IDL Research Students

Ahmed Fahim

PhD - Part-time

Supervisors: Dr Algan Tezel

What is the best way of organising in Healthcare Projects in Kuwait?

This research looks at the status of the completion of healthcare projects in the State of Kuwait and looks for the most critical obstacles and reasons for the lack of progress of these projects as planned.

This research also searches for ways to identify the roots of this problem and how to find a solution to it by applying one of the existing and previously applied solutions in the construction industry.

The aim of this research is to determine the appropriate project delivery method for healthcare projects in Kuwait.

The objectives are: (1) To develop the current Conditions and Problems of Healthcare Projects in Kuwait, (2) Explore Possibility, solutions taking the Visibility of the Implementation into Account, (3) Explore a System or Roadmap can be implemented in similar projects, and (4) Evaluating the Proposed Solution. 

The scope of the research is to investigate LC principles as an integrated project delivery in healthcare projects in Kuwait. Lean construction principles have three critical factors of standardisation, tools, techniques, and cultural change. These reinforce and facilitate better performance in the process and Construction of the project.

Data for this research have been collected by conducting a case study, face-to-face interviews, an online survey and focus groups. The initial data research analysis for this research is still in process as of the date of this report.

This research suggests an approach to what should be done in the next five years of Kuwaiti governmental Development Plan with healthcare projects in Kuwait. This approach can be applied to similar projects in the future. It will also propose LC tools and techniques for selecting an appropriate project delivery solution for tackling healthcare project problems.

A literature review revealed that there are notable LC tools and techniques and project delivery methods in the construction industry. Therefore, further research is required to explore more solutions by searching for appropriate LC tools, techniques, and project delivery methods to be applied in healthcare projects.

Benedict Okundaye

PhD

Supervisor: Prof Patricia Tzortzopoulos

When you are poor and have no home, it can feel like you are invisible – but in most Northern contexts, the government and charities provide certain safety nets. In African cities, it is free fall by comparison; nobody can hear or see you as you disappear without a trace.

In 2017 I travelled from the UK to South Africa to pay my wife’s lobola (bride price) in Gauteng. During the trip I witnessed a group of people erecting shacks on virgin land in an ill-defined area of the neighbourhood; it was two shacks the first day and ten by the next morning. I soon realised I was witnessing a phenomenon— the birth of a shantytown. Questions came to mind: why build at that location? What planning— formal or otherwise— took place before setting out the architecture? How were materials chosen and a build method adopted? This was a workflow conundrum, and the speed of this act of urbanism astonished me. 

Building on a 2018 five-month study trip to South Africa, in which I sought to observe informal housing from an architectural standpoint, I aim to investigate the social and spatial dynamics of informal urbanism to contribute to more sustainable ways of building, incorporating indigenous concepts with mainstream methods. I conducted pilot workshops on material suitability. Methods adopted to date can be summarised as a mixed, practice-based approach combining social research with design-led participatory activities, backed up by policy auditing and drawing on wider urban studies debates. By developing these test studies into an extended doctoral project that explores the intersection between domestic micro-practices and the dynamics of informal construction and shack consolidation, my proposed research is offering pathways to better appreciation of spatial and social strategies adopted to bridge the gap between top-down and bottom-up housing processes in Africa.

Giwa Falilat Jokotade

PhD

Superviosr: Prof Patricia Tzortzopoulos

I am researching Lean Construction and Building Information Modelling (BIM) in SMEs with a focus on Quantity Surveying. Lean Construction is a production technique which has majorly been used in car production and less adoption in construction. Though with the little adoption, it has been recorded to produce less waste in construction (in time and resources). BIM on the other hand aims to create synergy between professionals involved in a construction in terms of design as well as construction stage. Quantity Surveying on the other hand is a profession that is concerned about the financial probity of a construction project. In line with creating a synergy, I seek to research how both construction methods can work hand in hand to build productivity and profitability for SMEs in the construction industry.

Kevin McHugh

PhD

Supervisor: Prof Lauri Koskela

The research will provide a basis for integrating lean commitment planning with digital data in the construction industry. The use of digital data will enhance a bottom up management process to allow construction managers identify trends and manage opportunities and risks that arise through the production process. This will allow construction teams and management teams to integrate at each level to manage and commit to planned tasks.

Collaborating in this way allows for more information to generated, it is noted that digitisation improved the standardisation of the planning and control process; use of indicators to assess compliance with planning; critical analysis of information; using an easy-to-understand and transparent master plan. The key for successful lean deployment is the reliability of the commitments and the ability to continuously improve these commitments.

Construction projects are designed and managed in a digital environment. Where construction organisations are trying to digitise processes across the construction lifecycle there still has been no measurable improvement of construction productivity. Therefore, without the proper thought and consideration given to the core organisational pillars – i.e. people and processes, the digitisation does not automatically solve the problems. In fact, if people and process issues are not addressed, digitisation may end up creating more problems than solving.

There is also the potential for adding waste into the digital control system. Gathering and processing data that does not add value with the potential of generating too much data, which if not accurate could also be wasteful. Gathering and using larger volumes of data from the place of work will require a greater involvement of production teams. Gathering and managing digital data allows teams to work remotely and does not require all team members to assemble physically to commit to planned work. However generating an increased volume of planned commitments requires discipline to manage and close out to ensure the quality of the data. Moreover, the management of digital data is now becoming challenging. Identifying the correct data and the correct measurement will be dictate how successful an organisation can manage the project.

Morolake Ayo-Adejuyigbe

PhD

Supervisors: Prof Patricia Tzortzopoulos and Prof Lauri Koskela

User's Value as Criteria in Decision Making in the Social Housing Upgrading Process

European countries are receiving increased attention for building renovation; this has resulted from ageing building stock and the need for sustainability in the building. The government cannot achieve the UK's target to reduce 80% of CO2 emissions without a significant aspect of retrofitting of existing houses. However, there is a broad argument on social housing retrofit as essential, but an insufficient understanding of the user's value might make the process difficult. It is, therefore, vital to understand user's value as a centric aspect in social housing upgrading amidst conflicting interest and experiences of participating stakeholder involved in upgrading. The research aims to assess criteria of user's value relevant in social housing upgrading decision making. The study will adopt the use of survey and interviews to gather information on user's value and the concept of Living Labs, which is a social innovation to support users' value through a collaborative process to validate and create solutions for upgrading. Mediation Strategies and tools to emphasis the visualisation of problems and solutions to support decision-making to help advance, capture and incorporate user values. The research will also adopt the use of boundary objects to assist in upgrading 'briefs' and support decision-making processes. The study aims to contribute to decision making in upgrading and increase understanding of the user's value to overcome the participatory process dilemmas. Users value will be defined and visualised through their environment and social issues with a link of their domestic life.

Samira Awwal

PhD

Supervisors: Prof Patricia Tzortzopoulos and Dr Danilo Di Mascio

My research focuses on retrofitting Social housing to provide a better value for users. I am currently involved in the U-Vital project, which is a collaborative research project between research institutions in Brazil (BR), Germany (DE), the Netherlands (NL), and the United Kingdom (UK) (See: https://research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/idl/currentresearchprojects/uvital/). My research focuses on the issues in retrofitting social housing and understanding boundary objects to create shared understanding and enable collaboration between stakeholders. I am exploring user-experience using BIM to improve Social Housing retrofit.

My. Undergraduate is completed in Architecture from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 2015. My final year thesis comprised of regenerating a riverport terminal to provide public space and infrastructure support for the locality. After three years of professional experience in design and research, I have completed my masters in “Sustainable Urban Design” from the University of Nottingham in 2019. During my masters, I explored user-experience to assess the social impact on designing public realms.

My career is focused on multidisciplinary and collaborative research. My research engagement is social housing, regeneration of public place, and user-valued innovative design.

Sara Moayedi

PhD

Supervisors: Prof Patricia Tzortzopoulos, Dr Saeed Talebi, Dr Danilo Gomes

Flexibility in modular housing in the UK construction industry

From the beginning of civilization, humans have been interested in changing their buildings. These changes were due to climate change, increasing or decreasing the inhabitants of the building, their different needs over time. Houses should be designed in consideration with human changing requirements. in fact, considering users demand is one of the design necessities. The advantages of flexibility in the design are significant, it can be used for a longer period of time, it is compatible with user experience and intervention, it has more economic and ecological sustainability, and it easily enjoys the advantages of technical innovations. The construction industry is experiencing further industrialisation to achieve greater efficiency and flexibility in the development of manufactured construction products.

The aim of this research to implement flexibility in modular design in UK houses. It is delegating more decisions to end-users of housing by using the concept of flexible modular in design. This research will investigate how to enable flexibility for users in modular housing.  This research has produced a strategy to evaluate the content of flexible in modular houses with a view to its implement different level of flexibility in different level of modularity in UK housing.

Joao Soliman-Junior

PhD

Supervisors: Prof Patricia Tzortzopoulos, Prof Mike Kagioglou and Dr Danilo Gomes

There has been extensive research over the last decades on the use of automation to support regulatory compliance, focusing on rule-based approaches for code checking. Despite their important move, there are still limited results in practice. These limitations are mostly due to inconsistencies between information used to support design activities, which are largely subjective and technological constraints from software tools. From an architectural design perspective, healthcare regulatory requirements are much more complex and convoluted than what is assumed by existing research, whereas previous developments often understand regulatory compliance as an isolated activity in the design process. The aim of this research is to improve regulatory compliance in healthcare building design projects in the UK by using automation. It adopts Design Science Research (DSR) as a methodological approach, with two empirical studies being developed in close collaboration with the Industry.

Joao has graduated in Civil Engineering in 2016 and was awarded his MSc in 2018 by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. During his masters, he has explored how technology and automation could help streamline the assessment of healthcare building design in Brazil, from a regulatory perspective. Joao is now expanding his masters research and undertaking a PhD at the University of Huddersfield. His research encompasses the use of technology, automation and BIM to support architectural and engineering building design. His career is focused on multidisciplinary research and has been strongly anchored to Lean principles. Most of his research engagement has been in projects with an important involvement from the industry, underpinning his practical and collaborative initiatives.