D6.2 Recommendations for standardisation

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This deliverable is part of work package 6 ‘Training, communication, dissemination and exploitation’. It is documenting the recommendations for standardisation concerning the executed work within INSITER. The recommendations are categorised in chapters, related to:

• Chapter 2: Building Quality control and certification;
  
• Chapter 3: Data interfaces between different equipment;
  
• Chapter 4: BIM open-interoperability;
  
• Chapter 5: Procurement;
  
• Chapter 6: Guidelines.
  

For building quality control, different countries have different rules and regulations. That makes it difficult to follow a default approach. Although different, the main similarity is that the ever growing complexity of buildings creates a demand for a more prominent role for inspection parties. New development around quality assurance in the Netherlands, the upcoming “Quality Assurance Act for construction” makes a move for private parties to control the building process. In the current situation the government institutions (municipalities) are responsible for quality control.

Concerning measurement equipment, IR thermograph will be exploited for the U-Value distribution assessment and thermal bridges localisation during the building process. For this purpose an excitation procedure is designed to produce controlled thermal gradients between the wall surfaces and induce a thermal heat transfer across the wall. The results of the sub-task will be a standardised procedure and prototyping using different commercial IR systems that allow storing thermal data in open formats.

The number of formats in which measurement data is expressed tends to grow and evolve according to specific (and often conflicting) needs in terms of completeness, readability, portability, redundancy, etc. As proprietary file formats are developed, for instance in the private sector, software interoperability based solely on file input/output is at risk. Therefore, the file formats have to be discussed and agreed upon.

The main barriers to the application of measurement equipment for INSITER purposes are related to the commercial systems available in the market and to their applicability on-site during building construction.

One of the challenges to carry out self-inspection is the lack of interoperability between the various equipment used. Devices and current tools deployed on-site do not speak the same language, which leads to a lack of communication. Therefore, INSITER presents a framework under which the equipment is able to send information in a common format.

Within the world of Information Technologies (IT), there is an ever-growing number of information exchange standards. The existing standard(s) may not fulfil the needs and requirements, and could possibly require the combination of several standards. For projects like INSITER, the choice regarding exchange standards is straightforward. There is only one open standard (IFC, also called ISO16739) that is widely accepted, mature and covers most of the disciplines within the sector.

For the use of INSITER in construction project, it is important to have a procedure of establishing what is to be procured. Not only the building and its performances must be described, but far more interesting are the requirements related to planning, execution, inspection and evaluation. In other words, how the desired performance will be assured. At aspects where the procedures related to the construction objectives are generic, standardisation may be useful.

INSITER’s guidelines involve the 8-step methodology as proposed in the DoA. This methodology is developed to cover the full aspect of performance based evaluation and quality assurance. At the contrary, existing standards, like the standards for condition assessment, only have a focus on component conditions and not the functional embedment in the greater system and entire building. The proposal for a standardised approach would be the continuous consolidation of small and large scale construction processes through the (O)PDCA (observe, plan, do, check, act) approach.

Self-inspection demands understandable and applicable inspection protocols. Besides specific product-related inspections, there’s a wide range of generic inspection protocols that can apply to a certain component or element. It would be an added value to have these protocols standardised by branch organisations, in order to have a widely accepted inspection list for assuring quality.

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