I hope you enjoyed the

presentations for Module 2. These presentations provide you some feedback on

Exercises 1 and 2 for the module to allow you to judge how you went in
completing the tasks. Feedback on the
extension exercise will be provided at
the end of the course. In Exercise 1 for this module, we ask you to identify
the issues that would be considered
during conceptual design, based on the focus on a life cycle for the
domestic dwelling, rather than just a focus
on the acquisition or the construction
of the system. First, revision.
Remember, we discussed during the module how during
the acquisition phase we need to take into account
the issues that will relate to the system
throughout its entire life, that is, we need to
design the system not just to be
acquired, that is, to be constructed, but
also to be operated, to be maintained, and
ultimately, to be retired. Here, by way of example, we're focusing on the
impact of design on the utilization phase and
the retirement phase, where the system
will be utilized and maintained by the owner
in the utilization phase, so that means somebody
will live in it and they'll conduct the
required maintenance, prior to it finally being retired in the retirement phase.
Retirement could be through
disposal via destruction, or most likely, of course, it will be retired by
selling it to another owner. As seen in the first
week exercises, a domestic dwelling
could take many forms; it could be a suburban house, a town house, an apartment, a
flat, and so on. During conceptual design,
the designers want to make sure they would consider as many as the relevant
issues as possible. If we focus on just the
construction of the house itself, many of the other life cycle aspects would not be
considered. For example, how the
owners use the system; is it a family dwelling, or is it built for
a single person? What functions do they want? For example, we can't suddenly add a
garage
or a swimming pool in the future if we've not left enough room on the site
during the original build. Secondly, what maintenance
issues need to be considered? For example, if access is
required to the roof space, how large is that access? Where is it located, and so
on. If access was required to
air conditioning unit, what is needed to access? If there's a needle ladder, how
much space is
needed, and so on. Finally, of course,
there are issues like how the owners intending
to dispose of it, do they intend to
sell it immediately? Will they wait for
some period of time? Will they own it
for a short period, upgrade it as their family
grows, and then sell? All these things will
change the way in which the family or the owners of
the system build the system. There are many issues
to be addressed, these are just a small number. Let's have a look at a few more in
detail that each of you may have identified when you
were doing the exercises. Operational use issues. Well, the operational
issues that we need to consider for the dwelling
are many and varied, and we've just noted a few here. There are many common uses
we won't have time to cover, and it's very important
to not forget them and to articulate them for the system that
we're designing it. For the purposes of
exercises here though, we will only consider a small number of the
life cycle issues. But first like its foremost is, how will the dwelling be used?
Is it only ever a family home, or will it be a holiday home, and therefore will it
need
to have a greater level of security than a house
that has residents in it? Will it be a family home and therefore requires
multiple bedrooms, or is it the dwelling
of a single person? Second, what about
future growth? How will the dwelling
be used in the future? When a single person or a
couple acquires a dwelling, they need to consider
whether they plan to have children in the future. Perhaps elderly
parents may move in. Will they need additional
storage space? Will they need to be
able to provide space to park additional
cars in the future? Then we can consider
entertainment. Does the dwelling
require space to have parties, functions,
and gatherings? If so, is it expected that additional sleeping
space is required? Which also requires
consideration for parking. If, for example, there's
still parking in the apartment block,
can visitors use it? Do they have to use
on street parking, or is there even any on-street
parking available at all? If there's an exercise function, does the owner intend to
conduct exercise at home? Are there shift workers and
can make it to a gym easily? What about the exercise
therefore when they get home? Is the owner intending to put a swimming pool in for
exercise? If for example, they
want a home gym, will they change the
equipment regularly? How will they get heavy
equipment in and out, particularly if it's a
basement gym, for example? This could drive
requirements for a large entry and exit doors for ease of equipment
installation and removal. There are other operational
issues, including security, which is applicable to
the people living in the dwelling as well as
to their belongings. If the owner is intending to use the property as
a holiday house, as mentioned previously, the dwelling may require
higher levels of security, particularly when
people aren't present, and a different type of
security; video cameras, for example, in
conjunction with alarms, as opposed to just a fence. This could also
result in changes about how the external shape of the building is designed to
ensure clear fields
of view for cameras. Then how will
entertainment be provided? If one of the main uses of the dwelling is for
home entertainment, perhaps for a home theater, how will acoustics be managed? Is
the location of the
theater at the front of the house near a busy road
going to cause issues? If it's located at the front, can we fix that with
noise dampening glass, in the windows with double
glazing, for example? Or can we locate
the windows so that we minimize the amount of light
that comes into the room, or do we need thick curtains
to be to minimize them? Lastly, just by way of example, will the dwelling be
utilized to conduct work? If it is, it may drive
requirements for a home office to be included as part of the actual building. Or
are they prepared to
work on the kitchen table? Or is there a pull-out desk
in one of the bedrooms? With that comes potential
requirements for computers, phone lines, additional storage, perhaps secure
storage, wireless Internet, for
example, other networks. They may even require space for business-related visitors.
Access to the office
may need to be from the front of the building
rather than the back, and they may even
need a waiting area, if it's a small office, and perhaps even some
off-street parking. There are so many uses of a drawing that could
be considered, but obviously that
depends on how important those uses
are to stakeholders. It can here provide you
with a complete list, which just simply try to
show you some examples, which would have been
similar to the things you considered when
you did the exercise. Of course, all uses
that are of importance will influence the derivation
of functional requirements, and hence the desire
of the dwelling in the conceptual design phase
of the system life cycle. Early consideration of
these issues helps to ensure that delivered system
meets the owner's needs, and so it's very
important for us then, very early in conceptual design, to ensure that we
understand what it is that the
owner needs out of their building because
their needs are almost always going to be
quite considerably unique. Now, as well as the
operational issues, we've also got system
support issues. There are many of
those such things, but let's just consider a few. We need to worry about
exterior maintenance. The total of exterior
service of a dwelling affects the cost associated with maintenance
throughout its life. If a surface such
as timber is used, then it requires treatment
through painting or oiling to reduce the
rate of which it decays. Then eventually, of course,
it needs to be re-treated, and then finally replaced. Those timber surfaces may be
cheaper initially compared
to other services. Perhaps that cost of
continued maintenance and then replacement
would make the whole of life cost of
that surface more expensive than a more
expensive initial cost, for example, for
a brick surface. So the longer-lasting
surface such as brick may prove to be less expensive over the
life of the dwelling, even though it may have cost more to install in
the first instance. We'll also need to
consider documentation, something we don't worry
about for a house. But during conceptual design, the way in which we've
planned and designed documentation and how we've
stored it is important to us, particularly in other systems. For example, we need
to know the layout of the
plumbing and the wiring. This is necessary so
when we conduct repairs, or conducting renovations
or minor improvements, it's a simple matter of knowing where the power systems run.
It's even important for simple things like hanging
a picture in the wall and driving a nail through the plaster board to know
where the power wiring is. This information
well-documented will enable easier support of the dwelling throughout
its operational life and even into a disposal. May also consider some pre-emptive
aspects to the design. For example, if we
can't afford to have an in-ground watering system
in the first instance, but we plan to put
one in the future, it may actually be
useful to pre-emptively lay the least
expensive component of that, which is the piping, which could then
be there so that when we subsequently install
the watering system, it's much easier to do because
we don't have to dig up their newly laid lawns around beautiful gardens that have
been established since
we built the house. We could just simply
add the sprinklers and the control systems when
we could afford them. Similarly, there are many items that can't be
afforded initially, but may have elements included
in the initial building, so it's relatively easy
to add the major item or the more expensive items later in the life
of the building. For example, in an alarm system, we may lay the relatively
inexpensive cabling in the wall, and then later on install the more expensive
control
units and sensors. Other support system issues
include access requirements. These are very important
because we need to make sure that we
can gain access at a later date to things
that we need to go to maintain or actually
withdraw and replace. These things can
be very expensive, particularly if we're knocking down low-bearing brick walls. If
the dwelling has
a large portion of electrical wiring or plumbing running through the
specified areas, provide your method of access to that area, like under the house,
for example, makes supporting the dwelling in the event
of a system failure, that is if you've got a blocked pipe or some problem with the
cabling much easier and
much cheaper in the future. Similarly, if there's a
possibility that a pool or other large system or structure could be required at the
rear of the property, just ensuring that we
have sufficient access to allow maintainers and other people to get access to that
system should be considered during
conceptual design. There are also many
maintenance issues. Previously, we touched
on the maintenance of the exterior surface
of the dwelling. Similarly, the
interior surfaces such as the floor should
be considered because different flooring
materials require significantly different
support throughout their life. Timber floors require
vacuuming, mopping, and potentially recoding
and/or polishing in the future a number of
times throughout their life. Carpets wear out, they
require vacuuming, and most likely will require
professional cleaning and potential replacement over
relatively short periods. Now, polished
concrete, of course, would last a lot longer, but it's not always aesthetically
pleasing to all owners. The choice of flooring
therefore needs to be driven by the intended
use of the property, whether it's of a
high traffic areas, whether you've got
children, whether it's a holiday home, and so on, as well as the support
issues and the through life costs of maintaining
those systems. But, of course,
as we pointed out before with polished
concrete floors, whilst that might be
the hardest wearing, most cost-effective
solution through life, it might not actually be the preferred solution of
the business owners, they might like something
that looks slightly nicer. A family with young
children, for example, might want quick
and easy surfaces to clean in the event of spills, and so carpet might not be a
useful thing in
the first instance. As was the case with the issues associated with operational
use, these are just a
few of the possible life cycle support issues that will be considered
during conceptual design. Let's go onto a
retirement phase. The retirement phase
issues are discussed in much more detail in the extension
exercise from Module 3. But for completeness
and to show you the full impact of
the life cycle, we'll cover a number
of issues here. There are some key considerations
during conceptual design, which are relevant to the
retirement of the system, in this case, a dwelling. For example, have the users
actually envisage
retiring the system? Will they sell it? How
quickly will they sell it? Or are they going to wait until the building limit it
for as long as they can and wait until it can no longer be occupied
and destroyed? Throughout its life, sell the property with a normal
method of retirement, of course, as the house
moves between life cycles. Consequently, the design of the house must be attractive
to the largest number of people possible to maximize
the sale price. We don't want to design
our house so uniquely for our needs that doesn't meet the needs of potential
buyers, or rather only meets the needs of a very small number
of potential buyers. During conceptual design, the intended resale
target needs to be the most attractive range of people to increase our
possibility of sale. If the resale
target is a family, but it's being
acquired for a couple, is it worth building perhaps the extra rooms for a family,
even though the original
owners as a couple, don't need those rooms? Selection of the building
materials can also drive whether the resale is
aiming for a higher price, potency, along with tenant sale, or a lower price, that
is, the owners want to minimize the acquisition cost in order to maximize their
profit
in a quick sale. Now, of course,
eventually, the dwelling will reach the end of its life, either because it's
completely run down or it's been destroyed
by fire or flood, and it needs to be destroyed. In that case, the
destruction will be predicated upon the original
selection of the materials, the complexity of the design, and how easy those
materials are to destroy, and how easy the house
is if we pull down. If hazardous materials
are utilized, it will be more expensive in both time and money to
destroy the dwelling. Similarly, if the
design of the home is complex and requires a very specific way to be able
to safely drop the walls, for example, then it will take
much longer and cost more. As we mentioned briefly before, if the dwelling was
for investment, over the life of the dwelling, the owners will be aiming
to maximize profit. Having an expensive
destruction cost, and then therefore reducing the profit over the
life that having perhaps to be recouped in the price of the apartment
complex which is replacing it, will reduce the overall
profit of the business.