. “Need is something that is required to do something”.

Building performance: is the behavior of building under actual condition of use.

CPR (construction products regulation) EU regulation 305/2011. This regulation provides a common technical language to assess the performance of construction products. The CPR set up a framework composed of 7 essential requirements.

1. Mechanical resistance and stability: the construction works must be designed and built in such a way that the loadings that are liable to act on them during their construction and use will not lead to a collapse.
2. Safety in case of fire: the construction works must be designed and built in such a way that in the event of an outbreak of fire the load bearing capacity of the construction can be assumed for a specific period of time, generation and spread of fire and smoke within the construction works are limited and the spread of fire to neighboring construction works is limited, occupants can leave the construction works or be rescued by other means and the safety of rescue teams must be taken into consideration.
3. Hygiene, health and the environment: we must design and built the buildings in order not to be a threat to the hygiene or health and safety of occupants nor have an exceedingly high impact on the environmental quality.
4. Safety and accessibility in use: we must design and built the buildings in order to avoid or to reduce the risk of accident for people and we must design the buildings in order to allow disabled persons to access the building. 5
5. Protection against noise
6. Energy economy and heat retention
7. Sustainable use of natural resources: include reuse and recyclability of the construction works, a better use of natural resources and use of environmentally compatible raw and secondary materials in the construction works.

Serviceability: is a capability of a building, or part of it, to perform the functions for which it is designed and used.

Serviceability is one of the ways in which we can measure the functional value of a building as an asset.

Evaluation: assessing conformance of the element to the criteria (reference).

Facility: a physical setting used to serve a specific purpose.

Functional performance: the performance of a facility to support required function under specified use conditions. 6

6. Due diligence

Due diligence review is a specific way to apply the idea of technical assessment of the built environment. It is probably now the most used assessment that all companies perform before any purchase or sale of a building. Due diligence is normally a process that is carried out in an interdisciplinary process.

Due diligence: process of analysis of the condition of an asset that may undergoes a transaction, so a purchase or sale or a lease contract; this is normally performed before the change of ownership or transfer of rights or liabilities related to the asset and are formalized in a contract.

The main reason why we do perform due diligence review is to manage risks, due diligence is a risk management tool.

Risk management: understanding the underlying principle of risks, recognizing those instances where a risk exists and acting to control those risks based upon sound economic principle in practice (AS/NZS 4360).

In a real estate construction, you may have different areas of risks: the financial/economic risks, the technical risk and the legal risk. The vertical axis represents the amount of information that you have about an item and the depth of inspection. On the horizontal axis, R is the level of risk that is associated with a transaction in this case.

So, if you want to be sure about the object you want to buy you need to increase information, normally the cost of inspection is related to the risk reduction I may obtain from the inspection. The equilibrium point is to find a level of inspection that may reduce our risk in a significant way.

There are two possibilities in order to balance the ratio risk-inspection:

• Based on the possible inspection level I * with a limit that can result from several factors such as time that the seller provides to carry out due diligence and operating of activities in the assets to be sold that could prevent or at least limit, the execution of the inspections.
• Based on the level of acceptable risk R * that can be managed through appropriate contractual warranty provisions

In the area indicated with the red arrow you have a small risk reduction even if you have invested a lot of efforts in the inspection. The area indicated with the green arrow, on the other hand, is very convenient because you spend a one to perform the inspection and you save 1000 times the one who spent in inspection.

Walkthrough survey: a site visit consisting in non-intrusive visual observation, a survey of readily accessible and easily visible components and systems of the subject property.

Property condition assessment (PCA): the process by which a person or entity observes a property, interviews sources, and reviews available documentation for the purpose of developing an opinion and preparing a PCR of a commercial real estate’s current physical condition. 7

Property condition report (PCR): a written report that outlines the consultants’ observations, opinions as to the subject property’s condition and opinions of probable costs to remedy the material physical deficiencies observed.

Easily visible: I can observe visually during the walk-through survey something without intrusion, revocation or removal of materials, without exploratory probing, the use a special protective clothing or any equipment.

Immediate costs: cost related to work activities that must be done to solve specific critical situations like an existing or potential unsafe condition.

Short-term costs: costs related to the remedy of physical deficiencies, that may not warrant immediate attention, but require repairs or replacement that should be undertaken on a priority basis in addition to routine preventive maintenance.

Summarizing, I assess the building with a walkthrough, I compared the building with applicable requirements, I expressed my opinion. If the opinion report some