Nuria Forcada

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Papers by Nuria Forcada

SEAM4US: An intelligent energy management system for underground stations

Applied Energy, 2016

Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC http://upcommons.upc.edu/e-prints Aquesta és una còpia de ... more

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Energy mapping of existing building stock in Spain

Journal of Cleaner Production, 2015

Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC http://upcommons.upc.edu/e-prints Aquesta és una còpia de ... more

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The latent causes of rework in floating production storage and offloading projects

Journal of Civil Engineering and Management, 2014

There is growing demand for cost effective and reliable floating production systems to maximize m... more There is growing demand for cost effective and reliable floating production systems to maximize marginal and new deepwater fields worldwide. Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels are considered to be the most economical and viable options to meet this demand. Yet, FPSO projects are prone to significant cost and schedule growth. On average, FPSOs have been reported to experience a 20% cost growth and are delayed by six months. Overruns and delays represent uncertainties for owners, contractors and financial institutions. In-depth interviews with twenty-three practitioners about their experiences with FPSO projects revealed that rework arising from design and construction errors were major contributors to cost and schedule growth. Key latent conditions contributing to rework are classified according to people, organization and project. Using retrospective sensemaking an examination of the determinant histories in a new build and conversion FPSO that experienced rework was undertaken. The sharing of experience(s) is deemed pivotal for reducing rework in future projects, particularly through the use of communities of practice that are able to stimulate situated learning to take place. A reduction in rework will not only reduce cost and schedule growth, improve operational performance and augment safety.

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Environmental impacts related to the commissioning and usage phase of an intelligent energy management system

Applied Energy, 2015

ABSTRACT This paper presents for the first time the results of a life cycle assessment study for ... more ABSTRACT This paper presents for the first time the results of a life cycle assessment study for an intelligent energy management system. We considered material acquisition, manufacturing, transportation, assembly, operation and maintenance stages. The results show that the assembly phase had an environmental impact of 897 Eco-indicator 99 points that was mainly due to the monitoring subsystem (87.80%). When the analysis was extended to cover the use phase, the environmental impact ranged from 1963 (useful life of 5 years) to 3029 Eco-indicator 99 points (useful life of 10 years). The environmental impact of the use stage was found to represent 54–70% of the total, whereas the assembly stage represented 46–30%. The maintenance phase contributed to a very small extent to the total environmental impact (less than 0.5%). In any case, the impact on resources was the largest (about 51%), whereas the human health damage category amounted to approximately 35% and the ecosystem quality damage category represented about 14% of the total impact.

Analysis of the implementation of effective waste management practices in construction projects and sites

Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 2014

ABSTRACT We examine the implementation of waste management practices in construction projects and... more ABSTRACT We examine the implementation of waste management practices in construction projects and sites.•We also examine construction companies’ perceptions of the current legal framework.•We use survey responses from 74 Spanish construction companies.•We identify various instruments and measures for more sustainable construction waste management.

Assessment of construction defects in residential buildings in Spain

Building Research & Information, 2014

ABSTRACT The building industry is noted for its repeated building defects causing cost increases ... more ABSTRACT The building industry is noted for its repeated building defects causing cost increases and time delays during construction. In Spain, despite the Ley de Ordenacion de la Edificacion (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.

Development of an Ontology for the Document Management Systems for Construction

Complex Systems Concurrent Engineering, 2007

... 1 Construction Engineering Department. Technical University of Catalonia, Spain. C/Colom,11, ... more

Guidelines for the creation of integrated operational procedures for a construction company

Integration. A word sometimes related to adding things up to gather a comprehensive body of knowl... more Integration. A word sometimes related to adding things up to gather a comprehensive body of knowledge or group of actions that affect different aspects of a certain situation. Management system integration in the construction industry has been a theme of research for quite sometime now. The growing body of knowledge related to quality, safety and environmental management systems in construction,

Knowledge Management and e-Learning from Research Projects in the Field of Undergroung Construction

Web Information Systems and Technologies, 2010

Virtual teaching for construction

ISPE Conference on Concurrent Engineering, 2003

Knowledge Management and e-Learning for Underground Construction Projects

This paper describes a Knowledge management system (SGAC––Active Knowledge Management System) to ... more This paper describes a Knowledge management system (SGAC––Active Knowledge Management System) to manage the knowledge generated in a research project. This system aims both at organising project information during the project and at transferring this knowledge to other researchers from the same scientific domain so as to enhance e-learning. This paper approaches the problem of knowledge transfer from a case study angle. The system is developed inside “The Multidimensional City” project, which is a multi-disciplinary research project that promotes the development and implementation of Spanish technological innovation in underground construction. The SGAC system aims at achieving full integration of large set of contents created in research projects related to underground construction sites. Then, the project has developed several types of metadata for tagging and enriching contents. All this enriched information becomes the base of different e-learning courses in underground construction, promoting an updated education in this knowledge area and the dissemination of the results generated in the research project.

Knowledge Management and e-Learning for Underground Construction Projects

Advanced Concurrent Engineering, 2010

Abstract. This paper describes a Knowledge management system (SGAC-Active Knowledge Management Sy... more

Rework in highway projects

Journal of Civil Engineering and Management, 2014

There is limited systematic knowledge available about the dynamics of rework in highway projects,... more There is limited systematic knowledge available about the dynamics of rework in highway projects, despite the fact that they frequently exceed budget and schedule by more than 10%. A case study of a Spanish highway project, which experienced a significant cost overrun as a result of rework, is examined and the causal factors that contributed to its occurrence are determined. Through observation and subsequent analysis of interviews and documentation a high degree of interdependency existed between perceived causes of rework. This resulted in the nomenclature of Project, Organization and People to be adopted and used to develop the rework generic systemic model. Scope changes, high complexity, poor skill levels and unexpected underground services were found to be the most significant causes of rework. The developed model provides managers with insights about the interdependencies and behaviour between key influencing variables in highway projects and can be used to stimulate learning and process improvements in future highway projects. Keywords: highway projects, rework, system dynamics. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Forcada, N.; Rusiñol, G.; Macarulla, M.; Love, P. E. D. 2014. Rework in highway projects, Journal of Civil Engineering and Management 20(4): 455-465. http://dx.

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Experiences of success in industrial plants projects

Success has always been the ultimate goal of construction projects, and different researchers hav... more Success has always been the ultimate goal of construction projects, and different researchers have tried to evaluate it using different factors. Although specialized industrial construction usually involves very large scale projects with a high degree of technological complexity, research has mostly focused on civil and residential success factors. Experiences in Industrial Plants projects can help to improve project management and productivity in such a specialized sector. In this kind of projects, the contractual arrangement is one of the core differences on Project management and thus project success.

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An ontology for Environmental and Health and Safety risks' evaluation for construction

The present research project establishes the basis of a decision making tool, based on an ontolog... more

An ontology for the Environmental and Safety integration in the construction sector

Interoperability for Enterprise Software and Applications, 2007

Assessing concerns of interested parties when predicting the significance of environmental impacts related to the construction process of residential buildings

Fuel and Energy Abstracts, 2011

The most common challenges and obstacles encountered by construction organizations during the pro... more The most common challenges and obstacles encountered by construction organizations during the process of implementing and using environmental management systems are related to the inherent peculiarities of the construction sector. Several studies have shown that one of the issues involving the greatest level of uncertainty is the identification and assessment of environmental impacts. In order to improve the identification of the significance of environmental impacts of construction projects and sites, which will lead to greater efficiency and robustness in environmental management systems, this paper extends the systematic approach for identifying and assessing potential adverse environmental impacts at the pre-construction stage presented in Gangolells et al. (2009) by introducing the assessment of the concerns of interested parties. By considering concerns amongst internal and external interested parties, one can assess the significance of environmental impacts taking into account not only the severity of the impacts but also local perceptions and international challenges, thereby ensuring that the determination of the impacts’ significance is appropriate to the particular socioeconomic and biophysical environments surrounding construction sites. In order to quantitatively measure concerns among internal and external interested parties for each of the 37 environmental impacts related to a construction project, we developed corresponding indicators and assessment scales with the help of a panel of experts. A series of χ2 tests conducted over 76 new-start construction projects clearly revealed that the severity of environmental impacts is not correlated with the concerns of interested parties. The development of a formal quantitative method and the subsequent definition of a threshold make it possible to obtain advance knowledge of the significance – and, therefore, the acceptability – of each potential environmental impact for a particular construction project. A total score for each construction project alternative is also obtained, so the improved methodology provides a consistent basis for comparing construction companies and construction sites. Finally, two case studies are presented in order to demonstrate the benefits of the improved methodology.

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Mitigating construction safety risks using prevention through design

Journal of Safety Research, 2010

Research and practice have demonstrated that decisions made prior to work at construction sites c... more Research and practice have demonstrated that decisions made prior to work at construction sites can influence construction worker safety. However, it has also been argued that most architects and design engineers possess neither the knowledge of construction safety nor the knowledge of construction processes necessary to effectively perform Construction Hazards Prevention through Design (CHPtD).This paper introduces a quantitative methodology that supports designers by providing a way to evaluate the safety-related performance of residential construction designs using a risk analysis–based approach. The methodology compares the overall safety risk level of various construction designs and ranks the significance of the various safety risks of each of these designs. The methodology also compares the absolute importance of a particular safety risk in various construction designs.Because the methodology identifies the relevance of each safety risk at a particular site prior to the construction stage, significant risks are highlighted in advance. Thus, a range of measures for mitigating safety risks can then be implemented during on-site construction.The methodology is specially worthwhile for designers, who can compare construction techniques and systems during the design phase and determine the corresponding level of safety risk without their creative talents being restricted. By using this methodology, construction companies can improve their on-site safety performance.

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Mitigating construction safety risks using prevention through design

Journal of Safety Research, 2010

Introduction: Research and practice have demonstrated that decisions made prior to work at constr... more Introduction: Research and practice have demonstrated that decisions made prior to work at construction sites can influence construction worker safety. However, it has also been argued that most architects and design engineers possess neither the knowledge of construction safety nor the knowledge of construction processes necessary to effectively perform Construction Hazards Prevention through Design (CHPtD). Method: This paper introduces a quantitative methodology that supports designers by providing a way to evaluate the safety-related performance of residential construction designs using a risk analysis-based approach. The methodology compares the overall safety risk level of various construction designs and ranks the significance of the various safety risks of each of these designs. The methodology also compares the absolute importance of a particular safety risk in various construction designs. Results: Because the methodology identifies the relevance of each safety risk at a particular site prior to the construction stage, significant risks are highlighted in advance. Thus, a range of measures for mitigating safety risks can then be implemented during on-site construction. Impact on industry: The methodology is specially worthwhile for designers, who can compare construction techniques and systems during the design phase and determine the corresponding level of safety risk without their creative talents being restricted. By using this methodology, construction companies can improve their on-site safety performance.

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Influence of Building Type on Post-Handover Defects in Housing

Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities, 2012

Clients&amp;amp;amp;#x27; lack of involvement in defining quality requirements for dwellings ... more Clients&amp;amp;amp;#x27; lack of involvement in defining quality requirements for dwellings built by developers leads to a perception of poor quality at the time of purchase. The research presented in this paper aims to broaden previous research on defects by analysing the defects that remain ...

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