Abstract
Building energy renovations contribute significantly to energy sustainability and environmental protection. These advantages have increased the importance of renovating existing residential buildings in many countries. In China, the government has supported the energy-saving renovation of existing urban residential buildings since 2007. However, quality failures, which do not meet the technical requirements, occur during construction processes in building energy renovation projects. Although quality failures are regarded as a crucial problem in building energy renovation projects, the identification of quality failures and their sources, likelihood, impacts, and causes remain mostly unknown. This paper investigates the nature of quality failures in building energy renovation projects. A total of 25 quality failures were first identified through five cases, and interviews with six experienced construction professionals in China. A questionnaire survey was further conducted to evaluate the frequency of quality failures. The results show the nature of quality failures that arise during construction and their sources, occurrence frequency, causes, and impacts. The research reveals that quality failures are caused by defaults by workers; inadequate checking procedures; incomplete construction site surveys; inaccurate design work; fraud of construction companies; and inefficient cooperation between different departments. Above all, the behaviors of the main actors are responsible for poor construction quality. Additionally, emphasis on quality control during the renovation preparation stage is critical to ensure that quality failures are reduced in numbers and severity.
Highlights
The building sector is one of the largest energy end-use sectors, accounting for a larger proportion of the total energy consumption than both industry and transportation combined, in many countries [1]
According to the ‘Regulations on quality control of construction projects to ensure the main stakeholder compliance with quality control,’ the rework and repair of the quality failures must be recorded by construction companies during the construction period
There is legislation in place to reduce quality failures, such failures frequently occur during the construction stages in building energy renovation projects
Summary
The building sector is one of the largest energy end-use sectors, accounting for a larger proportion of the total energy consumption than both industry and transportation combined, in many countries [1]. Quality failures happen frequently in these types of building energy renovation projects, which do not meet the technical requirements [7] This has resulted in losses and the negative reputation of the building energy renovation sector. In China, previous research efforts have attempted to find the negative influence of the quality failures in building energy renovation projects, as well as their technical solutions to rework [20,21]. The specific objectives are: (1) to identify the quality failures during the construction period in building energy renovation in Northern China; and (2) to provide the analysis of the quality failures by considering their sources, frequency, impacts, and causes.
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