ASSESSMENT OF DEFECTS IN MASONRY WALLS FOR THE RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS IN LITHUANIA

Evaluating the impact of defects in buildings and ranking the most impactful ones enables construction companies to better choose which paths to take in light of continuous improvement activities to support more sustainable decisions regarding the design and operation of buildings. As a result, the risks of the different choices are more clearly identified while assessing all tangible and intangible aspects of residential building defects in a structured way. Although recent studies on managing construction defects in residential buildings have focused on monetary losses associated with maintenance activities based on the defect’s frequency and severity, these studies do not take into account the levels of customer satisfaction. To address this gap, this paper proposes a novel evaluation method of the impact of defects to support decision-making in managing defect occurrences in residential buildings. The goal is to rank the defects’ impact based on a combination of some critical aspects: frequency of occurrence, financial considerations on repairing such defects, the impact that these defects have on customer satisfaction, and the cost and complexity of preventing and minimizing these defect occurrences through continuous improvement activities. The method consists of a structured set of steps that use data from technical assistance departments and customer satisfaction surveys, where information about the users’ level of satisfaction and the occurrence of defects is available. In this paper, data obtained from a construction company were used to test and validate the proposed method. The method also examines the challenges and barriers associated with the technique and points out that difficulties in acquiring reliable data are a bottleneck for making conscious and sustainable decisions to address construciton defects. Moreover, the case study results highlight essential capabilities needed by companies to correctly assess the impact of defects, such as correctly logging data in a structured database and having skilled personnel to verify defects users might have complained about. The paper ends by proposing a set of guidelines to use the method and stressing that structured methods for decision-making are crucial to analyze construction defects in a structured way while also incorporating the user’s perspective. The proposed method is expected to improve sustainable managerial decisions where economic, environmental, social, and technical risks can be accounted for to enhance the quality of projects from the customer’s perspective. Such analysis can help optimize and prioritize the use of resources and minimize the economic impact of activities on the construction company.

Fuzzy-stochastic model to assess defects in low-rise residential buildings

Defects in residential building façades affect the structural integrity of buildings and degrade external appearances. Defects in a building façade are typically managed using manpower during maintenance. This approach is time-consuming, yields subjective results, and can lead to accidents or casualties. To address this, we propose a building façade monitoring system that utilizes an object detection method based on deep learning to efficiently manage defects by minimizing the involvement of manpower. The dataset used for training a deep-learning-based network contains actual residential building façade images. Various building designs in these raw images make it difficult to detect defects because of their various types and complex backgrounds. We employed the faster regions with convolutional neural network (Faster R-CNN) structure for more accurate defect detection in such environments, achieving an average precision (intersection over union (IoU) = 0.5) of 62.7% for all types of trained defects. As it is difficult to detect defects in a training environment, it is necessary to improve the performance of the network. However, the object detection network employed in this study yields an excellent performance in complex real-world images, indicating the possibility of developing a system that would detect defects in more types of building façades.

The building industry is noted for its repeated building defects causing cost increases and time delays during construction. In Spain, despite the Ley de Ordenación de la Edificación (Building Regulation Act), which establishes a general framework to promote overall building quality, construction defects in residential buildings remain a pervasive problem. An analysis of 3647 construction defects is presented which identified the location within the building, subcontractors and building element in 68 residential building developments undertaken by two large Spanish contractors. The research reveals that the most common defects that arise during construction are related to the stability of the structure and inappropriate installation of roofs and facades. These technical faults are caused by poor workmanship rather than by the quality of the materials or products used. By comparing these results with a previous study on defects after handover, it can be concluded that while the nature of defects during construction is basically technical, at handover it is aesthetic or technical.

The issue of defects in residential buildings has been reported to impact the performance of the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. Defects can increase the construction cost, significantly contribute to the increment of construction waste and cause stress to home occupants. To minimise these effects the first step is to understand the main causes of building defects (Building defects). To date, the research specific to building defects in the Australian context is scant. Limited research considered the perceptions of all the possible stakeholders that are responsible for the generation and management of defects. Hence, this study aims to explore the causes of building defects by considering the perceptions of various stakeholders using the machine learning method. The research employed a mixed approach that involve qualitative content analysis and natural language processing (NLP) of court cases obtained from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the legal entity that deals with building-related disputes. NLP resulted in extracting defect sentences based on defect keywords using the KeyBERT algorithm and pre-trained deep learning embedding models including BERT-Base, RoBERTa-Base, and fastText. The content analysis showed that the top three reasons for building defects are related to workmanship, design, and materials. The three main stakeholder groups involved in building defect management were builders, owners and sub-contractors. Drawing on these findings, a proactive defect prevention framework was developed to guide building defect risk management.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief of overview of building failures and building defects definitions with various terms from the previous researches and also to redefine the understanding of these definitions within the context of building maintenance management domain. Therefore, this article presents the insight of previous definition of building failures and building defects and provides their respective understanding in various aspects. It then provides the detail discussion on the building failures and defects definitions, understanding causes and effects in term of building maintenance management perspective. All the related onformatin has been gathered through secondary resources such as journal article, text book, report and others. The information and knowledge on the subject of building failures and building defects help in producing the building design with reliable, maintainability, and supporting for future building maintenance and building improvement. Finally, this paper has successed in describing a clear explanation regarding to the meaning of building failures and building defects.

In the realm of residential buildings, the choice of roofing plays a vital role in both functionality and aesthetics. Due to their attractive design, flat roofs have surpassed traditional pitched roofs in prevalence in Malaysia. However, while flat roofs have become a popular choice for residential buildings in Malaysia, it is imperative to address the specific challenges posed by equatorial climates. Climate projections indicate that Malaysia is expected to face increasing temperatures of up to 1.5°C by the year 2050. This rise in temperature is likely to be accompanied by more intense rainfall during wet periods and reduced rainfall during dry periods. These climate changes have significant implications for the design and construction of residential buildings, particularly in relation to flat roofs such as leakage, moisture accumulation, flaking, blistering, and ponding. These leads to financial burden to the homeowners in maintaining their residential flat roofs. Therefore, this research addresses the cost implications of flat roof defects in residential buildings. Its goals include identifying the types of defects, examining their associated costs, and proposing solutions to minimize their occurrence. Through the distribution of questionnaires to 63 respondents from contractor companies, the research findings highlight moisture as one of the predominant flat roof defects. Additionally, the study reveals that replacing the flat roof is the most expensive measure to address these defects. Consequently, the research underscores the importance of opting for high-quality waterproofing materials and implementing effective workmanship management during construction as key solutions to minimize flat roof defects. This research achieved it aims in providing valuable insights into the financial implications of flat roof defects in residential buildings. By doing so, the homeowners, contractors, and stakeholders in the construction industry have input in developing strategies to reduce maintenance costs and improve the durability of flat roofs in residential structures.

Assessment of public building defects and maintenance practices: Cases in Mettu town, Ethiopia

Buildings are major components of hospital assets and substantial resources are invested in their design, construction, and maintenance. Although investments in hospital maintenance are increasing, instances have been recorded of dissatisfaction among the hospital building users with respect to extent of defects in the buildings. Defects in the building have tremendous impacts on user’s performance and satisfaction and on the hospitals’ profit margins. This research investigated the remedial actions to reduce the defects in the hospital buildings. Through a survey interview involving 6 hospitals, the results revealed that educating building users, providing training to maintenance operatives, conducting preventive maintenance, and creating awareness on the importance of building are the measures remedies to prevent defects. Furthermore, it is important to blend design and construction with the functional value of the buildings. This research provides fresh information on the maintenance of hospital buildings. Even though the data are collected in Malaysia, the results can be applied to hospital buildings outside of Malaysia.

PurposeThe successive Malaysian government aims to provide housing to households earning the median income and below. However, there has been continuous criticism and complaints from the media and literature on the magnitude of the defects in affordable housing. Therefore, this research has investigated the defects in affordable housing for the users’/occupants' perspectives.Design/methodology/approachWith a response rate of 69%, the research developed a questionnaire instrument that included twenty-one defects in buildings based on literature and observation. These were scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from very common to least common. Twelve causes of defects measured on a five-point scale were included in the survey. Thirteen additional items that had to do with remedial actions to reduce defects were included. These were scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to least agree. The survey forms were administered to all the 152 home occupants in a Program Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) housing estate through hand delivery in a northern state in Malaysia.FindingsThe data revealed that broken doors, damaged roofs, damp walls and broken tiles in rooms were the most common defects in the housing development. It was found that defects in the buildings were caused by poor workmanship, defective materials, poor designs and bad weather. Additionally, to rectify the defects, adequate supervision is required during maintenance, the repairs must be conducted on time and there is a need to have competent maintenance organisations. Through factor analysis, the 21 defects were structured into six factors, the 12 causes were grouped into 5 factors and the 13 remedial actions were grouped into 6 factors.Practical implicationsThe information on the nature, degree and kinds of defects from the users' perspectives will dictate when repair work is to be undertaken and allow future work to be programmed and financed as part of a maintenance rolling programme.Originality/valueThis research focused specifically on “Program Perumahan Rakyat” housing development. Furthermore, none of the previous research on defects conducted attempted to categorise the defects in the buildings. The categorisation is very important for systemic decision-making because there are continuous interactions amongst the defects, causes and remedial actions.

PurposeMost residential building owners often report problems associated with the plumbing systems. If identified at the early stages, plumbing-related defects can be easily repaired. However, if unnoticed for a long period of time, they could lead to major damages and incur a significant cost to repair. Despite the problems, studies investigating plumbing anomalies and their root causes in residential buildings are limited. This study aims to explore plumbing defects and their potential causes, diagnosis methods and repair techniques in residential buildings.Design/methodology/approachThis research used data collected through an extensive survey of both academic and grey literature. Through the content analysis, plumbing defects and the associated causes have been identified and presented in tabular format.FindingsThe study investigated the anomalies and causes in the residential plumbing system under five key sub-systems: water supply system; sanitary plumbing system; roof drainage system; heating, ventilation, air conditioning and gas system; and swimming pool. Accordingly, some of the identified plumbing defects include leakages, corrosion, water penetration, slow drainage and cracks. Damaged pipes, faulty equipment and installations are some of the common causes of the anomalies. Visual inspection, hydrostatic pressure test, thermography, high-tech pipe cameras, infrared cameras, leak noise correlators and leak loggers are techniques used for diagnosing anomalies. Reactive, preventive, predictive and reliability-centred maintenance strategies are identified to control or prevent anomalies.Originality/valueThe findings of this research can be used as a useful tool or guideline for contractors, plumbers, facilities managers and building surveyors to identify and rectify plumbing system-related defects in residential buildings.

Ethiopia is one of the developing countries; and many projects are being carried out with some of the firms acting unprofessionally, leading to lots of defects in buildings. This study was focused on identifying the types of defects and assessing the causes of defects occurring in residential and office buildings located in North Shoa zone, Ethiopia. To identify the types and causes of defect, questionnaires surveys were distributed for persons involved in the construction industry including clients, consultants and contractors. The data received in the questionnaires were analyzed by Relative Importance Index (RII) method to determine the relative importance of each factor, and the Spearman rank correlation coefficient was determined to test their significance. Observations were also done on buildings that suffered from the defects in the study area; and foundation, wall and window bay cracks were observed. The top causes of the defects in building construction in the study area according to data collected were lack of consultant timely response and proper solutions; unavailability of professionals for material control; delay of construction material delivery; shortage of construction equipment; and lack of coordination between professionals during design. The Spearman rank correlation for causes of defects in the building indicated that there is no positive significant relationship between stakeholders. These results showed that there was a problem of taking responsibility. Finally, to minimize the problem of defects, various minimizing measures should be taken. These may include; control the quality of design, provide appropriate supervision, train professionals on construction and manpower management, arrange the meeting for stakeholders for proper communication and coordination, and creating awareness on construction defects. Key words: Construction, defect, defect causes, Relative Importance Index (RII), correlation analysis, minimizing defect.

Fire door defects in residential buildings negatively impact construction management by reducing fire safety effectiveness, increasing the likelihood of smoke and fire spreading, and consequently putting occupant safety at greater risk. To address this critical safety issue, this study proposes and evaluates five transformer-based text classification methods—BERT, RoBERTa, ALBERT, DistilBERT, and XLNet—for automated defect detection. These methods are optimized using both common and method-specific hyperparameters, resulting in 1,458 model variants evaluated through multiple metrics. Among these, the optimized RoBERTa achieves the highest performance, demonstrating F1 scores of 92.13% (frame gap), 87.29% (door closer adjustment), 78.17% (contamination), 82.89% (dent), 80.17% (scratch), 96.66% (sealing components), 98.43% (mechanical components), and 67.81% (others), yielding an average F1 score of 85.44%. Furthermore, RoBERTa significantly outperforms the other optimized 535 text classification models (ANN, SVM, DT, LR, 1D CNN, and LSTM). These results underscore the potential and effectiveness of transformer-based methods for safety management in real-world construction scenarios.

The aim of the article is to present the results of preliminary research of the defects in residential buildings occurring during the warranty period. Due to the small amount of data, the research results cannot be generalized but allow for the formulation of research hypotheses that will be verified in future studies. The data collected included reports of defects in three multifamily residential buildings constructed by the developer in one of the big cities in Poland, which were then examined. For the examination of defects, statistical analysis was used, which revealed that more than half of the reports contained reasonable defects. The results of the preliminary research also indicate that, on the one hand, owners are very active in making warranty claims in the first three months from the date of commissioning, and, on the other hand, with time, the percentage of reasonable defects increases. In terms of the significance of defects, the largest percentage was significant defects. The results showed little activity on the part of property managers in the initial phase of the operation of the buildings, which is the opposite of that of apartment owners. Reports of faults in windows and door joinery, moisture, scratches on walls, and in the area of balconies and terraces are characterized by a relatively low number of cases reported in the first half of the year after the building is commissioned and a gradual increase in the subsequent warranty period. On the other hand, reports related to electrical installation defects are most frequent in the initial period of the warranty, but, with time, their number decreases.

Grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) system efficiency can be maximized with building demand matching. Computer simulations were used to investigate the priorities of energy efficient measures commonly used in residential and commercial buildings in Thailand that decreased the electricity demand while producing load profiles that matched the unique output profiles from PV systems. Residential and commercial buildings in Thailand were modeled in existing conditions. Then they were made compliant with ASHRAE energy standard requirements which can reduce electricity consumption 16-36% in residential buildings and 8-19% in commercial buildings. With energy efficient design measures, electricity production from PV systems could satisfy the remaining consumption and peak electricity demand reduction could reach up to 70% in residential buildings. Electricity consumption and peak demand reduction in commercial buildings was not high. Reducing lighting power density in residential buildings, using higher glazing efficiency in small offices and using thermal mass in big offices were found to be able to reduce more peak load when electricity output from PV systems were incorporated in the buildings compared with other measures. Energy efficient design measures suitable for different purposes in each building type have been identified. Building owners and electricity utilities can use this information to select the best energy efficient design measures that fit their objectives.